Daisies and Vireo

We have had a couple of sunny days so I went up to our back pasture, the one that usually has donkeys on it.


Field of Ox-Eye Daisies (June 13, 2009)

No donkeys but a field of daisies--acres of them have sprung up thanks to all the rain lately.



The Ox-Eye Daisy is not native and common in fields and roadsides. Like other composites, the center is composed of many small flowers, producing many seeds later.


Each little flower must have a dab of nectar for this bee or fly.


Here's another bee I don't know. I looked but there were no honeybees on these flowers. I have seen my bees on Catawba trees down the road but that's it--not much nectar collecting going on now.

A few days later, I spotted two nests in the woods.



This photo of a small nest (about 3-4 inches in diameter) was taken from below so I wasn't sure if it was occupied.




A Red-Eyed Vireo was sitting on her eggs in this nest--not quite as neat as the previous one but similar with spider webbing and some lichens holding it together. I was able to identify the bird by first cropping the photo and consulting Peterson's Eastern Birds' Nests field guide and my bird field guide. I heard the song and saw the bird last year in about the same area. The nest also was where the field guide predicted--in a small hickory tree about 10 feet from the ground.


I confirmed the red eye by cropping one photo more and increasing the color saturation to bring the red out.