Brown thrashers

I was gone till mid afternoon.  When I got home, two brown thrashers were foraging on the ground.  They also looked around at everything high and low.  I wondered if they were residents or just thinking about moving in.  Blue sky gave way to cloud cover and then back to blue.  The temperature stuck in the mid 60s.  Cabbage whites flitted around and I glimpsed some swallowtails. 

Meanwhile the female bluebird and brown headed nuthatches competed with the cardinals, house finches, and chickadees for seeds.  The barge I saw the other day headed downstream, again ignoring the "no wake" signs.  The lanceleaf coreopsis, aka tickseed, was flowering, but a lot of the flower stalks were lying on the ground.  The evening primroses and coral lilies were also blooming as I circled the pool.  I rescued a scarab beetle too. 

Some birds were also upset because only the seed feeder had food.  The suet was gone, to the distress of the female pileated woodpecker.  A mockingbird had a look into the empty cage as though the suet was just hiding.  I rearranged the feeders so the hummer juice is where the suet was and the barkbutter dishes are at either end of the patio.  That got the blue jays excited and the bluebird switched from seeds to barkbutter balls.  Toward evening, a couple mourning doves roamed the patio. 

Last night there were sightings of the Northern Lights because of a solar storm.  But we had rain.