Mostly sun

At dawn, the sky overhead was clear though clouds circled the horizon.  The third quarter moon hung overhead. Geese paddled through the reflections on the placid creek.  A Carolina wren and a downy woodpecker visited the suet.

The clouds moved in, leaving only a rim of blue in the Northeast.  But the cover was thin enough to allow some sun.  Honeybees worked on the herbs while yellow jackets preferred the camellias.  Remnants of spiderweb dangled from dogwood limbs.  I hung a new block of suet and the chickadees quickly found it.  Then a first-of-season pair of hooded mergansers appeared on the creek! 

A cabbage butterfly flitted through the yard.  A white throated sparrow perched in a dogwood.  A couple of squirrels chased each other and one perched in a different dogwood to cough and whine while it worked on a nut.

Other small lepidoptera zoomed through the yard too fast to identify.  When we got back from an errand, I went into the back yard to photograph a web-caught leaf and a hawk shot past me.  I think I spoiled its aim.  It landed in the oak for a minute, then took off upstream. 

I went down to the dock but only saw a buzzard.  When I came back up, a great blue heron landed on a neighbor's dock.  But the clouds had moved on and the afternoon was beautiful.