A Morning for Rocks, Feathers and A County Mountie

The last two days have been lovely, temperature wise, though we still need rain. But the forecast for today and the rest of the week is for steadily climbing temps - back into the 90's again with higher heat indices. That is why we decided to go out this morning and do some rock hunting before it became too hot.

I took HD back to a dirt road not far from our home that I had discovered a few weeks ago.

There was so much bird song. One of the first ones I heard was a Quail calling its ubiquitous "Bob-white, Bob-white". Try as I might, I could not see the little one.

But I did see one of our state birds, the Goldfinch, and manage to get a photo before it flew off. 

We were just moseying along, heads down when I glanced up and saw a pickup coming down the hill. It stopped and a Union County Deputy Sheriff asked if we were having a nice day. We visited a little bit then he went on his way. I am certain that someone must have seen us and called him to check on what we were doing. I can't imagine he just 'happened' to be driving down that road on regular patrol. 

This little flower, growing in the middle of the road is a Bladder Hibiscus trionum. AKA, Flower-of-an-hour, Venice, and Venus Mallow. 

Muh man in silhouette at the top of the hill.

At this point, the shade was feeling pretty good.

When I first noticed these plants with what looked like heads of cotton, I wondered what they were.

Then I looked at the stems and leaves and realized it was Canada Thistles after the flowers had bloomed.

They are on the Noxious Weeds list in Iowa and by law are supposed to be controlled. Oops! Maybe they should have sent out the Weed Commissioner instead of a Deputy Sheriff. 

We were surprised to find so many feathers along the road. Maybe we shouldn't have been with all the birdsong and glimpses of birds we saw, but most of the feathers were from larger birds.

The only ones I can definitely identify are the Pheasant feather and the Blue Jay feathers.

And here are the rocks I picked up. My favorites are the large one on the left in the back and the one just in front of it.

I also like the long, smooth blue gray one second row from the bottom. 

The white one in the back is a thick piece of crockery. The white in the front is a bone.

We were only gone and hour, but it was a nice morning to be out and a lot of fun hunting for rocks. That has always been one of my favorite pastimes.