Autumn Reveals

I recently visited a favored bird-watching spot, along Elk Creek in Vanocker Canyon in the NE Black Hills area...

...And spied a female spotted towhee hopping across the gravel road...

...A perfect wasps' nest framed with fading leaves...

...A second wasps' nest, that I'd seen earlier this summer, busy then with activity...

...And a third papery nest among wild plum thorns...all three nests within 20 yards of one another...         

...A dark-eyed junco peering out at me from brown, faded leaves...

...An empty nest in a leaf-less tree...

...And common tansy, fading but still holding on to its yellow.