Poison ivy

The mostly gray day was still windy.  A rash showed up on my left wrist and it was too cold to go soak it in the pool.  The male bluebird developed quite an attitude.  He chased off a cardinal as well as smaller birds.  I guess he was annoyed at having to eat suet because I hadn't got the barkbutter balls out yet.  

The pine warbler was back, but not early enough to escape the bluebird.  Mockingbirds and blue jays were too big for the bluebird to intimidate, but he tried.  The yard crew found a black snake and were all in a tizzy about it. 

The sand for the living shoreline has created an inviting path for waterfowl to mosey up into the back yard.  A flock of eight mallards congregated there while a family of geese paddled past them.  

Daffodils blooming

The creek was as shiny as a metal mirror.  Orioles glowed in the sunlight as they snacked on jelly.  Blue jays got excited over the fresh barkbutter balls.  Then the birdwatching tux cat showed up.  

Bluebirds drifted in when the cat left. A Carolina wren arrived in the afternoon.  Warblers were around too.  Juncos came late to the party.  Brown headed nuthatches did too.  A song sparrow tucked into the barkbutter crumbs.  A starling had difficulty reaching the last bit of suet. 

The first daffodils buds opened also a couple of hyacinths.  Of course the Carolina jessamine was blooming and attracting honeybees and bumblebees.  I found tiny birdseye (speedwell, veronica) flowers in the grass. 

The turtles stayed out all afternoon.  Pelicans were fishing enthusiastically.  A flock of geese begin diving and splashing - I didn't know they could do that!  An osprey circled in the blue sky. 

 

Scorcher

The thermometer was stuck at 99° for hours.  A dragonfly perched on the topmost pine candle.  It might have been a bar-winged skimmer.  I found the gladiolus at the far end of the pool.  Goslings paraded up the creek.  While in the pool I rescued a bumblebee, innumerable beetles, and an earwig. 

I saw dragonflies in flight with spotted wings and wasted camera pixels trying to catch them.  A cicada started its buzz and woke the dog who looked all around for the source of the alarm.  An ant found a defunct beetle and proudly carried it off.  An egret stalked upstream along the bulkhead.  I saw a night heron fly over.  Either vegetation got in the way, or birds refused to pose today

As the fireflies came out, clouds covered the sky, then a little after 8pm, they turned yellow and orange and tore apart.  I thought the show was over and then fat raindrops began to fall.  Not long after I went inside, I started to hear thunder.  The temperature dropped twenty degrees.  

Praying mantis

When I left home for an appointment, a Cooper's hawk flew across the street right in front of my car.  A bluebird thought the breakfast selection lacked something, so I hustled out with more barkbutter balls.  Then I decided to check on the plants.  A lone goose hunkered down by the shoreline.  A gray toadstool looked freshly emerged.  I could see many little green figs The female common whitetail dragonfly preceded me, unless there are more than one around.  

A green praying mantis crawled through the clover.  *I moved it closer to the peppers. There were flower buds on the coral honeysuckle.  The green blueberries were swelling nicely.  There were numerous spiders walking on water. 

A male great blue skimmer was back on a bamboo perch.  A large, intimidating fly turned out to be a flesh fly and thus not a biter.  I was too late to rescue an assassin bug nymph.  Leatherwing beetles met up on the parsley flowers.  

We replaced the suet that the birds had with eating with a hummingbird feeder.  A male hummingbird tested but left quickly.  And the lighting gave him a black throat, not a ruby red.  While I was in the water, a small, pale moth fluttered erratically into vegetation, pursued by a female cardinal trying to catch it in flight.  

At twilight a small mallard family gave the dog some exercise.  In addition to the male and female adult ducks, there was a half grown duckling.  

Tiny praying mantises

The pink evening primroses were blooming in the morning.   Mama bluebird got a quick barkbutter snack.  Canada geese parents escorted their four goslings downstream.  A pair of mockingbirds picked up suet crumbs. 

Kayackers paddled upstream and I went out hoping to photograph them coming back.  I never saw them but I did see chickadees dangling from pine branches.  Unfortunately they were right-side up in the photos.  Birds were not very cooperative today.  The blue irises had also begun to bloom.  Skinks dashed about their business under the pool cover.  

I went out front to see if I could see the bluebirds.  One gloriously red strawberry was almost ready to pick.  I found a centimeter-long praying mantis on the wall and moved it to the strawberries only to discover another had already begun guarding them.  I did get to see the bluebirds ferrying bugs to their chicks.  

Scorcher!

A stiff Southwest wind pushed the temperature to at least 97° and drove the water out of the creek.  Low tide was as low as I can remember, though the full moon was partly responsible.  considering the heat, I was grateful for the breeze.  The two-gosling goose family came to graze but I told them they were unwelcome.  I rescued a honeybee, a bumblebee, a tiny green bee, several spiders, innumerable black ground beetles, and a ladybird beetle, but they all left before I got the camera.  Cumulus clouds occasionally passed in front of the sun, casting shadows on the sky.  

A great blue skimmer hunted tiny biting insects.  A dark butterfly flew away under the trees.  A rusty-backed carpenter bee fed on the rue.  A female hummer rejected the sugar water and no wonder - when K took the feeder down we discovered nasty, black guano splattered over it.  When I tried to disassemble if for washing, it broke.  I have more feeders but I need enough to keep rotating them.  

A Carolina wren peeked at me from behind vegetation.  Then a bluebird landed on the top of the maple tree.  The wren went for the empty barkbutter dish.  So did the bluebird.  K walked outside and interrupted their confrontation.  

Amazingly, 97° was not a record.  The thermometer hit 98° on this date in 1880.  

Temperature dropped

It was a beautiful blue-sky day but too cool to get into cold water.  A Carolina wren drank from the ant moat in the hummer feeder.  The pair of wrens were busy around the feeders all day.  Geese came calling twice, uninvited.  I ran them off, but not before they fertilized the grass. 

Suet eaters behaved like they were starving.  Even crows, blue jays, and brown thrashers attempted to eat from the cage.  Of course the woodpeckers were better equipped to do that.  And the starlings and bluebirds managed.  

Blueberries were getting fat thanks to K's watering.  A magnolia tree was blooming.  Toward evening, I finally caught one of the speedy little brown headed nuthatches on camera.  It was after seeds as there was no suet left at all.  

Hot wind

Bluebirds were around all day.  I can't tell if they started a nest because they both seem to spend a lot of time eating.  The female froze on the suet as though she saw a hawk.  All three woodpecker species came for suet at least once.  The brown thrasher pair also came to feed together.  Their fierce-looking eyes don't reflect their behavior.  They give way to smaller birds.  The suet was only a nubbin in the morning and gone by noon.  

The first daylily bloomed.  It was nearly the same yellow as the nearby iris so at first I didn't notice.  I also found a sprout of butterfly milkweed.  The pink evening primrose flowers danced in the wind all day.  Two adult geese with two goslings tried to encroach again.  I hustled them downhill. 

I saw a yellow and brown swallowtail fly past the rue, probably a palamedes but maybe a giant.  A tiger swallowtail, a cabbage white, and something brownish were also flitting around.  So were wasps, bees and dragonflies.  I rescued a small bee.  A gorgeous dragonfly landed in the dogwood and dangled from a twig for as long as I watched.  It was a swamp darner, Epiaeschna heros. 

I put out a new block of suet and the pileated woodpecker noticed.  I was outside at the time so I used the screen on the camera to avoid looking at her directly.  It worked quite well except that I had a tendency to tilt the camera.  Crows were also around all day.  Two of them seemed to be courting but others looked like they were arguing.  

Toward the end of the afternoon, two migrants descended on the suet.  One was a yellow rumped warbler, Setophaga coronata, and the other a chipping sparrow, Spizella passerina, albeit in non-breeding plumage.  Actually, the sparrow might be local but I think it was just making a pit stop.  The final visitor of the day was a white breasted nuthatch.  However, my one photo of it was pretty poor.  

Flies

The sun lit up birds on the suet at breakfast.  First a female bluebird had her fill.  Then a brown thrasher took a turn.  The bluebird pair came back for another helping.  Roses were fully open.  The pink evening primroses seemed to have multiplied overnight.  And hibiscus sprouts emerged.  So had just one milkweed plant. 

A bluetailed skink crossed the step and disappeared before I had the camera ready.  But the brown thrashers and bluebirds returned so I hadn't wasted the effort.  After lunch, I was finishing the newspaper when there was a gosling invasion.  After I met them on the West side they circled around to the East.  This time I remembered to hiss and they didn't come back.  

I saw a couple of ladybird beetles on violet leaves.  One was being harassed by a tiny, red long-legged fly, some Condylostylus species, I think.  I missed it but got a picture of a slightly larger green one.  I also got what I'm guessing was a small, black deer fly.  Then I found another narcissus bulb fly.  This one was actually laying eggs, I think.  I had thought that because it looked like a bee it was a bee fly, a parasite on bee larva, but I guess the mimicry is defensive. 

Meanwhile the sun was barely visible through a thick white overcast.  Crows were having a fit over a hawk I barely glimpsed in flight away from their racket.  

In the evening's poor light I believe I saw a white breasted nuthatch.  Cardinals were courting again.  A titmouse claimed some suet.  Brown thrashers were back for a bedtime snack.  After dark a light sprinkle finally fell.

Windy

The wind continued to growl, pushing the creek over the dock and beating the trees till green leaf fragments flew.  There wasn't much rain but the air was damp and the sky was gray.  Nevertheless, I found a bumblebee working on the rue! 

Wrens visited the bark butter balls frequently, but mostly with their backs to me.  Bluebirds came but the camera wouldn't focus. 

Even the mallards headed for higher ground.  I spotted goslings in the yard across the creek.  Apparently the water was high enough for them to get out over the bulkhead. 

Back in the water again

 A hummer came for breakfast.  It had something white on its forehead.  The ground cherry was blooming and so was the chaste tree.  Turtles queued up on one lake log leaving the other in the sole possession of one big turtle.  A flock of mostly well grown goslings fed down by the creek. 

I think I used this title last summer for much the same reason.  This time it was only a week.  I decided that having the camera by the edge was on thing too many, so I wasn't able to photograph a mama wolf spider, a scarab beetle, a Japanese beetle, a click beetle, a stink bug, a millipede, and a lovely male widow skimmer. 

It was a bit chilly when I got out, especially with the wind. A gorgeous Needham's skimmer stayed low on the perch.  A belated money plant popped its flowers up in the midst of the rue.  The others had drying seedpods.  A skink chased another along the retaining wall.  The moon was sharp and bright but I had trouble holding the camera steady. 

Sweltering

By mid morning, the temperature had passed 90F°.  As I ran errands, dragonflies were everywhere.  It surprised me somewhat as there has been little rain recently and few mosquitoes, midges, or gnats.  The hummer(s) kept drinking like it was the last day before Prohibition. 

When I returned, I found still more dragonflies flowing across the yard together..  A black swallowtail tried to wrestle nectar out of a blue indigo flower.  A flock of chickadees were all over the yard acting as if they had no sense.  Fledglings, I suspect.

Almost everything in the pool had drowned.  There was a camel cricket, two carpenter bees, and assorted spiders and small wasps.  A ground beetle had a reddish ant clamped on one leg.  I think the ant was dead, but the beetle was lively.  The rue still hosted a variety of wasps

Two geese with three goslings paddled upstream.  Later a couple of mallard drakes kept to shaded water.  A couple of cormorants occupied the snag on the lake.

Frustrating day

Murphy's Law was very much in evidence on what was otherwise a pretty day.  Among other issues, the cat seemed to have moved in.  And the geese weren't far behind.  I had some hope that one would discourage the other, but apparently not.  The cat behaved as though there were fish lurking under the pool cover.  I hope it wasn't a drowning skink. 

Something dug up another plant, the hardest one to reach of course. Even the butterflies refused to cooperate.  I saw an emerald pondhawk in a parking lot.  A few turtles hung out on the log in the lake.

A downy woodpecker wanting suet was all I saw at home.  Swallows swooped and chattered in downtown Norfolk.  (I don't understand why they deserve swallows.)  A thin crescent moon hung over a rosy sunset in Norfolk. But I bumped the settings and took a video instead of a snapshot.  The moon was still up when I got home, but it was full dark and the crescent moon was insufficiently bright to take a sharp  photo.

Windy

The storm left sky and earth scrubbed and shining.  But the wind was still gusty. Turtles lined up to bask, overseen by cormorants.  Lots of periwinkles found resting places above the water.  An egret paced beside the shore.  A little moth spread its wings on the window.  The wind trashed an orchard spider's web.  Geese brought their six goslings to graze. 

A dragonfly zipped around the yard about 18" above the grass.  I wasted pixels and only got a blur.  Earlier I saw a black and a tiger swallowtail.  I found a patch of a different kind of moss, Polytrichum commune - Common Hair Cap Moss.  Most moss in the yard is either pincushion - Leucobryum glaucum or  Fern Moss - Thuidium delicatulum.  I believe the stuff on and under the retaining wall is cypress-leaved plaitmoss Hypnum cupressiforme.  The fuzzy fiddleheads of Christmas fern were beginning to unfurl. 

K cut off the redwood branches that were blocking my view of the lake.  Thus I saw a great blue heron land on a dead tree.  Then an egret landed on a nearby log.  A raft of cormorants paddled down the lake past the egret and some got out of the water.  The egret joined the heron which eventually departed.  So did the cormorants. The feral cat came by at dusk, and was rolling on the lower patio as though in catnip.

Skink

Why are crane flies so fascinated with windows?  I saw a black and a tiger swallowtail. And wasps and bees, of course. 

An egret appeared to hold a conversation with an oddly pale mallard.   A couple of geese brought their four goslings to eat our grass. 

I think a squirrel was eating green cherries.  Another turned somersaults off the redwood trunk and generally acted like it was intoxicated. 

A skink scampered past me and slipped under the pool cover.  A little later, it or another emerged and then froze, perhaps noticing how close I was.  It was definitely blushing.  One turtle sunned itself on a log. 

Blue eyed grass was beginning to bloom and a money plant was festooned with green coins.  The purple iris apparently bloomed without my noticing.  The Solomon's seal flowers seemed mostly done.  The coral honeysuckle was covered with flowers so if any hummer didn't like what was in the feeder, it would not go hungry.

Earth Day

I remember the first Earth Day 49 years ago, just the fact of it, not the weather or whether I saw any wildlife. I doubt it was as lovely as today.  Clouds blew in from the East and North all day, sometimes getting thick, bur only a few were left at sunset to be painted vivid colors.

The blue jay raided the bark butter again.  A titmouse came for seeds.  I spotted a goldfinch on a branch over the creek downstream.  A flock of little birds zipped around in the blooming wild cherry, but I'm not sure they were all the same species.  One was a summer-suited male myrtle warbler and another was a female. 

An egret lurked downstream and a great blue heron flew over the house.  A pair of geese escorted their goslings upstream. 


A skink seemed very red about the head but moved too fast for details.  Butterflies stayed ahead of the camera.  One was a tiger swallowtail, the other smaller and orangey brown. Later I saw a dragonfly as well as an assortment of bees and wasps.  Syrphid flies found the first flowers on the rue. 

Humid

At breakfast, a female blue dasher dragonfly landed on the watering can.  The molting blue jay was back at lunch.  Bark butter balls made the bird thirsty.  An egret fished below the dam.  A few drops of rain fell. 

I wanted to gel the last seeds in the ground before I'm immobilized.  Lots of mushrooms popped up thanks to the rain.  I saw a skink on the West wall of the house, but the camera decided I wanted a photo of the fence between us.  Some of the oxalis growing in between stones was pink, whether from the minerals or a mutation, I don't know.  I transplanted some to see it the color would change.   The magnolia began blooming. I saw the remains of a crane fly on a wall.  It had interesting wings. 

The pool crew ran into geese with two goslings frantically trying to get out of the water.  The molting jay returned several times.  Toward evening, the feral cat showed up.  I hope the jay avoided it.  And the day concluded with a male hummingbird, but the overcast meant there was no hint of a ruby throat, just a black head.  The temperature dropped in the afternoon but the humidity made me very sweaty. 

Lovely Mothers Day

The temperature ranged from too warm in the sun to slightly chilly in the shade when the wind blew.  I heard a great crested flycatcher but couldn't see it.  Wrens were also playing coy. The hummer however was easy to photograph.I spotted what I believe was a hermit thrush at the far end of the pool. 

One pair of geese were down to one gosling which I threatened to eat if they didn't leave, especially after they photo-bombed my picture of an egret.   An osprey circled over the creek and flew upstream. 

Lots of skinks were out enjoying the warmth.Toward evening the feral cat became very interested in something, probably a skink, that slipped under the pool cover.  A paper wasp constructed a nest in the corner of the front patio.  I saw several butterflied, including a tiger swallowtail, and at least one dragonfly, but the were all too fast for me. 

The bluebirds (also thrushes) were visible from the front patio.  One was drying off after a bath.  At one point I thought I saw a hawk, a large bird with a pale belly, fly away.  Then the brown thrasher demonstrated that it was the culprit that threw mulch onto the driveway.  A blue  jay discovered that I had bought more bark butter balls.  The cardinal pair were still courting. 

Clearing

At breakfast time, a gull and an egret found something of interest in the water flowing from the dam.  A blue jay was annoyed that I hadn't hurried to get fresh mealworms out.

During lunch I saw a house wren in the fancy new birdhouse.  I hope it will stay but unfortunately the afternoon brought too much activity to its doorstep. 

After lunch, the overcast began to thin and soon it was sunny.  I chased off the geese three times and then there was a huge commotion behind a screen of vegetation.  I think something got a gosling.  One goose hung around for a long time daring whatever it was to come out of the reeds and fight like a goose.

 A yellow crowned night heron paused on the dock bench.  A cloud of little black bugs hovered over the vegetation at the North end of the patio.  They landed on violets and cinquefoil and the rose, but not the rue or the money plant.  They look like miniscule lightning bugs with read head and dark back, but they may be flies, not beetles.

I startled a young skink.  A periwinkle had crawled to the top of a spartina stalk when the sun came out.  A small wasp was fascinated by something deposited on a rose leaf.  Meanwhile the temperature climbed and I came inside.

Bold catbird

 The cat came back.  A finch family ignored their offspring's begging as it hopped around on the feeder cluelessly.  A blue jay was disgusted that I didn't have its breakfast ready, but when I put mealworms out, a squirrel got them all.  Downy woodpeckers were still working on the last suet block.  A pair of goldfinches drank from the pool puddle.  So did a male cardinal who then proceeded to bathe.  A hummingbird paid a very brief visit to the feeder.  And then the catbird appeared.  It hung around all day and ventured out in the bright sunshine.  I tried to get photos of the bluebirds, but they got away again.  So did a couple of ospreys flying upstream, a titmouse, and a wren. 

Insects were everywhere.  A crane fly scrabbled on the window glass.   Yellow jackets searched for a place to nest, paper wasps scraped the wooden bench, and bumblebees fed on the money plant.  Tiny flies sent ripples across the pool puddle, laying eggs or eating larva?  A different paper wasp was attracted to the hackberry, possibly to its tiny flowers. 

One goose family after another invited themselves and their offspring, and had to be sent packing.  For reasons that were not apparent, two adult geese took off flying, leaving their goslings bobbing in the water.  Like a folktale illustration, an egret decked out for mating shared a log with a cormorant that looked ready for a funeral.  They were watched by turtles.  A little green heron rested on top of a dock piling.  It preened and scratched and posed.