Tiny Tuesday ...

... Birds and Butterflies.

What a morning I had ... thankfully the day got better as it progressed.

I had to take my 24-hour urine collection to the lab this morning and it didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped.  Without getting too much into detail ... the instructions were to collect during a 24-hour time period and I was to record both mornings first elimination.  The instructions said that these two SHOULD be done at about the same time.  It really should have said MUST be done at the same time as I ran into trouble because there was a twenty minute time difference between the two mornings.  The lab tech had to call the doctor's office to see if it was okay to accept my "donation"!  This took at least a half an hour before it was established that the 'donation' was acceptable!  I thought I was going to have to repeat the test!  But all ended well enough.

Now on the happier news ...

When I got home I saw that two of the 40 ... yes, I said 40 ... Eastern Swallowtail chrysalids that we have overwinter since last September had emerged!  We have two butterflies now! YAY! I've added a collage with both butterflies ... plus a picture showing the back of this beautiful male yellow-shafted northern flicker.  The butterfly shots are being posted for Tiny Tuesday.  

After lunch I went back out to the backyard for some nature therapy after the interesting (NOT) morning I had.  As I sat taking pictures of Mr. Chips for my SquirrelsEtc journal I heard ... and then saw this gorgeous northern flicker.  I first saw him in one of our neighbor's tree and then watched him fly to said neighbor's yard.  Excitedly I sneaked up to the fence to see if I could get some shots of him.  I very rarely have the privilege of photographing these lovely birds ... even though they are almost always present in our yard.  I'm happy to report that I was able to take over 60 photos before he flew off.  You can tell that this is male because of the black whiskers ... which I call sideburns! These are not present in the females. 

Thanks to Sheol for hosting Tiny Tuesday this month.  Sorry that my TT entry is in the Extra photos ... but the northern flicker took precedence today.