Warming up

When I got up, the creek was a mirror of warm colors.  The tide was still running high and egrets were still fishing at the dam outfall.  A great blue heron stood statue-like on the bulkhead across the creek while Canada geese moved in.  And a night heron stood on a boathouse with wings cupped.  A female goldfinch visited the hummer feeder for a drink.  Hummers did too.  Butterflies flitted too fast for me, but I saw skippers, snouts, a cloudless sulphur, and a black swallowtail. 

The sky was a clear blue but the wind was very gusty in the afternoon, and seemed to change direction unpredictably.  I was too late to save a blue tailed skink, but rescued a handful of black field crickets and a couple of ground beetles.  A few bees, butterflies and dragonflies braved the wind: a female blue dasher, a male slaty skimmer, and this tattered variegated fritillary.

The milkweed began to recover from the caterpillars' appetites.  However the marsh fleabane was uprooted by the storm.  A rosette of bracket polypore fungus popped up in the grass after the storm, probably from a dead oak root. 

There were fireflies blinking away at dusk.  I don't remember seeing them this late in the year before.