June 9, 2024

Summer is coming in - It's already June and feels like it!  My children are here together and I'm loving it!  Don't tell anyone, but so far no Raccoon has tried to harm my frogs or fishes or shred the lovely Water-lilies, although Chaim showed me some movies he took of a couple of them - seems to have deterred them from the things I'm always worried about.    Here is a Lily flower beginning to open up, and then open fully.  Here's a little Frog, then a couple of bigger ones.

The Fishes are so lovely - what a treat to have a Pond teeming with beautiful creatures.  Since I feed the fishes with flaky fish food, they don't have to eat each other, though they do keep the numbers of baby Fishes down.  The Frogs fatten themselves up with insects - sometimes you see a Frog make a little leap and settle down with a mouthful.  The Fishes come in so many colors - the water seems to boil sometimes.  

Let's try again to see the different kinds of insects.  This time we have a lot of kinds of Bees.  One kind I haven't seen in a few years is the Nomad Bees, but this year was a good year for them (picture 1).  Second is one we always have around (the Western Honey Bee).  There are always several colors of Green Bees (picture 3).

How about Beetles?  Here is one of the Pale Green Weevils.    (I always have trouble distinguishing this one from the Green Immigrant Leaf Weevil.)  Bugs?  The middle picture shows a big green Bug, type unknown.   Far right shows a young Bug nymph, or maybe a Barklouse nymph..  

So we have seen the usual kinds of insects.   Let's check out the various plants we have seen and loved.   One plant that has been rife lately is the Goutweed, whose smallish flower parts can hold very tiny creatures.  Here are  an ant and a red Mite on Goutweed.  It does seem to attract some unusual creatures, so we will keep our eyes peeled for them.  Goutweed doesn't stay very long - I used to think of it as a Weed - but now I like to see it for the things that come along with it.

This week has given us a number of chances to see interesting small creatures that can be resolved into visibility.  :-)  

This first one is some kind of Dance Fly.  Next is one of the pretty Treehoppers.  And third is another one that is going to change from white to blue in a while!

Here are a few more.  I'm not at all sure what the first one is!  It was called genus Zygoballus in iNat.  Cute, though, huh?

The next two are two stages of Scudder's Bush Katydid.  The second one is the older.