June-like day

A raggedy-molt brown thrasher came for breakfast.  Later in the morning while I was slicing green onions for Persian cold yoghurt soup, a pair of goldfinches visited.  Alas, no photo. The sky was intensely blue and the temperature mild with moderate humidity, more like the beginning of summer than the end. 

I saw skinks at lunch and several times in the afternoon.  Brown headed nuthatches also showed up repeatedly.  The hibiscus had a new flower and there were still more buds, thanks to the neem oil!  

The Argiope was still facing the other way on its web.  And the new Argiope was back in its web, so the one that drowned was an unknown.  In the late afternoon, the dog took a notion to have a roll in the violet leaves under the hibiscus and perilously close to the spider.  I checked afterward and found that, while the web had some damage, the spider had wisely hidden behind a dead leaf.  I found myself apologizing.  

The mountain mint continued to draw pollinators despite the spider mites damage and my pruning.  I didn't see the green bee, but there were plenty of honey and bumble bees, and flies.  Lots of digger, thread-waisted, and potter wasps, and today a butterfly!  It appeared to be a tattered summer azure.  The foolish monarch caterpillar found another seedpod to eat. And a hummer sampled the flowers on the butterfly milkweed.  I wish my other milkweeds would bloom, but I guess that's too much to ask when they're trying to survive all the insects.  Curiously, a Guinea paper wasp was sitting on the neem oil sprayer. 

A fly was very interested in a crack in the steps.  I thought it led to a skink lair but I wouldn't expect that to attract flies.  I rescued a spider carrying an egg pearl but I was too late for a big cicada, one of the same kind as I rescued a few days ago.  It may have been finished living before it fell in the water.  I also fished out a skink, an assassin bug that was still swimming, a small brown click beetle, and a big scarab with markings that reminded me of an army tank draped in camouflage.  

I believe I saw a tree swallow land in the oak but I couldn't find it in the foliage.  A downy woodpecker came back for suet.  Three titmice, including the one with no tail, also clustered on the suet.  And as the light began to fade two Carolina wrens sought suet for a bedtime snack.