New bird

A mockingbird came for a wake-up drink from the ant moat.  An Orthoptera nymph (grasshopper/cricket/katydid) wandered around the window.  I based my guess on its hefty thighs.  A monarch wandered around the yard, noticing the milkweed but not stopping.  Maybe it just needed nectar and we lacked flowers.  As a result, I was lucky to get an orange blur.  I also saw a cabbage white, a duskywing, and a dark butterfly, either a red spotted purple or a black swallowtail.  Small wasps or flies and a Guinea paper wasp hunted through the overgrown, gone-to-seed plants. 

The dogwood berries tempted more birds than the barkbutter balls.  Even the juvenile cardinal tried the berries.  However, a mockingbird preferred beautyberries.  I saw a Carolina wren in the dogwood but it was preening, not eating.  A dove foraged under the seed feeder.  Then I saw a bird that was new to me. I took many pictures as it ate many dogwood berries.  According to iNaturalist, it was a rose breasted grosbeak in winter drab. 

A leaf that must have gotten caught in a web fluttered very convincingly and I wasted many pixels.  Some kind of insect had nibbled a bigger leaf into the shape of a smaller which left a lot of stem to snag.  Clouds blew in from the Northeast but only briefly interrupted the sunshine.  Down at ground level the air was warm with a light breeze.  In the late afternoon, the kingfisher returned to a dock post.  A female mallard slept on the back of the bench.