Cy-Hawk Day

Today in Ames marks our annual grudge match with the University of Iowa. The Iowa State Cyclones squared off against the Iowa Hawkeyes for the Cy-Hawk trophy at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames this afternoon. 

Rick and I decided that our meager funds were better spent on rent and food than on football tickets, so we didn't buy season tickets this year. The Iowa/ISU game is the one game you can never find a scalped ticket for, so we didn't bother trying. Instead, we're watching the game at home over hot plates of grilled brats and garlic-green-beans! 

We did make a trip into campus though, Rick needed to print a few things and I'm always up to take pictures!

Male Downy woodpecker - he was very busy excavating this hole on central campus and completely ignored Rick and I while he threw his sawdust at us. 

A rose near the library

A chipping sparrow near Lake LaVerne

The "wildlife" on campus is SO USED to foot traffic that they're all completely desensitized to people. This squirrel let me walk to about 4 feet from her and sit down while she dug around looking for a place to hide this acorn.

I got the feeling this squirrel didn't want Rick and I to know where she was going to hide her acorn.

A pretty Sulpher butterfly near Catt Hall

 After our walk around campus, Rick and I headed over to Ada Hayden. We took the prairie loop around the lake so our total milage was about 5.4miles.  There's a pretty good sized patch of thistle near one of the smaller lakes behind a housing development and the place was buzzing with these amazing
Hummingbird Moths!

I was playing with my shutter speed while I took these, hummingbird moths beat their wings the way actual hummingbirds do, so I really had to crank up the shutter to freeze the wings so you could see the colors!

These bugs are HUGE, they're the size of small hummingbirds!

Here I stopped adjusting and just turned my shutter speed all the way up so I could completely freeze the movement of their wings. These guys never seem to land!

While this isn't, in my opinion, one of my better pictures, I love being able to compare the size of the
Hummingbird Moth to that Honey Bee!

A Red Admiral blends in with some dry grass

The butterflies at Ada Hayden today gave Rick and I some practice in telling a Monarch from a Mimic

The black stripe running down the lower wing of this butterfly gives this guy away as the monarch mimic: Viceroy. This is one of the most colorful viceroy's I've ever seen. Normally they're a pretty solid orange without so many red and yellow tones.

This is a true Monarch - notice the lack of strip on it's lower wing