Still very nice

Titmice visited the feeder early.  Since then, it has just been the regulars.  There are small chocolate brown mushrooms in the grass. 

When I first came outside, I saw a gray back slink through the tall grass, followed by a bouncier fox.  All sorts of bees and wasps have been on the sunflowers and the mint, and occasionally the portulaca.  They ignore the hibiscus, the roses, and the gladiolus.  A black beetle, a spider, and more big ants were all I rescued from the water.  A juvenile night heron perched on a piling.  A couple of blue dashers perched and mating saddlebags flew by, as did a brown butterfly.  A leaf-legged bug marched along the patio till it came to the end of the shade.  A couple of skinks slipped across the patio. 

The tail-less cardinal  climbed the biggest sunflower stalk maybe a dozen times trying to get at the front of the flower.  He would lose his grip, land and start over, hopping upward, leaf-stem by leaf-stem, like a re-enactment of Jack and the Beanstalk.  We thought he was after seeds but he finally dislodged a green grasshopper or katydid.  The flurry of excitement startled a finch who banged into the window.  I didn't see if the cardinal caught his prey. 

In the mid afternoon I could hear lots of birds.  Chickadees came to the feeder while cardinals went to the cherry.  A brown thrasher hunted under the oak, as did a wren.  The thrasher also sat in one spot, fluffed out its feathers, and opened its beak - I think it was using ants to clean off parasites. Crows carried on in the treetops.  I glimpsed a tiger swallowtail high up in the trees.