Photos from this past week

For the weekend of the fourth, I traveled with family again to the National Eagle Center in Wabasha, Minnesota, where this fellow was in residence.  I should go in the winter sometime, because the open water at this segment of the Mississippi attracts eagles from miles around; one archive photo shows ~25 of them perched on one tree on the riverbank.

I spotted this other handsome fellow along the Wisconsin side of the river, while driving down the Great River Road.  I would suspect that's a very expensive rack on his head.

On the butterfly front, we are experiencing a second wave of Monarchs.  Our initial group flew away many weeks ago, and for a long time we saw no more new eggs in the garden, but recently some adults have arrived, oviposited, and grown to maturity; this week some of them were ready for release.

Out in the fields there appears to be a second wave of American Lady caterpillars as well.  I'm not sure how many brood cycles they go through at this latitude.  This caterpillar looks to be almost fully developed; it's interesting that she didn't pull any leaves together for her "nest," but rather just wove a mesh roof over her head.  Perhaps the leaves were so small that she couldn't approximate their edges.