Love In The Afternoon

This has been the year of the Wood Duck..I saw a pair for the first time last year, but as quickly as they appeared, they were gone in a flash of color..This year however, a cycle of life was revealed...beginning in April, at the New York Botanical Gardens, in their stunning bit of old-growth forest...a patch of old New York..

I am calling yooouOooou! 

Who? Me?

Yes, you! 

Here I am!


I've got to admit, I didn't know what was happening at first either ;-) , I thought she was..um..dabbling..

Still here..

Now you're talking!

That was it? Wash that guy right outta my feathers..

Then the love birds swam off to a rock underneath the trees where 

prying lenses were at a disadvantage..

Fast forward to June and serendipity....Another Wood Duck sighting..this time at Avalon Nature Preserve in Stony Brook, N.Y... A native plant restoration project. http://www.avalonparkandpreserve.org/

'First comes love, then comes marriage'..There were three ducklings..

Glowing!

One was off on its own

Mama checks him(?) out..

Soon I'll have an empty nest..

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love~ Marc Chagall