Today's walk report: 072713

Another abbreviated walk.

The "kids" (my son, his gf) were on their way from Santa Barbara and I figured either my normal walk but really brisk so I could get back or a short walk to the garden and back with more time for photos and to gather a little peace. I chose the latter.

Not too much going on in the way of photo ops though with some of the "same old" but there was one neat little happening and that was a mass of dragonflies zipping all around me. Maybe 30-40 of them. It was a larger dragonfly than the blue dasher you'll see below and they were doing some mating flight thing most likely. Whatever it was I never saw any of these land. I shot a some sloppy video just to give an idea. Don't turn up the volume because there is none. All you could hear was the lens desperately trying to find focus and me chomping on a piece of gum.

First a few pics.

Had I gotten all 3 in focus this would have been nice. Insects are not very patient. 3 grass skipper butterflies.

Yes, once again, an Allen's hummingbird.

Jack rabbit munching on lamb's ear. Last year there was 20 times more lamb's ear and it was flowering over 1 meter tall. This year there is very little. There was a cabbage white butterfly in this scene but I couldn't get them to quite cooperate for a nice picture together.

As promised, blue dasher dragonfly on Hesperaloe parviflora.

Closer. If you don't disturb them too much, stay still and they will usually land in the same place after flying off to get a better look I suppose. Here I got the opportunity to screw on my close up lens.

Then I irked him a little too much, he moved and off with the close-up lens for me.

One of the Australian native Grevillea 'Superb' flowers shows up since my last visit.

Leptotes marina (Marine blue). This little fellow is about the size of a dime and it drove me crazy with it's indecisiveness over landing for about 15 minutes.

Here's the video of the dragonflies "swarming" for what it's worth.