Fourth of July walk

Amazing, I know! But these photos are actually from today! We took a walk, with the dogs, in our neighborhood Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary. It was a gorgeous day- we saw an egret and a great blue heron as well as an (unidentified) hawk. We consistently see egrets and great blue herons when we are there- it's right next to the Mississippi River, on what we call the flyway for these birds. The summer prairie wildflowers were also out- and I tried to get some photos.

I took about a million photos of the really beautifully fuschia/deep purple colored Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea), which was new to me. They weren't too easy to capture, they wave around in the air lots. And somehow the color doesn't quite come through.


from the top (if you click on the photo, you can see all the little stamens sticking out. So cute! Okay, maybe only to botanists...),



And Coneflowers! We saw lots of the Long-headed Coneflower (Ratabida columnifera),


Apparently the morph with so-called purple colored ray petals (which I would describe as deep red, almost brown, not purple, but whatever!), are rarer than the yellow morph. And on our little walk, indeed we saw only one (almost makes one want to be a plant population biologist or something). This isn't the best photo of it, but here you go,


Here's a photo I stole from http://biology.missouristate.edu/Herbarium/,


Brown-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) intermixed nicely with Hoary Vervain (Verbena stricta),


Another Brown-eyed Susan, cos I just can't resist!



There are a couple of ponds at the Vento, at which we saw Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata; no photo) and also nearby, Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa),



I think Nodding Thistle (Carduus nutans) is way cool-looking! And kinda scary.


Not a wildflower, but here Moose (Canis perpetuo latrans Phil.) is trying to hide from the firecrackers that people on the bluffs high above us were letting off. Poor guy.