Skink love

A female bluebird came hunting breakfast.  Everything except the seeds was soggy from the overnight rain.  The bird looked to me like it might have been this year's hatching.  I went outside but the humidity was overpowering so I turned right around.  Later when the temperature had risen it was not so bad.  Clouds flowed from the Southwest.  The New England aster put out a second crop of blooms.  

In the pool, I rescued a couple of winged queen ants and a leaf-footed bug.  A sidewalk tiger beetle watched without getting wet.  Dragonflies hunted the little biters that the humidity encouraged.  The mountain mint was covered by the usual bees and wasps, and a blue mud wasp.  A tiny skink climbed the post which wasn't very smart.  A couple of grown up skinks appeared to be courting.  

The white breasted nuthatch was back and I thought I caught sight of a brown headed nuthatch.  Later, the bluebird argued with a cardinal over access to seeds.  The bigger cardinal won.  Meanwhile, the hummer was sadly disappointed in the diluted sugar water.  Later, a wet Carolina wren wanted a turn at the seeds but the cardinal wasn't having that.  Eventually the goldfinch got an opening. 

The clouds thickened and I headed inside but on the door was a black bug outlined in red.  The closest match seems to be the largus bug, Largus succinctus.  Around 3:45pm the rain finally arrived.  It was quite heavy for about ten minutes and continued off-and-on into the evening.  My mother would have called it "raining stair rods," which is so archaic it might as well be ancient Greek.