I took nearly four hundred pictures today. I was reasonably sensible in the morning. Mostly I took the hummers and the mountain mint gang, A Carolina wren needed some suet. So did a pine warbler. A bald female cardinal wanted seeds. Another female hanging around had all her face feathers still attached. The sky was variable, sometimes overcast, sometimes with puffs of cumulus, and sometimes almost clear. The hibiscus and daylilies were nearly finished.
At lunch time, a male widow skimmer found one of my perches convenient. A hummer found a perch on a dead twig in the dogwood that let her monitor the feeder. Later she used a hibiscus twig.
A great black digger wasp Sphex pensylvanicus, has been dominating the mountain mint pollinators. It's just as twitchy as the great golden digger wasps. Another big wasp looked like a relative of a cicada killer, or a sand wasp.
A fiery skipper and a snout butterfly managed to get some mountain mint nectar. A hairstreak landed on a hibiscus leaf. A summer azure settled on a violet leaf, then sampled the mountain mint. A female bar-winged skimmer took over the perch the widow skimmer had vacated. A female pondhawk rested on the steps. I found one of the caterpillars I relocated.
Two brown thrashers were dust-bathing and possibly anting. They had their beaks open, heads lolled back, feathers sticking up, and glassy eyes, like they were drugged. They looked so funny I took many photos.
An osprey flew over, then a turkey vulture passed by. Downstream, an egret fished. Then a brown headed nuthatch, maybe two, came for seeds. A mockingbird landed in the oak. I suspect it had been eating wild cherries. A large fungus erupted next to the oak.
As I was dripping after I got out of the pool, a praying mantis asked to use my chair to climb up onto the glass door. For some reason it wanted to lurk at the top of the glass.
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