“We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mourning Dove
Preening and Sunning
One day while I was sitting outside enjoying some beautiful weather, I noticed this cardinal as she carefully preened her feathers and then very meticulously fluffed and spread out her wing and tail feathers to soak up the sun. She sat so long with her feathers opened out that at first I thought she must be hurt. But it turned out that like me, she was just taking advantage of a lovely sunny day.
“Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie.” ~Henry David Thoreau
Ichneumon Wasp
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” ~Mary Oliver
Liberty
“Liberty is among our most highly prized ideals, especially valued if one has had it curtailed.” ~Amy Sims
Hazy skies
Smoke drifting down from Canadian wildfires made for hazy skies over West Tennessee last night. This picture was taken about an hour before sunset.
“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” ~Albert Einstein
Blue Dasher
“Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.” ~A. R. Ammons
Enjoying the view
“Never lose an opportunity to see anything that is beautiful. It is God’s handwriting – a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, every fair sky, every fair flower.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly
“Each season has its joys to treasure, to lift one’s spirits and bring us pleasure.” ~Unknown
Trilling frogs
This little frog was camouflaged so well that I would have never seen him, had it not been for his loud melodic chirping. At one point, when the lake got very still and quiet, he was joined by a great chorus of frogs all singing at different frequencies and volumes, scattered throughout the greenery. It was a beautiful sound to the ears.
Later, as I was looking at the photos, I discovered that I had been so focused on the one vocal frog, that I had not noticed that there had been another quieter one hidden nearby (see the last two photos). 🙂
“If we can discover the meaning in the trilling of a frog, perhaps we may understand why it is for us not merely noise but a song of poetry and emotion.” ~Adrian Forsyth
Fleeting beauty
While walking around the boardwalk at Reelfoot Lake State Park, this little warbler darted in and landed on the hand railing about two feet from where I was standing. It gave me a good scolding, and before I could get my camera poised to take a picture, it quickly took off to the shelter of a nearby tree. I waited around a while in the sweltering heat and humidity, watching it briskly hopping about from tree to tree, hoping to get a good photo. Disappointingly, I only ended up with a distant shot of its back before it eventually faded into the faraway trees and was gone. Still, I felt lucky to have seen this beautiful little bird and to have enjoyed its cheerful song that was called out so clearly to another warbler concealed in the woods nearby.
“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
walking on a country road 