Dragonflies

The sky dripped a little at breakfast and that was all there rain there was.  A white breasted nuthatch joined the chickadees and titmice, cardinals and house finches at the seed feeder.  A mockingbird and later a blue jay, bluebirds, and a pine warbler visited the dish of barkbutter balls.  Goldfinches couldn't leave the sunflower alone.  The mockingbird harassed a couple of crows on the roof. 

The pool was full of beetles - a few black ground beetles, lots of brown May beetles, and of course Japanese beetles.  And the mountain mint was full of bees and wasps.  The hibiscus attracted a grasshopper nymph, a tiger swallowtail, and of course Japanese beetles.  A duskywing skipper visited the mountain mint.  The canna bloomed.  One lone turtle occupied the log on the lake. 

The humidity was higher which brought out the little biting bugs and that brought dragonflies.  I saw one outside the library i think was a wandering glider, Pantala flavescens.  A four spotted pennant, Brachymesia gravida, perched at the top of the cherry tree on a twig that something had stripped of leaves.  Something else zipped back and forth too fast for identification.  An amberwing, Perithemis tenera, lurked in the mountain mint. 

On the way home I spotted a rabbit.  As I sat outside around 5pm, the goldfinches, a mockingbird, a pine warbler, the female pileated woodpecker, and the male hummingbird fed cautiously.  They didn't like it if I moved to aim the camera.