Bird cherries

A female goldfinch visited briefly.   Blue jays played a game of trying to get bark butter balls without getting photographed.  This time I won, mostly.   A female bluebird had to wait for the blue jays to finish.  Brown thrashers competed with the blue jays but were too awkward on the feeder to get much.  They spent more time with the cherries. 

I didn't know that American wild black cherries belonged to the Padus sub-genus of Prunus called bird cherries.  Apparently the birds knew. The mint has begun to bloom so maybe I will see some hairstreaks.  A great golden digger wasp fussed over the mountain mint.  A Carolina saddlebags perched on the dead hackberry twig.  Blue dashers operated from the bamboo stakes I put out for them.  So did a female widow skimmer.  A common whitetail preferred the new mulch. 

The coral honeysuckle was still flowering, though not in the profusion of Spring.  I wonder if the hummingbirds visit it?  The flowers on the beautyberry seemed bigger this year.  A cardinal took a sunbath, maybe an ant treatment, in the domestic cherry, Prunus avium, sub-genus Cerasus, that grew from a random spit pit. 

I went down to the dock to see the yard from a different perspective.  A mockingbird was at work in the cherry closest to the water.  Virginia creeper was running rampant all over the cherry tree but I don't think its berries were ripe.  The cardinal, or another, popped up in that tree too.   

A dragonfly with spotted wings cruised low over the creek, paralleling the shore.  I saw lots of mud crab holes and a couple of dead crabs, but none living.  I did see wasps gathering mud and possibly digging holes.  Back at the pool I rescued a metallic-green bee.  A green grasshopper nymph climbed the chair I was sitting in but I could not find the right focal length.