Red Cardinal Plus a Butterfly

My bird camera doesn’t capture many birds in the summer because I don’t feed them. I do furnish water though, and sometimes they visit the birdbath for it.

This is a male northern cardinal. It was captured on video, but I prefer to publish still shots. I tried a couple of apps that are supposed to grab stills from video, but found them complicated. I went back to pausing the action to capture screenshots on my iPad. Then I cropped them in the Photos app. 

 

The cardinal happened to visit in the rain, which makes the images even less sharp than video images usually are. To make up for this, I’m republishing a favorite picture of a cardinal from several years ago. This was taken in early spring after a late snowfall.

This butterfly visited my garden on Friday. I think it is a silvery checkerspot. It is considered rare in the northeastern states, but not uncommon in Virginia.