Buggy

The morning sky was overcast, but in the afternoon it turned very blue despite the humidity.  The bees and wasps continued their blissful consumption of mountain mint nectar. There were several great golden digger wasps and many thread waisted wasps.  A leafcutter bee had the underside of its abdomen packed with yellow pollen.  The wild cherry had dripped sap on the patio and the rain had turned it to jelly. 

I resorted to slapping myself to reduce the mosquito population, also a few other little fliers that invaded my personal space.  But the dragonflies were happy.  A slaty skimmer used one of my perches.  A four spotted pennant perched atop the wild cherry where the leaves had all been eaten off the bare twigs.  Something photobombed one of my pictures, maybe a big beetle?  I wasted pixels trying to photograph a low flying dragonfly near the sakaki. 

A monarch flew across the yard without seeing the butterfly milkweed.  A smaller, browner butterfly escaped portraiture.  It was probably a fritillary.  I also saw a fiery skipper and a summer azure that was attracted to the red cedar.  In the pool, I rescued two woodlouse hunter spiders. 

A great blue heron used the floating dock platform.  A skink climbed the steps and another lurked near the vegetation.  A third, with a tail just beginning to regrow, caught something in the shade.  One of the fledgling bluebirds perched on a bare twig at the top of the wild cherry.  Soon it swooped down to the feeder dish.  Another young bluebird hung out on the bare oak limb.  A ragged Carolina wren foraged around the birdbath.