Long day

I was gone from before dawn to after lunch.  When I got home, the usual suspects were busy eating:   white throats, wrens, titmice, downy woodpeckers, etc.  The pine warbler was out and about in bright daylight and I did not see the butterbutt at all.  Buffleheads were bathing together.  The geese tried to invade the yard so I had to sit outside till they were convinced to go elsewhere. 

A wasp made a determined effort to get through the glass.  A small beetle got entangled in a bit of spiderweb left from last fall. A crane fly clung to window screen.  A honeybee worked on the rosemary along side the carpenter bees.  A cabbage white, a tiger swallowtail, and a spring azure butterfly all flitted through the yard, but I only captured the little spring azure. 

And I saw the first skink of the year!  That one, a bluetail, was followed soon after by a mature adult.  It was a warm day, albeit mostly cloudy.

The cherry that grew from a pit I spit had lots of flowers this year.  Last year it only managed a half dozen altogether.  The azalea bushes with small flowers were covered with blooms and the ones with big flowers had a few blossoms down low.  Flowers on the other dogwoods were beginning to open.  

I spotted a squirrel eating something pink, apparently a flower bud.  It then swiped a hickory bud.  Around sunset, a male happened on a female foraging around the birdbath and it was instant love.

 Sunset was colorful but, after teasing us all day, rain started before it was fully dark.