Mosquito swarm

I love the way the creek glows at dawn on a sunny day.  If there's wind, it drops at dawn and dusk so the creek can reflect the light.  A brown headed nuthatch was up early and a chickadee waited rather than argue.  The sky was blue again but a little more hazy.  Dogwood leaves took on a bronze hue.  Southern purple mint moths were ubiquitous and I walked into a swarm of mosquitoes, the most I've seen all summer.  My skin no longer reacts to their bites as much as when I was young, but they were in my face and everywhere.  

The Berkley polypore shrank, perhaps from water loss, and turned rust and gray.  I found a few very small mushrooms like orange beads in the grass.  When I picked one, it was just as orange underneath.  It had gills that were well separated, surprisingly thick, and attached to the stalk, no veil ring but maybe a hint of a cup at the base.  My best guess is orange bonnet, Mycena acicula.  

Butterbutt

The sky was the clear blue that suggests low humidity.  Certainly, the sun was very hot though the air was not.  After lunch, I found a little snail lying in the sun and moved it into some vegetation.  The Berkeley's polypore was getting orange.  The bright red juvenile cardinal was camouflaged among the dogwood leaves.  He appeared to like dogwood berries.  They were disappearing fast.  I thought I glimpsed the grosbeak again but this time it was a yellow rumped warbler - first of the season.  Lots of spider threads caught the sun.  This late in the year must mean that they will winter over as hatchlings instead of eggs.  

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. 

Warm sun

Initially, the sky had looked gray but it soon brightened.  The female downy breakfasted on seeds.  Below, the immature male cardinal foraged for himself.  His beak color was definitely getting more adult.  At lunch a small flock of doves showed up.  Maybe they were a family having a spa day.  One sunbathed while others preened.  

A Carolina wren popped up and disappeared just as quickly.  Blue jays rushed around but never stopped for barkbutter balls while I was watching.  I thought I saw a nuthatch but it was a chickadee head-down on a pine trunk.  I wonder if it was caching seeds in the rough bark.  

A red spotted purple rested on a hackberry twig.  It was dingy and tattered but in different places from the one I saw yesterday.  Thin clouds like chalk smudges on a blue board were followed by wispy jellyfish, then a cumulus cloud all from the West.  I came inside for a meeting and never got back.  By evening the sky had clouded over.  And when I wasn't looking, a whole dish of barkbutter balls disappeared.  

Bright sunshine

At breakfast, the creek was a glowing mirror.  A mockingbird scowled from the hummingbird feeder hanger.  Maybe its loose feathers itched.  I did not see a hummer this week.  The feeder might attract a migrant but the local nesters must have have gone South.  The adolescent male cardinal was still begging food from his poor tired mother.  

A cloudless sulphur flew past and a red spotted purple landed on a dogwood branch.  The purple had a notch bit out of one wing.  A kingfisher rested atop one of the posts on the neighbor's floating dock.  I accidentally caught a fish jumping as I photographed the bird!  

Summer's end

The pool was closed today.  Te workers frightened the birds away and made me very sad.  

Dark

Thick cloud cover kept the light low.  Overnight rain never really dried off and then we got more rain.  The dark of the moon was abetted by the wind to push the tide over the dock.  Southern purple mint moths flew anyway.  Because of the rain I left the barkbutter dish empty.  The female downy had seeds along with chickadees and titmice.  Toward evening, a great blue heron surveyed the creek from a post.