Sun and clouds

Titmice, goldfinches, and hummers showed up at breakfast along with cardinals and house finches.  The hibiscus put on a show with a half dozen flowers.  Butterflies came out by mid morning: a monarch, a black swallowtail, a tiger swallowtail, a cloudless sulphur, and a duskywing skipper.  The sky was that intense blue that shades into ultraviolet. 

In the late morning, I saw a cicada killer, but it shot off toward the creek.  I could certainly hear cicadas to interest it.  I could hear jays as well, but they stayed out of sight.  A barn spider tucked itself up under the eaves and pretended to be invisible.  I almost got a perfect photo of two hummers, one an adolescent male, fighting over the feeder, but I cut off the head of the higher bird.  Sob! 

K told me she saw a caterpillar on the pepper plant.  Its leaves had certainly fed something but all I saw was another armyworm on the patio.  Crows gathered to harass something.  Cumulus piled up to the South after lunch and by 4pm those clouds looked ready to rain.

Dragonflies were sparse - I saw one perch in the morning and another cruising against a background of clouds.  Fiery skippers went crazy on the lantana.  A hummer visited the feeder in front of the house.  I thought it was a male, but it may have just been a bad molt.  The tide was way out and something kept generating delicate rings of ripples just beyond the mud.  It continued after the rain began so it was probably something under water.

In between two waves of rain an egret preened on one of the pilings.  The feeder was busy as I grabbed supper.  Chickadees finally appeared.  When I left for the Environmental Justice meeting, the rain had stopped but the clouds were very dramatic.  They thinned after dark and the almost full moon shone through them.