Skink skills

A blue mud wasp visited the mountain mint.  A buckeye came with the same goal.  A fiery skipper tried the daisies.  A male goldfinch drank from the nasty ant moat. 

I was sitting inside, digesting lunch, when I saw a disturbance in the water.  Thinking it might be a skink, I grabbed the pool brush as a rescue tool.  Well, there were three skinks, all blue tails, floating at the deep end.  The first I fished out ran to hide under my flipflop, with just a smidge of blue tail sticking out.  When I carefully lifted that foot, it dashed across the other foot and off into the shrubbery. 

The second skink when rescued ran back into the pool.  It refused to be netted by the brush and dived!  Then it swam under water.  Fine, I thought, I'll rescue number three.  That one was no trouble and quickly ran under the azalea.  I had another go at the escape artist and snagged its tail.  When I deposited it on the ground, it ran to the red cedar and climbed the trunk till it could hide behind a branch.  I checked the skimmer and, sure enough, there was a fourth little skink sitting on the handle. Since it seemed safe, I left it there.

It was gone when I came back, but I found a swimming skink that seemed the same size, so I'm guessing it was able to swim out of the skimmer.  I found a large dead cicada in the water.  I also fished out a scary mess of legs that I thought was some kind of spider, but the photo looks more like the remains of a leaf footed true bug.  I had counted the antenna as legs.  And I rescued a green eyed bee that was alive, but then stopped moving.  I thought it died, but when the ants came for it, the bee rose up and took flight, and promptly fell in the water again.  I rescued it again and this time took pictures. 

A Carolina wren hunted in the grass.  The neighbor's crape myrtle shed flowers on the wind that landed in the pool like pink confetti.  A tattered skimmer used one of the perches.  An amberwing perched on an azalea twig and glowed in the evening light.  A red spotted purple investigated the cherry that grew from a pit I tossed out.  A Carolina saddlebags used the dead twig atop the oak.  A squirrel ate green dogwood berries.  The tailless brown thrasher camped out under the shrubbery. 

I stayed up to watch for Perseid meteors and  I believe I saw a couple. It was the only opportunity because a storm was coming. I couldn't photograph meteors, but I did get the moon. 

Pleiades

I did get up before dawn (thanks, K) and saw nine meteors in a half hour.  Then I thought the sky was getting lighter and mosquitoes were beginning to wake up, so I didn't wait for a tenth.  The meteors were as bright as the brighter stars but the streaks were quite short.  They all seemed aimed between North and West, though that could have been because I was on the North side of the house, trying to block street lights.  The sky was clear after all but so washed out from lightscatter that the visible stars were few.  I thought a bright one to the East was a planet, but it may have been Sirius.  

When I finally got up for the second time, the morning was well advanced.  The seed and hummer feeders were busy, but not the mealworms.  I saw a great crested flycatcher in the redwood and a brown thrasher in the cherry.  Later a couple of the brown thrashers chased through the grass. 

A drowned cicada that had never molted into an adult was drifting in the pool.  I suppose it must have fallen while climbing to a good molting spot.  I rescued quite a few bees and wasps and a couple of beetles.  After I got out, a robber fly perched on one of the bamboo stakes.  There were dragonflies and butterflies but they did not cooperate with the photographer.  The argiope still haunted the marsh grass.  Several great blue herons flew over and one fished downstream.

I believe I counted six blue jays at lunch plus a black bird that I couldn't identify.  In the afternoon a flock of robins flitted from tree to tree along with the blue jays and the black birds.  I saw a Carolina wren in the dogwood above the creek.  A hummer tried the butterfly weed but left quickly. A skink scurried across the lower patio.