Bright and sunny

Busy feeder birds, all day long. The spartina is blooming, another sign that summer is waning.

Here's yesterday's cicada. In Provence, the cicada is called a cigale and claimed as the regional bird for its singing. La Fontaine's fable about the grasshopper and the ant was actually about a cigale and an ant. I saw two more cicadas today, one in the yellow rose bush and the other up in the oak. But this is the best photo.

Another green frog was in the skimmer. It was small but had some extra skin around its throat as though it had been calling.

For several hours a yellow-bodied dragonfly with clear wings patrolled the pool. It never perched and all my photos are fuzzy but it may be a cinnamon shadowdragon. I also saw a blue male Eastern pondhawk and that tiny amber spotted dragonfly that stays close to the ground. I think it's a female amberwing. I watched a mud dauber wasp collecting mud down by where Irene toppled a pine tree.

The giant swallowtail visited and I chased it around with the camera. It flies very slowly and looks like it would be easy to photograph, but it is not. I wish it would lay some eggs on the rue - the caterpillars are fascinating. They look like bird poop and are called orange dogs.