A bee, I’ll call Wild-B, was minding his own business collecting pollen on an echinacea, when another bee, I’ll call Sam-I-am, started buzzing Wild-B. Wild-B held his position and stuck out his pollen laden back legs as he tried to block and discourage Sam-I-am from buzzing him. Sam-I-am was quite pesky, but finally moved on after a Bumble Bee landed on the echinacea. Wild-B also took off once the Bumble Bee started making his way around the flower in Wild-B’s direction.
The echinaceas are attracting the various colors of clouded sulfur butterflies: green, orange, yellow.
Green Clouded Sulfur (Colias philodice)
I was able to get the orange sulfur (Colias eurytheme), also known as the “alfalfa butterfly”, above with it’s wings open as it landed on an enchinacea. Clouded Sulfurs rarely open their wings to a flattened position when they are perched. The solid black around the edges of the wings indicate that this one is a male (females have dots on the black edges).
Backlit orange.
A male Orange fluttering around an unfazed female Green (the green has spots on the black edges of her wings).
Yellow Sulfer (Colias croceus).
Bumble bees enjoying our echinacea.
The people who put out the Spin Scooter arrange them so the scooters make interesting patterns.
Speaking of wheels, my little “green” red sports car got 40.2 mpg (17.09 kpl) driving 339.6 miles (546.53 kilometers) the last tank of gas. I got on Trip B resetting the trip meters when I realized I hadn’t taken a photo of the instrument panel. I ran a manual calculation of my mpg (8.5 gallons over 339.5 miles — 339.6÷8.5=39.95 mpg), which is pretty close to what the car’s computer calculated. Not bad at all.
Everybody wants to get in on the Off Center & Not Even music scene these days. We came across a group of toads (Bufo woodhousii) in the bosque last night that call themselves The Kaleidoscopic Croakers, which is rather obvious from the photo I took of them under the light of our phones. They croaked out a bluegrass-like tune for us that they call A Chorus of Crazy Croaking.
One happy donkey rolling in the dirt.
Over hill, out of scale, on a dry and rocky trail, a red ant carries a bee. Over logs, over rocks, a little ant hopscotch, dusk falls and the ant carries on… Then it’s hi hi, he he, here in the bosque, only one ant a silent drone. For wherever he goes, the ant always knows, he carried that bee all alone.
Off Center & Not Even 