I set out with my big camera to find a dead moth only I didn’t know that was going to be my main accomplishment, I only knew that I had just seen and heard a Kingfisher in the big dead pine tree and I greatly desired a photo shoot with it.

As trees and birds and all of creation are much wiser and intuitive that we realize, the kingfisher sensed my plans and was gone without a trace by the time I came back outside with the camera. No matter, I would wander. As I’ve learned time and time again, going out is truly going in……in to God’s big, beautiful and endlessly generous world.

I never go back to the house disappointed or empty handed.

I admire little nurseries such as this. Some wonderfully accomplished parent sewed up a little room (using a fern frond) for its babies to hide and grow. I was so very curious as to WHO exactly this particular family was, but would never dream of doing damage to such fine house building. Imagine! Building a house out of leaves and threads (I’m fairly certain it’s some sort of spider).

Into the darkness of the woods I wandered, and although it is darker in the forest, there is always dappled sunshine that comes through the tree canopy above. I continued to look for birds but was reminded, as I stopped to admire an old dead tree, that there are worlds below as well. These silent little slugs, for instance. feasting on mushroom.

Then I saw this insect on a fallen tree. The tree was pushing out mushroom (?) through its bark and on these mushroom growths were the insects, probably snacking.

The beavers’ preferred tree to chew down in our woods was the swamp, or yellow, birch. The birch is a juicy, sappy tree, and this stump was oozing with it. Another feast for slugs!

On my way back out of the woods, I bent to look at the ground again, and happened to spy this dead moth. It was so pretty I brought it home and added it to my nature journal, along with two mourning dove feathers.

And now I shall sit on the porch and try to identify things. We aren’t going to church today because Seth sprained his ankle badly yesterday and is now lame, and my husband is terribly sick with fever, chills, headache, and cramp. He did an at home Covid test = negative.