Fledgling bluebird

The rain had stopped though everything was wet and the sky was gray.  Papa bluebird hit the seed feeder because the barkbutter was still covered.   Then his offspring showed up,  just as big as Dad but pretty clueless.  I imagined the fledgling thinking, "the world is so big and smells so good, after spending my whole life in a box."  But Papa still needed to feed the youngster.  

The cardinals were still courting.  A persistent brown headed nuthatch stuffed itself with seeds and threw rejects down for the squirrels.  I mostly got pictures of its rear end.  A Carolina wren worked on the diminishing suet.  Curiously, there haven't been any woodpeckers recently. The sky cleared at lunch and I spent some time outside. I saw a large dark butterfly, a small pale butterflu, a small brown skipper (I think), and the ubiquitous cabbage whites.  Dragonflies flew over, including one so big it had to have been a darner.  Polistes wasps roamed the vegetation.  Little red mites roamed on me.

The skink with the blue tail section crossed the patio.  Geese paddled downstream with goslings in tow.  I couldn't get a count through the screen of vegetation.  A dark object just below the water's surface was a turtle.  I'm afraid it was foiled by the goose excluder, though maybe it was following the geese in hopes of catching a gosling.  An egret flew downstream.  Clouds gathered as the afternoon went on and when it was fully dark we had a loud thunderstorm.