A genius among squirrels

Crows cam looking for peanuts at breakfast.  Birds, and squirrels, continued to eat cherries, though fewer remain on the tree.  A very athletic squirrel hung by its toes from the feeder roof so that only part of its weight rested on the perch and thus did not trip the counterweight that closes access to the seed trough.  At least once, the toes lost their grip and the squirrel landed in the mulch.  But back up it went for another try.  Toward evening, a great blue heron perched on a dock piling.  

 

Shower

I got caught in a downpour while returning from a meeting and it followed me home.  As a result, I was late swimming.  There were more May beetles, a green stink bug nymph, and a greenhouse millipede.  And mosquitoes, of course.  The usual insects fed on the mountain mint and milkweed.  The spiders were in about the same spots.  I was frustrated by a common whitetail dragonfly that refused to let me get any pictures.  I got flashes of the black patches on its wings but mostly identified it by behavior.  There aren't many dragonflies that perch on the ground.  

 

Steamy

Another steamy day brought the same bugs and not many birds.  I checked that all was well with the garden and orchard spiders.  Bees, wasps, and skippers enjoyed the mountain mint.  In the pool skimmer, I found a cluster of May beetles on top of each other clinging to a pine needle.  It appeared they weighted it down and all drowned.  There's probably a moral there.  A sprinkle fell around 6pm.  

Buggy

The heat returned, this time with humid, sticky air.  We picked blueberries and it was not pleasant.  I was very glad to get into the water and cool off.  The little Argiope seemed settled in among the mountain mint stalks.  The orchard spider also seemed quite settled.  I rescued a small spider that looked like it might grow up to be a marbled orbweaver, or something in the Araneus genus.  Also, I fished out a planthopper, Acanalonia conica, and the usual batch of May beetles.  I tried to get the planthopper to come up to the house for a photo shoot but instead I got to see it fly away.  

The same insects were back on the mountain mint: leafcutter bees, carpenter bees, the hairstreak and the duskywing, and thread-waisted wasps.  A blue dasher obelisked on a twig.   A woodpecker went after cherries.  All I got was blurs, but it might have been a flicker.  Birds were not plentiful.  

Humid

Light rain fell in the morning and the temperature was moderate.  I glimpsed a goldfinch but bigger birds scared it off.  At lunch, K fed the mother and child crows.  A brown thrasher was interested in the leftovers as well as what fell from the seed feeder.  A brown headed nuthatch sneaked around bigger birds to get seeds.  A molting titmouse was more easily intimidated.  

Mist collected on the orchard spider's web. I waited to swim till mid afternoon when surfaces were drier.  The usual beetles were swimming too including a green June beetle.  A duskywing fed on the mountain mint alongside bees and wasps.  They were joined by a gray hairstreak.  The sun began to find loopholes in the cloudcover but mosquitoes were beginning to fine me.  

More birds

Yesterday's thunderstorm brought little water but did moderate the temperature.  A Carolina wren inspected the cinquefoil for anything tasty.  Mockingbirds continued to harvest wild cherries.  A section of the oldest dogwood appeared to be dying. It looked fine all through Spring and early Summer.  Another section died a few years ago.  The mountain mint was stressed by the drought but seems to be recovering.  

The pool yielded nothing but scarab beetles, roaches, and itty-bitty wasps/bees/ants.  A fresh load of cherries were sunk on the bottom.  I did evict one spider.  A duskywing joined the bees ans wasps on the mountain mint.   One funny, little bee did its best to intimidate me.  I found the Argiope which was quite cleverly camouflaged as a stem.  The orchard spider was in the same place as before but the light was wrong to see the web.  A female hummer visited that feeder.  

Then a male pine warbler considered the hanging dishes.  The brown thrasher returned for more cherries.  A white breasted nuthatch was frustrated by a house finch.  Then when it finally got on the feeder perch, a chickadee landed on top of it and the finch attacked them both.  

Thunder

I had a lot of running around town before I could swim.  In the water with me were beetles, tiny bees and wasps, two bumblebees, and too many spiders.  One soon-to-be-mother perched on the twig I had propped on the ladder as an escape route.  She clutched her pearl of eggs with her back legs.  As I dripped off, a hummer visited the feeder.  A brown thrasher, a mockingbird, and other birds visited the cherry tree.  Another hummer tested the milkweed and the roses for nectar.  

The mountain mint hosted carpenter bees and leaf-cutter bees, thread-waisted and scoliid wasps, and skippers.  The orchard spider was still above the azalea.  We had a flower on the hibiscus.  Thunder began in the late afternoon but the sky was blue to the North.  So I looked out the front windows and that was another story.  But the rain didn't reach us till 6pm.  A wren hurried to get some supper.