Mantis

Hummers visited for breakfast.  So did the juvenile towhee.   It had a bit of an argument with a cardinal. Wrens worked on the bark butter mush.  The tailless brown thrasher tossed leaves and twigs.  While floating in the deep end I saw a bird in the red cedar that had a pale belly and an eyeline.  I'm guessing it was a mockingbird. 

The brown mantis lurked upside down on the rose canes, blending in so well I had to hunt for it.  A black swallowtail hovered over the rue.  I found a firefly floating on the water.  It seemed very late in the year for one.  Lots more butterflies were enjoying the heat. I chased one with the camera and got one blurred shot.  A couple of dark butterflies had an aerial battle or dance or something.  I think they were palamedes swallowtails. 

There was a lively frog in the skimmer.  It jumped back into the pool and went to the bottom. I ignored it and it disappeared.  Also in the skimmer was a winged ant queen with another ant clamped onto one leg.  She couldn't get it off and eventually disappeared when I was busy elsewhere.  A dragonfly was watching, so I don't know if the ant became a meal.  I went after the oleander aphids with neem oil.  It seemed to work.  Later I used morning glory leaves to try to scrape the dead aphids off the milkweed.  A skink hustled under the patio furniture. 

The sawflies were back on the hibiscus.  While looking at them, I found a second praying mantis, twice the size of the first.  It may have been a Chinese praying mantis.  The small one was, I think, a Carolina mantis. A skipper landed rather close to the big mantis.  

A yellow crowned night heron landed on the creek edge to hunt for crabs.  A gray mushroom popped up in the mulch.  After I came in, a red admiral landed beside my window.  I saw a disturbance in the creek's surface, perhaps a school of minnows, but the heron had left.