Beautiful

It was warmer and hazier but the breeze kept us comfortable.  I hung the clean refilled hummer feeder and a hummer showed up.  The chickadee fledglings were begging up in the pines.  Swallows or swifts or maybe both hunted far above me.  An egret soared downstream.  A yellow crowned night heron stalked across the dock. The wasps showed up to feast on the rue after it was in the shade.  I saw three dragonflies, a pink-orange one that zoomed over the house, a smaller dark one that cruised over the pool, and a big darner over by the blueberries.  A cabbage white flitted all over and a dark orange butterfly passed quickly through and I glimpsed a tiger swallowtail.

I was puzzled by the house wrens.  They chased around the yard sporadically all day.  Perhaps one was challenging the other?  According to Cornell, "Single males sometimes compete for females even after a pair has begun nesting. In about half of these contests the outsider succeeds in displacing his rival, at which point he usually discards any existing eggs or nestlings and begins a new family with the female."  At one point the bird house bounced suggestively.   I heard a wren grumbling and then saw it scuttling along the back of the house.  Then it shot between me and the cane over to the birdhouse.