Fox play

While I haven't seen any birds at the feeders, an egret landed on the dock.  Two fox cubs wrestled all around the maple tree and then played hide-n-seek in the azalea. As the day warmed up, small skinks crossed the patio.

I think I finally identified the tiny aster-like flower in the yard as Carolina elephant's foot, Elephantopus carolinianus.  Meanwhile a mysterious pink-flowered plant is growing at the foot of the dock. The flowers are tiny, the wasp even tinier.  Update: it's swamp or saltmarsh fleabane.  The spartina is in flower - fall is coming.

A single crow chased a vulture upstream.  Later all the crows flew out of sight but I heard them screeching.  A blue-fronted dancer damselfly perched in the lee of the dock out of the wind which had grounded all dragonflies. A Black and Yellow Mud Dauber, Sceliphron caementarium, collected mud that a fiddler crab had mounded beside its burrow.  Smart! 

The regulars were coming to the feeder by lunch time. A male towhee poked around the mulch.  A male goldfinch worked on the sunflowers, not waiting for the seeds to ripen. I rescued a small brown frog that I think was a young green frog, Lithobatesclamitans. 

A lady butterfly, painted or American, flitted around the pool while I was swimming.  All three kinds of swallowtail were around - black, brown (palamedes), and yellow (tiger).  Blue jays flew back and forth over the yard.  A hawk glided silently through and all I saw was the back of its brown wings.  That's when the camera battery died on me.