Sunday Stills: Fall Foliage aka. A Walk in Busey Woods

Grab a cup of coffee, this is a long post with lots of pics. I got real lucky this year and while enjoying some off time in Illinois the trees, mostly Sugar Maples were in full colour and I was like a kid in a candy shop. Last Sunday I went to my favorite place in Urbana, Busey Woods, a 59 acre postage stamp of a wooded area which once was a forest of over 20 square miles. Now its a nature preserve and a little bit of heaven where I played as a kid and a place where I could let my young imagination run wild. The base of the woods is the Anita Purvis Nature Center and a great facility that welcomes visitors to the woods. And now for the pics, imagine the wind rustling though the trees and the amber glow of the sun filtering to the forest floor and the crunching of leaves under foot, it was awesome!

Macro Monday: Going Back in Time

Still going buggy. I’m in Champaign Illinois taking a few days off and hanging with my dad. The first thing we did on Sunday after breakfast was visit the Anita Purvis nature center and Busey Woods…my favorite place in the U.S. Why this little nature preserve? Well, I basically grew up playing in these woods back in the day of no video games, no cell phones and no computers. Playing adventurer and army occupied my mind and encoutaged creativity. So everytime I return home to Champaign/Urbana where I grew up, the first place I visit is the woods and go back 40 years and relive a bit of my childhood, but now I am fascinated by wildflowers,bugs and just nature in general.. 🙂

So here are a few bugs I encountered while perusing the restored prairie and woods….

 

 

Into the woods…

Into the woods, on a personal search for my favortie subject..BUGS! Armed with a macro lens and a Nikon D80, no tripod just hand held it will be a challenge but worth all the mosquito bites and sweat dripping into my face as I got hunting for dragonflies, damselflies and various arachnids so stay tuned for the next coulpe of days and see some really cool bugs..:-))

The Magnolia Warbler and a New Mystery Bird

Here we have a different shot of the Magnolia Warbler followed by a new mystery bird for ya’ll to help me identify. I guess I’m just too lazy to look it up myself..:-)

The Magnolia Warbler

And here we have the new bird, if it helps I took this picture in central Illinois last June. Let me know what ya think…:-)

Birds of Busey Woods

One of my favorite places to visit back in Illinois is Busey Woods and the Anita Purvis nature center. The woods are one of the last tracts of natural woods left in Champaign county and have some great trails and of course birds, which are one of my things to photograph. So here are a few shots from the woods. You saw the Downey woodpecker last week and the Rose Breasted Grosebeak but i’ll put up a different one with this post..Enjoy..:-)

Indigo Bunting

Rose Breasted Grosebeak

And last we have a mystery bird, he/she has a grey head and a yellow and black body. If anyone has an idea let me know..