Yesterday's butterfly and today's walk report: Tempus fugit, calor beat

 That was the ticket, I wanted to get out and beat the heat this morning and while I tend to get up well before the crack of dawn most days, it is also a struggle for me to get out of slow motion, straighten up and get in gear. I checked hourly temp predictions and it appeared I'd be within my comfort range if I got out by 7:00 and could finish up by 8:30. I got out at 6:59 but ended up doing a 7 minute roundabout because I forgot headphones in my haste. Gotta, gotta, gotta have music. I pulled the car into my starting destination at 7:10. It was 61ºF. Perfect. There was no June gloom either. It was glaringly sunny bright. I could have used a little cloud cover for the photos.

First here's yesterday's butterfly in the backyard. This was a little after 11:00 and it was also glaringly bright. The butterfly is a Nymphalis antiopa, also known as the mourning cloak. Where does it get its name? The mourning cloak apparently gets its name from its resemblance to an archaic, traditional cloak worn when someone was in mourning. Mourning cloaks are the most memorable butterfly from my childhood because they were everywhere. Over the past several years I haven't seen very many and these are the best pictures I've gotten (not too excited about them either). According to a search, eggs are usually laid on host trees like willow, elm, hackberry, cottonwood, poplar, rose, birch, hawthorne, and mulberry. I, however, remember the caterpillars populating fig trees in abundance as a child. 

Onto today's walk. June 15th.

I was mostly walking. Photo ops were not jumping out in front of me. Lately I've been challenging myself and testing my thoracic and lumbar spine on walks. I would like to get back up over 3 miles. I typically walk at a fairly brisk pace, all things considered. Brisk for me is about 3.5 mph. Today's walk was only 2.13 miles, while yesterday I put in about 2.5. 

Here are a few pictures. Nothing too exciting...

Sylvilagus audubonii, the common cottontail rabbit. I don't believe I've ever seen as many rabbits on this campus as I've seen today.

Prunus persica, nectarines. This tree is in an odd place. These young fruits are hanging right over the sidewalk I was walking on. More free fruit I'm going to make an effort at snagging a sample of in the near future. I grew up with quite a few fruit trees. There were two nectarine trees, two Santa Rosa plums, a dwarf peach tree, a Valencia orange and a dwarf orange tree and an apricot tree. I wasn't appreciative of the fruit as a kid mainly because once I was old enough (to be put into child slavery) it became my job to rake up fallen fruit. There was a lot and it was always surrounded by bees and a few other stinger equipped insects. I was not fond of that.

Speaking of fruit, sometime in late 2010, during one of my first antediluvian walks on this campus, I brought a couple of Fuji apples to the pen where these two donkeys hang out when they're not out in the fields. However, they weren't at home. It probably would have been frowned upon by someone anyway but I suspect the donkeys would have been okay with it. I gave them some nose scritches on a few occasions.

The Red Barn. I have a few childhood stories about the Red Barn too. I actually spent a fair amount of time inside the barn. My sister and I spent portions of a couple of summer vacations in one of two houses that used to be right across the street from the short road up to the barn. I remember one evening in particular when I followed the screech of a barn owl up into the red barn which wasn't particularly well lit at night and was kind of spooky. I don't believe I can get up to the barn these days.

 Here's the barn as seen from Google Earth. It's on enough of an incline so you can't really see it from the sidewalk down below.

Say's phoebe (Sayornis saya) is a passerine bird in the tyrant flycatcher family, Tyrannidae.

A "while I was posting" bonus. I spotted this giant swallowtail from my office windows and dashed outside. A few days ago there was a Papilio rutulus, the western tiger swallowtail and a giant swallowtail, Papilio cresphontes out there at the same time but despite practically breaking my neck to get out with the camera I missed both of them.

The high for today, 1:00 PM, 100.4º, currently it's 98.8º. I don't know what's going on in your part of the world but summer is here in SoCal. Predictions for tomorrow look a bit cooler but I'm not gonna trust them.