Drippy dawn

Either there was light rain or heavy dew overnight which left drops dangling from leaves.  Sometimes the sky had fish-scale clouds and sometimes it cleared.  At times it looked like a storm was coming but then the clouds passed or dissipated. 

A titmouse came for breakfast.  A hummer rejected the feeder juice.  The sunflowers began to unwrap.  The beautyberry and the chaste tree began to bloom while the sakaki was about finished.  Wild cherries were turning red.  Some of the stale barley I tossed out for squirrels germinated and even went to seed. 

An assassin bug nymph walked on me so I took its picture.  I fished a queen ant, a robber fly, and an ichneumon wasp out of the water, but too late for all of them.  I did save other wasps, a zelotes spider, a tiny caterpillar, and beetles, including ground, scarab, and gray sidewalk tiger beetles.  Dragonflies perched all over, though one turned out to be another robber fly.  Blue dashers, a saddlebags, and amberwing, and others I couldn't identify hunted the air over the pool.  

A yellow-kneed wasp found the yellow milkweed, as did a load of aphids.  The stalks were bare, whether from caterpillars or something else, however, seedpods were forming.  A few butterflies appeared, including a cabbage white. The orchard spider was gone from the azalea. I found a large glass snail and an almost microscopic one. Skinks enjoyed the heat. 

Crows chased something over the yard, screaming all the way.  Whatever it was it was the same size as the crows.  Egrets and night herons flew up and down the creek.  A cardinal pair hunted bugs in the grass for their offspring.  I also glimpsed a fledgling.  Blue jays evaded the camera.  Three osprey circled very high up.  A white breasted nuthatch competed with house finches and chickadees at the seed feeder.