Up close and personal, this cucumber beetle larvae looks like a hyper-spiny ankylosaurus or other prehistoric creature. I don’t know what type of wasp is on the brown eyed Susan, but it’s quite colorful. The last photo is purple cosmos backlit in the early morning light.
Baby Blue Grosbeak took his first flight out of the black bamboo and fluttered over to a sunflower. Daddy Blue Grosbeak hopped around near where baby had flown concerned about the paparazzo sneaking up on Baby Blue. Mama Blue Grosbeak fluttered around in the bamboo, but would not come out into the open. I got up close to Baby Blue, got some photos before he flew off into our giant Dr. Huey rose bush that made his papa and mama very happy.
The temperatures on Saturday and Sunday were much cooler, only getting up to 80º F, so the birds and the bees were actively foraging on our abundance of plants that are either in bloom or going to seed.
Spunk waiting in ambush, napping, and waiting for story time with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
I was talking to an engineer, who is also an avid photographer, about taking lightning photos when I went up to pick up a piece of equipment he had been working on. We were noting that lightning is easy to photograph, but the danger made up for how easy it is to photograph. On may way home at 11:00 pm, there was a nice lightning show over the city, so I pulled off to the side of the road in the rain, set my camera on top of the car to stabilize it (didn’t have a tripod in the car), and took a few lighting photos before I got soaked in the rain. The results are interesting.
Thunderheads built up in the eastern sky, threatening to give us another early evening thundershower.
The hummingbird moth seems to flutter its wings in slightly different patterns from the ghost images of its buzzing wings.
Pollock’s title seemed fitting for this curly cosmos.
Laurie pointed out that there was a bluebird in the bamboo being attacked by a hummingbird — by the time I got outside with my camera, the bluebird was standing its ground atop the pear tree next to the bamboo. I did get one shot of the hummingbird confronting the bluebird.
So much for 105 @ 5:00. Our weather station reported a wind chill of 111º F (43.9º C) at 3:47 pm yesterday afternoon, about the time the birds were battling (see the last photo).
Hot and sunflowery.
