Sky Watch Friday - Birds, clouds and sunset

The skies have been beautiful this week in Maryland and I spent a good bit of time with my camera pointing up. Tuesday afternoon, white clouds were drifting by to the south and north of our house with little wisps above. There has been a large flock of birds (I think they are starlings) hanging out in the nearby trees this week. They would chatter away in the treetops for a while and then take off in groups of 10 or 12 to another tree or out into the corn field (maybe for a little snack of corn?). As I was trying to capture photos of them, this larger group took off from a neighbor's tree headed toward our front yard. Suddenly they made a sharp turn and flew directly over head to the corn field. A little later, I got a picture of the southern sky through the rear window of my home office.

On Thursday, I was out and about and pulled off the road to get some shots of the clouds near sunset. Below is a zoom on the patch of sunlight shining under the clouds. My daily post for Thursday is also a sky picture.