Last weekend, I headed down to the South Platte Park. Maybe there would be some birds that had migrated here for the winter. Most of the summer visitors moved off during the last few weeks, but the returning winter visitors had not arrived back! However, the Rabbitbrush bushes were in flower, so I decided to give more attention to the fall colors instead. A Painted Lady butterfly was moving from flower to flower.
Here is another image of the Painted Lady that shows the hairs glowing when backlit by the sun in the late afternoon.
I headed out under the bridge, hoping to find some birds on the other side of the highway. The concrete bridge was reflected in the slow flowing South Platte River. This created some interesting abstract patterns in the water.
Not finding many birds, I returned back under the bridge and headed downstream along the river. Sitting on a rock was a female Common Merganser and some friends! We had seen several resident Mergansers during the summer months, so maybe this female was a resident. Or maybe she migrated south?
Further downstream, water flowing over shallow submerged rocks had developed some interesting patterns. These patterns broke up the fall colors reflected from the opposite bank of the river.
Returning to the parking area, I passed Blackrock Lake. Here the setting sun highlighted the fall colors and created some nice reflections in the water.
Close to the parking lot was a patch of grasses that were lit by the setting sun.
I approached closer and made a second image.
Within a few minutes, the sun had dropped below the mountains for the day.