Sometimes it's all about the flowers (but at the end, a bird)

Lorelei update:
Still has a fever. And nothing else. Just hot to the touch and not acting normal.
***
I took a stroll around the yard today, in the daytime, even.
I need some help here.
(Okay, okay. Enough, there.)

Someone tell me that this is an important plant.
Because we have a lot of it. (And more than what I am showing...I DO have standards, damn it.)

I've been praying that it's a beautiful milkweed or something so exquisite that tearing it out would be sacrilege.

I know what this is.
Prickly lettuce.
I don't know about the lettuce part, but the prickly stuff is for real.
And it's a foot taller than the grass. We haven't had to mow, since Mother Nature is spanking us on the bottom with the lack of rain.
Not a native.
Damn it.

I finally know what this is. Now that it's opened up.
Moth mullein.
And not a liatris, just as you said, Laura.
Not a native.
Damn it.

This was one of the freebies I got from the nursery, and I have been waiting for it to open up more so I can ID it.
It's an upright, woody-stemmed plant. With bright pink tubular flowers.
Think it's a native?
Poop.

Oxalis triangularis. Pretty.
Not a native.
!@%*.


A sort-of-a-succulent kind of thing. With pretty orange flowers.
Bet that's not a native, either.
Pbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbp......

While pining over the hopefully-valuable plant, I found a cute little leaf hopper that looks like a stained-glass window!

And also while waxing poetic about the big, huge, unkempt weeds behind me, our female hummingbird landed on the pole by the feeder. I was puzzled by the fluffiness on her legs at first. But when I enlarged the photo, I noticed some fluff stuck to the wind chime, and I guess she is "wool-gathering" for her wee sweet nest.
***
When I like something, I tend to keep hold of it, so here's a few more quotes from Our Boys:

*Our experts describe you as an appallingly dull fellow, unimaginative, timid, lacking in initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of humour, tedious company and irrepressibly drab and awful. And whereas in most professions these would be considerable drawbacks, in chartered accountancy they are a positive boon.

*Brian: Excuse me. Are you the Judean People's Front?
Reg: F*** off! We're the People's Front of Judea.

*I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy lot of second hand electric
donkey-bottom biters.

C'est la vie

Remember the opening song in "The Lion King"?
The Circle of Life?
I had that kind of day.

I had an awesome day of birding and butterflying? and dragonflying? Is that what you call it?
The Oxbow is radically different when there hasn't been much rain. The water level was down far enough to open up pieces of land that I hadn't been able to walk on before.
I took a million pictures, but I narrowed it down to the ones I am really proud of.


Lots of butterflies...this Question Mark was very cooperative while I took its picture.
Look at those colors!

Let's play "Can You Spot the Killdeer?".

Well, I'm not especially proud of this one, but...it's a green heron.

This is what made the trip worth it:
A Yellow-billed cuckoo!
I saw this bird fly over and land, and beat a big yellow caterpillar against the branch before swallowing it. When I got a look through the binoculars, I broke out in giggles.
It's not really a life bird (I heard one at Bill and Julie's last year) but it's the first time
I actually SAW one.
And a cuckoo in the sunlight, sitting still.
I sat there and grinned like an idiot.

I don't know what kind it is, but doesn't it look like a Transformer?

Okay...THIS one is going to get blown up and hung on the wall.
I couldn't believe the luck of seeing this glittery dragonfly sitting in the sun, motionless.
A dragonfly dusted with shimmer-pink eyeshadow.

And not so great...on the way out of the Oxbow, I found a snake along the road that had obviously been hit by a car and had died, twisting and writhing in its death throes.

Is it me, or is this the weirdest fly ever?
Those eyes remind me of those sunglasses from the Eighties...the ones with just a slit in the front to see through....know what I mean?

Back at home, Nellie and I went out in the back yard and I checked on the baby robins.
A few days ago, there were four.
Yesterday, there were two.

Today, there was one.
What the Hell was going on? I looked all around the tree, but didn't see any that had fallen. A snake? A raccoon? WHAT????
I wondered if the parents were somehow not getting enough food for everyone. I went in and grabbed some mealworms (I wasn't sure if they ate them, but I wanted to give it a shot.)
I put the dish near the tree and went back in to watch.
About one minute later, a large thing came barreling into the robins' tree, and then flew out, with the parents chasing after it.
When I saw what it was, I realized where all the other babies had gone.
A red-shouldered hawk was taking them away.
I stood in the yard, looking up in the trees where the hawk had gone, with my hand over my mouth. I didn't know whether to cry or not.
I pulled myself together and told myself:
"The red-shouldered hawks down the road have mouths to feed."
"At least it was a native eating a native."
"That's nature."


The hawk came back as we were eating dinner. He or she perched on the purple martin house...at least someone is using the damn thing. The TRES laid two different clutches, and they both disappeared. The purple martins were too late. I wonder if I could put our bat house up there.
(More on bats later on...)


Nellie puzzles me.
She is deathly afraid of the TRES, but she could care less that the parent robins were screeching a few feet above her head.
The girls took it a lot better than I thought.
Isabelle said, "At least the HOUSE SPARROWS didn't get the babies!"
That's my girl.



After all the drama, Isabelle and I walked the yard. The thistles are blooming, and I didn't even see the inchworm until I uploaded this!

Tonight, as I was outside looking for the tree frog, I saw a bat fly over. This is the first one I have seen this year. I so need to get that bat house up!
I went in to tell the girls and Geoff, and they surprised me by wanting to go out and see.
We walked out in the back yard and watched the bats and fireflies. It was one of those moments.