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It wasn’t a stunning sunrise, but I had to stop and watch anyway, enjoying the soft pink and grey sky of a slightly smokey morning.

Then I went to check on the sunflowers…
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Almost a reflection of the rising sun.
This one is still erect. The others as predicted, came down again yesterday.
It was pointless, really, to have propped them back up and constantly falling would only damage them further.
So they will be ground flowers.
After separating them a little to give each plant room to grow, I covered the roots with dirt and watered them well.

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Down but not out.

Maybe they’re relieved to be down.
It must be hard standing in a strong wind when you are so tall and leafy
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An expression came to mind. Young people might not know the reference.

Sometimes I think my posts must seem repetitive, like that stuck record…

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When I see images like this, I can’t not capture them.
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From this way and that.

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It’s just…a compulsion.

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Some subjects escape…


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…after they’ve posed nicely for me.

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A Cooper’s hawk was hunting one day.
It had landed in a bush and after looking around, it spotted chipmunks.
It came running across the grass…

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“Where d’it go?”
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“Maybe it came up here…”

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After a thorough check, Coop flew off and settled on the wall by the driveway

A groundhog was having lunch, but the two seemed to ignore each other.
Groundhogs are too large, but Coop does fine preying on small birds.

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One of those small birds was having an identity crisis.
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“I thought I was a sparrow.”
“But I grew a long black tail and white bits.”
“And I’m not so small anymore.”

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Soon it will look like this.

Towhees tend to stay away from the mob at the seed trays, so we don’t see them often but maybe this one will stay on for a while to become our token Towhee.
We’d like that.
Thank you, Carolyn, for the interesting update on the events in your garden. As long as no one is a token offering to a predator!
Joanna
Hawks of any description are a joy to observe. I just have to suspend the knowledge that they are out to kill whatever they can! I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to apologise to spiders for having crashed through their homes.
I really like the sunrise photo – the sun looks like a fireball. Haha old vinyl records – there is a small box full of these records in our garage back home (mostly music records, but also quite a few with children’s stories). As a child, I quickly read through my library books and then had to wait a week before we could get new books from the library again. To pass time, I would always listened to one of my story records – oh, what great memories. The hawk made sure to pose nicely … maybe he wasn’t after food, but knew you wanted to take some pictures of him.
Wow, you could capture the hawk – very impressive!
I still have all my vinyls and hope to buy a second-hand turntable when back in Australia. My muso friends said the blue tooth ones aren’t great.
The photo of the hawk was from a couple of days ago when it was looking at chipmunks and suddenly came to sit on the porch. Beautiful bird.
He (she) is a beautiful bird. I haven’t been that close to one before.