Two days

I missed the 18th because I was too tired to even look at the pictures I took.  So this is fro both days.  Yesterday, a brown headed nuthatch was the early bird eating suet.  A bluebird was thirsty but the ant moat was down to sludge.  

I found a camouflaged looper, Synchlora aerata, on the mountain mint.  It should grow up to be a wavy-lined emerald moth.  I can only recall seeing the moth once but they must be around.  However, BugNet added, "from Maryland southwards other Synchlora spp. are also present and only raising to adulthood can yield a definite caterpillar ID."  The mountain mint was busy with wasps and bees as well as the mydas fly and a big, green June beetle.  I think one of the bees was a cuckoo bee Epeolus scutellaris.

I rescued a bumblebee from drowning.  In the afternoon, the amberwing again lurked in the mountain mint, obelisking to cool off.  A black swallowtail egged the rue.  The goldfinches worked on their sunflowers.  A mockingbird perched and panted in the heat.  The male hummingbird visited but I didn't see red. 

While swimming today, I found a drowned caterpillar.  It was brown with eye-spots, so probably a tiger swallowtail.  I tried to revive it to no avail.  I also saw a wolf spider on the pool ladder step, and of course beetles.  A beetle wasp, Cerceris spp, joined the mountain mint diners.  Then along came a summer azure.  A skipper also popped up on the mountain mint.  I found three more camouflaged loopers on the aster.  

At lunch, two skinks got into a chase.  The winner basked on the wooden step wall.  The other wandered along the edge of the patio.  I noticed its tail was still blue,. unlike the winner.  In face, the winner had a short, regrown tail unlike the long, slender, twitchy, blue tail. Maybe that made short tail grumpy?  

An odd bird on the fence turned out to be a bald cardinal.  The afternoon got very dark and dropped buckets of rain accompanied by rumbles of thunder.  The storm finished and the sky cleared in time for late afternoon sunshine.  But it was still humid and wet everywhere.