The Odd Sock: Weekend walk report: (Don't) Take a Pebble

We're having a heatwave, for about the next four months most likely. I'm just trying to get out early enough to beat it. Saturday's walk, departure was 68º and 59% relative humidity, with an end of walk temp of 72º with RH at 52%. Today, Sunday, I was out an hour earlier but the departure temperature was 71º and the RH was 55%. For today's end of walk it was 77º and RH was 44%. Both walks were just a little over 50 minutes and covered pretty much the same route.

Here are photos from Saturday, June 22nd.

The grape arbor is very grapey. I tasted one of these years ago, they're absolutely horrible.

This is a flame skimmer or firecracker skimmer dragonfly (Libellula saturata). The bush is Vitex agnus-castus, it's also called vitex, chaste tree/chastetree, chasteberry, Abraham's balm, lilac chastetree, or monk's pepper, it's native of the Mediterranean region.

Monarch butterfly on narrowleaf milkweed.

Onto the bulk portion of my walk...

The nectarines are much redder in appearance this week but remain watermelon firm.

Win a fabulous No-Prize by identifying this bird! Any participant caught cheating using Merlin ID, Bird Search, Google image search or any other like app will be disqualified. Put your answer in the comments section. Good luck!

I had no idea what this was all about. It appeared they were preparing for a big event, lots of tents, etc. My first thought was, I wonder how Indigenous Americans would feel about the use of the word powwow. As it turns out it was a first annual gathering held by many Native American and First Nations communities which provides an opportunity for Indigenous people to socialize, dance, sing, and honor their cultures. I was off campus about two hours before it was scheduled to start.

Dude, don't do it... that's a pebble.

Seriously, I'm telling ya... it's a rock.

Oh man.

I told ya!

Say's phoebe, moving on from its taste a pebble experience.

"Due to weather." Usually the western most gate on campus is closed. This was letting people know that the powwow location had been moved because it was gonna hit 102º and apparently the event was originally scheduled to be set up in the worst, flat, asphalt paved, no shade part of the campus. I can't imagine why anyone thought that was a good idea no matter what the weather was providing.

Last week I wrote that one can't see this the "Red Barn" from the sidewalk down below. I thought about it later, so this is a correction of sorts and yes, I confirmed there isn't a legit way for me to get up there these days.

Today. Sunday, June 23rd.

This was actually toward the end of the walk. The thing is I took several pictures through these classroom lab windows yesterday. There were also a couple of hominoids, great apes, perhaps even early humans but I somehow lost all of my pictures from yesterday. The images above were spared because I had already selected them before whatever happened, happened. If you knew my workflow and I'm not going to explain it, you'd think how is that possible? I don't know but I'd guess about 1/4 of my images were never even previewed.

This is not Not Dusty. Looks like Not Dusty has another male Calypte anna hummingbird hanging out in the California natives portion of the garden. The thing is I suspect that Not Dusty is offspring of Dusty and perhaps this bird is too. It's also remotely possible that this is Dusty. It's been too long since I've seen him and birds change. Confused? Search this blog for "Dusty."

This is Not Dusty.

This is a tiny orb-weaver. Body, less than 1/4", maybe 5 mm. It was really difficult to get a picture and then it started moving. Also, is this the spider that dropped acid?