Late afternoon rain

The bit of beard lichen on the back of the bench never seems to get any bigger.  After some prowling around iNaturalist, I'm calling it Bristly Beard Lichen Usnea hirta.  The sunflower keeps making flowers but each is smaller than the last.  They have gone from desert plate down to thumbnail in size.  The beautyberry still had some flowers but more green berries. Yellow bells dangled from the ground cherry plants. 

I was afraid it might rain later so I picked figs in the morning.  Green June beetles had the same idea.  So did a bald faced hornet.  A lovely male widow skimmer used the perch outside my window.  There was a striped caterpillar drowned in the skimmer.  It looked to me like the kind that attacks azaleas so I did not mourn.  I could not locate the swallowtail caterpillar.  It may have gone off to form a chrysalis or it might have been hunting for more parsley, or it might have become dinner. 

A black mud wasp twitched around the mountain mint. The specific sand wasp I've been seeing on the mountain mint appears to be a Four-banded Stink Bug Wasp Bicyrtes quadrifasciatus even though I see five bands.  A tiger swallowtail hurried across the yard and out of sight. 

 

The dog wanted out around 4pm and spooked a female common whitetail dragonfly which got away unphotographed.  The clouds were already dark and threatening and the temperature had dropped.  A goldfinch was unwilling to visit while I was outside.  A fuzzy-looking bluebird perched atop the redwood.  Three mockingbirds landed in the dogwood, two fledglings and a tired parent.  And then the rain began.  

Toward evening, I saw a great blue heron on the dock.  It appeared to be stalking something.  The water was quite still after the rain.