Still pleasant

Finally, I got some real outdoor time. Before that, I thought it would be another day with little to see.  Little pollinators buzzed around the camellias.  I saw something rafting on a leaf but didn't discover what for several hours.  I also saw wasps and yellow jackets, a dragonfly, a cloudless sulphur and some small butterflies.

Yesterday, K said there was a Argiope in a West window, so I went to see it from the outside in the afternoon.  It appeared rather small, so perhaps it was the offspring of the spiders that were around the fig in the summer.

Geese and mallards paddled on the creek, then got out and grazed.  Cormorants stayed in the water to fish.  A red tailed hawk flew away while crows called, but they didn't give chase.

Then the male kingfisher alighted on a downstream piling and I stayed very still.  He plunged and caught something very small.  After swallowing, he shook off water.  The crows caught his attention, but when I moved my foot just a little, he took off screeching.

The Argiope egg sack in the marsh had two small holes.  I don't know if that means the eggs hatched, or were eaten, or nothing at all.  Periwinkles coated with green hung from phragmites stalks.  The wild cherry in the corner between the fence and the water has shaded out the spartina and I suspect that's how the phragmites got started.  I couldn't pull it out. 

A venusta orchard spider hung its horizontal orb web from the back of the neighbors' bench.  Three first instar black swallowtail caterpillars munched on the single surviving parsley.  I moved one to the rue to see if it would eat those more plentiful leaves instead. 

Then I began fishing leaves out of the water and rescued the wheel bug I saw earlier.  I also scooped out some beetles.  By then the wind had shifted from South to West and felt cooler to me.  When I came in, I noticed a tiny green spider on the glass.  Tentatively, I think it was a magnolia green jumper. 

The wispy clouds that had been pushed first North, then East, turned a pale pink as the sun disappeared.  A cardinal and a couple of doves came for supper.  Then the feral cat arrived.  One dove flew but the other, idiotically, sat on the birdbath.  I expected blood and feathers, but the cat seemed more curious than hungry and the dove finally flew.  Then the cat left as well and we closed up for the night.