Dragonflies

Blue dashers were ubiquitous. One attacked some drifting dust and spit it out.  In the morning, a saddlebags hung out atop the topmost pine candles.  I couldn't tell if its markings were red or black.  In the afternoon, a widow skimmer found perches along the retaining wall.  Something I couldn't clearly see kept popping up from the flowers out front.  Wasps caught the sun as they went about their business.  Fireflies and probably other beetles wandered over the windows.  A black swallowtail visited the parsley flowers.  I saw one skink scuttle under the outdoor furniture. 

Hummers looked at the gladiolus with suspicion and returned to the feeder.  But one had pollen stuck to her beak.  There was one chase when two hummers showed up at the same time.  Blue jays, and one chickadee, took bark butter balls.  Neither the wrens nor the bluebirds tried them despite the mealworms I asked K to add.  The wrens continued to work on their nest and finally left one twig poking out as a "Sold" sign.  I did see a bluebird fly out of the nestbox in front. 

The sky was covered with ridged clouds in the morning.  They melted into featureless white that gradually thinned to a pale blue haze.  But it was almost always sunny.  The water was quiet in the morning but a breeze got everything moving in the afternoon.  An egret and a heron fished by the dam till some neighbors began fishing from their dock. And then around 7pm clouds swept in from the West.