This week's pictures span several several picture-taking sessions over about several weeks, thanks to the various trips.
The second of the winter-resident sparrows to show up at Owl Pavilion was this White-crowned sparrow, here feeding on the spill-off of a wildlife block others had been working on.	Another white-crowned sparrow preferred to work on the block itself, digging out favorite seeds. There compressed blocks of various seeds are relished by mammals and birds alike.
The female dickcissel's beautiful muted color and markings don't show well at any distance, but photography brings the bird close enough to enjoy.
In the fall, dozens (hundreds?) of skippers flit about in the grass and just above it. Most won't hold still to be photographed (and I have the deleted blurry files to prove it!) but this Fiery Skiipper, Hylephila phyleus, posed just long enough.
A male House Finch clings to a greenbriar vine in the shade of a cedar..
Early fall here shows its beauties in the gold of Maximilian sunflower and purple of eryngo and blazing star, but mid-fall brings grass flowers backlit by the sun. In this corner of the SW meadow, a clump of Indiangrass sends up golden spears next to a goldenrod and the last few Maximilian sunflowers.	When I looked at the previous image in the computer, I noticed the effect of the drought on the Indiangrass: last year's flowering stalks rising two feet above this year's...so this is a crop of that picture, to show what I saw. On the right side, old goldenrod stalks are also two feet and more higher than this year's flowers. These tough native plants won't die in a drought, but they must adjust.
Some of the bluestems have silvery awns that catch the slanting autumn sunlight--here it's bushy bluestem, a native that grows along ditches, seeps, and other wet areas. It can tolerate drought (it spread this year, dry as it has been) but also wet feet. We dropped some seed in the gully system that first year--had one tiny clump the next year and now have dozens of clumps along both sides of the gully system. On Sunday the 22nd, I was walking along the bed of the gully with a house guest at exactly the right time of day to illuminate the grasses on the west side. Above the bushy bluestems, little bluestem was just starting to show its beautiful silvery seeds (but they aren't in thick clumps like this, and in the stiff breeze we had, I couldn't get a picture.) Back from the edge of the gully were the Indiangrass clumps, their tall stalks swaying in the wind.

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