Today's walk report: monarchs in the making, prequel version

 My post, Sunday June 4th was titled, Weekend walk report: monarchs in the making. That post was all about monarch caterpillars. Before the caterpillars come the eggs and before the eggs... I believe this is only the second time I've spied a monarch couple mating.

I always find it a bit rough capturing in flight butterfly images. This was marginally acceptable, they're a little slower when coupled like this. The male is in the lead.

Of course, they just had to maintain their position once they landed in the pistachio tree, with me shooting into the sun. I tried to move around the best I could but right in front of me it's thick with sages, verbena and a lot of wild roses.

Previous experience taught me that they could stay like this for quite some time and I wanted to get some walking in so I left the two little lovers alone.

Meanwhile male Calypte anna hummingbird, Dusty, had finally settled down for a moment in one of his regular perches. He had been quite busy chasing at least two other males and one female Calypte anna.

 

I went to walk my westbound loop. It was only 63º f and a little on the humid side but I was already perspiring. Perhaps it was in anticipation of high temps today. Right now it's 96º outside and I can feel it penetrating into this room. Yep, 85º in here, I just turned on a loud window unit AC, it's dominating the headphones I'm wearing. Here goes turning that up 4 dB for now. All my instincts, they return. The grand facade, so soon will burn...

The loop...

Same doves, about the same time on the same lamppost as last weekend? Maybe so.

This mockingbird looks quite young.

Then there were the ravens.

First I heard this one talking up a storm.

Her and her partner on the other side.

Two lampposts west (about 80 yards or 73 meters) were these two, also yakking up a storm. I'm guessing the bird on the right is the male.

His partner took off into a tall pine tree in a small park area on my side of the street. This seemed to make the alleged male bird even more boisterous.

I walked back to the garden and wandered around a bit. Quite honestly, I think a number of weekday chores had caught up to me and I took a roundabout walk back to my car. As I pulled out of the parking lot I started feeling guilty about only walking a little over a mile, feasibly a mile and a half, so I decided to drive up to the top the hill and attempt to put additional distance in. Except...

I have been complaining about this road for, drum roll please... decades. In 2011 into 2012 I was bicycling this hill, sometimes at night. Anyway, I saw this as a good excuse and drove home. Tomorrow is another day and it's a long 4th of July weekend. At first I had planned on venturing out all four days of the weekend and putting one walk report together. Then I remembered how long it took me to get through this task last weekend. So, we'll see. Perhaps tomorrow I'll take the stairs to the top and see what all was accomplished on this road and the road exiting the campus to the west. Note the sidewalk fenced in on the right side of the image. They've been replacing that sidewalk, starting at the top of the hill, for over two years now.

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