Cloudless Sulphur - Yes, Another Butterfly Blog

Warren brought down our annual hibiscus plants when he came from home last week.  The elusive sulphurs LOVE hibiscus evidently as you could just about touch them and they lingered so long getting pollen, I thought they were dead!  So this enabled finally a closeup.  This is called a Cloudless Sulphur and is one of the most common butterflies down here.

They were still too fast for me to get them wing open as they don't sit with their wings open like many butterflies.  This was the best I managed.

Just two more shots!

Yellowbelly Sliders and Pied-Billed Grebes

Carolina Beach Lake just never disappoints me!  Each day I go down for my walk, there are different things to observe even though I am always sure there will be nothing!  Today was another beautiful day down here and as the weather is supposed to deteriorate tomorrow,  went for my walk a little earlier than usual.  I was very surprised to see these two Pied-Billed Grebes swimming and diving on the south side of the lake.  It's like the birds all know to have a different species each day and hopefully as winter comes closer, there will be more resident birds like the Coots.

Looking over to where the Great Egret was the other day, I thought I spotted some rather large turtles but they were pretty distant.  Sure enough, looks like there are three here, each at least a foot long if not longer so among the largest of their species.  I am assuming that these are the same kind that are in the following picture -- the Yellowbelly Slider which is not particular about its habitat!  

Still more turtles on one of the side ponds at Carolina Beach Lake.  You can see the yellow belly and the stripes on the neck.  As I got a little closer, they headed for the water!

This is another shot of the two grebes (yes, I am getting desperate!).

Yesterday, I walked down to my "secret beach" which clearly has seen the effects of Hurricane Irene and some of the other tropical systems that have dumped on us.  The steps down to the sand have been replaced -- there used to be about 3 steps which would sometimes be covered by sand -- now there are at least nine steps and you can see that the condos down there are really exposed.  I still love the exposed sandstone beach though and can't wait for the winter waterfowl to come and dig in the seaweed covered sandstone.

This is a closeup of the seaweed which looks like wonderful soft grass.


Later this week, I will continue my quest for Colin Firth.  Thanks to some industrious digging, I know where he might possibly be filming on Wednesday and Thursday  -- I know they are filming in these locations, just don't know whether Colin Firth is in these scenes. Now my old challenge motivation is kicking in!
(When working, bosses learned that if they framed a task as a challenge, I would get pretty persistent and almost always succeed despite the obstacles that were thrown in front of me.)

Birds and Butterflies but No Colin....

This is the beach at Ft. Fisher -- the very same one that Colin Firth was walking on the day before.  Today a wedding was taking place (last month we watched them doing an HBO show).  It is a wonderful beach that stretches for miles with no people.  This island (Pleasure Island) is spectacular in that there are two state parks bookending the two towns of Carolina Beach and Kure Beach.  The Cape Fear River is on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.  It was a peninsula until the Army Corps of Engineers made a cut across in the 30's (Snow's Cut).  So it isn't a sand bar like the Outer Banks are and thus not as much a victim of the vicissitudes of nature.

This is a Gulf Fritillary which I had seen in Florida.  I had seen them flying around the house but finally got a picture down at Ft. Fisher.  They are certainly a beautiful bright butterfly.  This is the northernmost part of their range.

This is a  Buckeye (I am assuming a Common).  You can see the big round circles on the wings.

At the other end of the island is  Carolina Beach State Park which is a wonderful wildlife refuge filled with walking trails, a campground, picnic grounds and a marina.  Warren and I took the Flytrap walk (but didn't see any of the many carnivorous plants native to the area) and then went and sat on a bench by the river.  This Ruddy Turnstone was doing what he does best, turning stones for food!

The Ruddy Turnstone practically ran over my feet -- he seemed to have no fear at all.  I love their bright orange feet.  He did manage to get a crab while we were watching.

Arthur Newman, Golf Pro....

The title above is the name of the movie that Colin Firth (The King's Speech), Emily Blunt (Young Victoria) and Anne Heche (Men In Trees) are filming in and about Wilmington NC.  They are supposed to be around the area filming for the next month.  Unfortunately, I missed my very best opportunity to see Colin Firth in person yesterday.  He was in the water down at Ft. Fisher which is about a mile down the road from my house and where I had seen an HBO series being filmed about a month ago.    


Last night I knew (from the local newspaper) that they would be filming down the road in the other direction right next to Carolina Beach Lake where I go almost every day for a walk (when not at Ft. Fisher and my secret beach).  They were supposed to film from 8 pm to 5 am and had the main road closed for about four blocks.  They were doing a chase scene (with Emily Blunt and not Colin Firth - darn).  I took several shots of the setting up.  Considering I didn't use a flash and it was dark out, they aren't too bad.  When they were actually rehearsing and shooting scenes, we all had to back up quite a way down the street.  Before then, we were right there watching them set up cameras and lights.

The guy with the khaki pants and shirt is obviously a VIP as he was dishing out orders and I saw him in the newspaper pictures from the Ft. Fisher shoot.  It was fun to hang out for a couple of hours with the other locals and watch what was going on.  I stayed until 10 and watched the rehearsal of the "chase" scene with all the phony police cars.  They are filming again tonight so don't know whether I will go down again or not.  So far I haven't seen a picture of Colin Firth in the local newspapers either!

Couldn't resist taking a picture of this tree stump covered with mushrooms.  It always surprises me to see such a profusion down here as there is so much sunshine and I always think of mushrooms  in dank moist places (it is moist!).  This was at Carolina Beach Lake park.

This is a picture of the lake at night.

Where Have All the Ibis Gone.....

Usually down here I see Ibis wandering down the street almost every day.  This year I hadn 't spotted any at all.  As I am usually here a little later, maybe they just haven't settled down yet.  I was pleasantly surprised when I took my walk down at Carolina Beach Lake to see a small flock of them calmly (not their usual scissoring motions) walking around the lake.  There were seven altogether with one being a rather large immature one (you can see the tan feathers still).

This is the immature ibis!  Southeastern North Carolina is really the northernmost end of the range of this bird.  Hoping that the migration picks up and we start seeing the ducks and other waterfowl before too long.

My black duck remains in among the assorted domestic and mallard ducks.

I just liked the juxtaposition of this female Boat Tailed Grackle against the lake and the reflected brilliant blue sky.  For some reason, there is a rather huge algae bloom on the lake which I have never seen before.

And last but not least, this is the finished one block wonder whose individual blocks were shown in yesterday's blog!  It is plenty big enough for one of the twin beds.  

Catch Up on Quilting Activities

During the rainy days we had last week, I got to finish machine quilting several of the quilts I had brought down for the beds.  This is the first of the quilts where I practiced a bit with  my new Juki.  There is a lot of free hand quilting in the striped fabric but you can't see any of it!  I also quilted in the ditch around everything.  I love the speed of this machine as well as the perfect attachment of binding.

This is the second of the quilts to be finished also sitting on the king sized bed.  I stitched in the ditch up and down and then on the diagonals and called it quits.  It could stand with a little more but nothing shows anyway and there is enough to hold it together!

This is one of the blocks in the first of the one block wonders to get done.  If you double click you can see I am doing quilting in the "motif".  I did this in each of the hexagonal blocks and it did take a bit of time -- first having to determine what I would quilt around and then what was the most efficient way to do it.  Another feature of my Juki that I love is the thread cutting -- no more spending hours cutting all the loose threads on the back of the quilt while I am sewing the binding down!  I am almost finished with sewing the binding down on this one.

Another of the motifs.

 If you look closely, you can see the spiral pattern I quilted in the border.  I did a really bad job of putting on the borders (too big) which is too bad as this is turning out to be a pretty quilt.  There is no way I would take it undone though!  This was el cheapo Cranston fabric from Walmart that I bought years ago.  It did make a nice quilt though!

This is the quilt I am now working on.  The hexagons are smaller in this quilt so I am "stitching in the ditch" around each one and then will just do one round of quilting on the inside of each block which should be relatively fast.  It will be nice and perky for the beach house.  This was again one of those hideous (what was I thinking) fabrics I bought many years ago on a flatfold table in a discount fabric shop no longer in existence!

This is a picture of the new toy with my set up.  I am using an old wooden sewing table with a FW card table behind it to hold some of the weight of the quilt.  I have a luggage rack on the left hand side for the same reason.  It isn't bothering my shoulder so mustn't be too high.

No day would be complete without some butterfly pictures.  This is some sort of skipper  or duskywingI would guess -- less than an inch across on a dandelion in our very long grass!

Another one of the small butterflies -- lots of these hanging out -- maybe a checkerspot?  Very bedraggled.

This is a sulphur and there are always a ton of these flying around.  I have seen some of the other common butterflies from my third floor site but none have remained long enough for good pictures.  This one is taken with a telephoto from my third floor porch and is in the next door neighbor's flowers!  So hopefully a little fuzziness is forgiven!

White Crested Duck - Huh?

Yes, it actually is a different kind of domestic duck although this one was in the wild.  I had seen him the other day but thought it was an immature white (or Pekin) duck but seems it is a separate duck originally bred in Great Britain or Holland but found with different breeders here in the US.  So ta da, the White Crested Duck!  You will note one of the interbreeds behind him -- a white and brown colored duck.  All of the domestic ducks originated from the common mallard so  you see them together often and they interbreed frequently.

Over in one of the swampy areas at Carolina Beach Lake, a Great Egret was feasting on dragonflies I suspect as well as some small fish.

If  you look closely, you can see the lump in his neck, which is some recently swallowed critter -- pretty good sized.

This is the first time I have seen the fountains up and running at Carolina Beach Lake.  It was a gorgeous day and very very comfortable for walking.  While I was there, I checked out the two motels where Colin Firth will supposedly be filming (I hope) in a couple of weeks -- an easy walk from the lake.