Common Buckeye in an uncommon pose.

A birding couple I met on the beach on Saturday told me about Timber Point and Timber Island trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. They were up for the day from Massachusetts, chasing eBird reports of birds of interest. I live practically next door to Rachel Carson Headquarters, and I had never heard of Timberpoint or Timber Island. A little research turned up the facts. It is a new trail and a new property for the NWR system, acquired after a locally organized fund-raising drive that covered the $2 million plus purchase price. It is a point of rocky upland and mixed forest extending out along the ocean side of the Little River across from Goose Rocks Beach and south of Fortunes Rocks. At low tide you can walk out to Timber Island. Local volunteers, along with the Civilian and Youth Construction Corps, built trails and boardwalks as needed and one raised deck overlook, and installed a Tide Clock near the head of the passage to the Island. It is altogether a wonderful spot and one that I will add to my regular round of photoprowls. It was dead high tide when I was there yesterday of course, but I plan to get back there the first sunny day we have at low tide.

There were lots of the typical birds of the Maine fall: Yellow-rumped Warblers, White-crowned Sparrow, Song Sparrows, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Brown Tree-creeper, Rufus-sided Towhee, Blue Jays, etc…as well as hundreds of chipmunks busy gathering acorns…and 5 species of butterfly: Cabbage White, Clouded Sulphur, Red Admiral, Painted Lady (pictured here in an uncommon pose), and Monarch. I will post an extended Photoprowls piece later today.

I like this backlighted pose of the Lady…which is good since every effort to get on the sun side of the bug lead to its moving deeper into the brush off the trail.

Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 320 @ f6.3. Processed and cropped slightly in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.