Cattail fuzz, Henne

On a beautiful, sunny and almost warm afternoon, I hit the trail at the Henne Preserve again to try to capture images of late-flying honeybees and newly arrived birds. Neither was particularly obliging and I suspect that, on the bee front, the girls have called it a year and are now busy making the hive in the Red Maple nice and tight for the winter. The birds were there, but they were mostly distant—not much more than specks, even with the Sigma supertelephoto. The most interesting thing was a "feather" tree near the boardwalk I crossed: a shrub, shorn of leaves, but now festooned with what at first looked like down. On closer inspection, I discovered that the small tree, and several others nearby, were actually draped in Cattail fluff: material which, in bygone days, was used as flotation in life vests, absorbers in diapers, and chill resisters in winter coats. These days, it serves as a fine item, when suitably backlit, to photograph.