Eyes on the Prize

My day of coverage at the Wallkill River Stadium was quite productive, especially for Team Ode who gave us some thrills.  Seen here is Madame Blue Dasher keeping all of her compound eyes on her competitors as she gathered herself to compete.  Her concentration is palpable, don't you think?  

Meanwhile, the star of the spreadwing team did a stunning routine on the diagonal bar, showing amazing flexibility and strength.  Things didn't go quite as well for the Blue-fronted Dancer team who's star had to be disqualified when he was seen trying to quickly swallow one of the competitors.  Oops.  

In the butterfly arena, Team Checkered White made a very rare appearance and Team Monarch had many flyers around, perhaps guarding the Crown Jewels?  (By the way, that is the first chrysalis I've ever seen "in the wild"!)  

Team Tussock Moth apparently overdid it last night in the dew and their star was seen Sitting on the sidelines, muttering.

Overall, a very enjoyable morning with my naturalist group, one of whom went home with 11 little monarch cats for his milkweed garden - from yours truly.

And speaking of monarchs ... when I got home and went outside to check on my various monarch enclosures, I found that two of my chrysalids had "eclosed" and there were two gorgeous female monarchs fluttering around inside.  Since they were obviously fully dry and "flight ready", I opened the enclosure.  One flew out immediately and the other had to be coaxed out on my finger where she spent about a minute surveying the territory before taking to the skies.  What an amazing experience to release these beautiful, fragile creatures into the wild.  So, I'm on my way to my personal goal to release at least 25 this summer.  The second one went soaring into the sky with some special thoughts for my friend Lynn who left this earth on March 19 2010,  but is always in my heart.

Don't forget to check out all of today's events from around the globe at AOG16!  Just a few more days until these momentous games come to an end, but not too late to join in on the fun!  And while you're at it, don't forget to check out and cast your votes for this weeks' TinyTuesday

Debbi

PS:  A note from osuzanna about today's Tiny Tuesday : "There are 5 Tuesdays in August and this week I (osuzanna) have some unexpected travel so I think it might be a good week to have another round of “Blipper’s Choice,” where you will actually get to vote as to who should receive hearts for their Macro entries into Tiny Tuesday. I encourage all entrants to browse through the images that are posted with the tag TT64 and send your top two selections to me as a comment by no later than Thursday midnight Eastern Daylight time (US). I will post the results with my blip on Friday.
Be sure to use the tag TT64 and pass the word around."