Today's walk report: 101514, last weekend

Busy with other "stuff," last weekend's walks and picture taking took a back seat but here's what I've got...

Saturday, 101114.

Blue-eyed Darner (Aeshna multicolor, syn. Rhionaeschna multicolor).

A wild rose.

Vanessa cardui aka, Painted Lady, or the Cosmopolitan.

Vanessa cardui on lantana.

Another Blue-eyed Darner.

Sunday, 101214.

A small tribute to the southwestern fence lizard. Things are finally cooling down in SoCal and that'll mean goodbye to the lizards for awhile.

Some species of Banksia, plant family Proteaceae.

Common Buckeye butterfly, Junonia coenia. With its wings closed at 1.5 meters amongst the wood chips and dirt the butterfly seemed to disappear every time I pulled the camera away. This butterfly REALLY blends in well.

The red-eared slider turtles, like the lizards, will disappear soon too. Red-eared sliders brumate over the winter at the bottom of ponds or shallow lakes; they become inactive, generally, in October, when temperatures fall below 10 °C (50 °F).

So ends our tail, er, tale this week... Stay tuned for more and thanks for coming along on our walk.

Today's walk report: 081813

Double header.

In the A.M., iCal tells me I get the Dodgers vs. the Phillies game at 10:30 so I hustled to do some stuff all for naught, the Dodgers' calendar was wrong, no game on local TV.  So I said wtf, it's only 94º outside, why not go for a walk?

This is how I felt right at this point, only about .5 km into the walk. It's okay, it got better even though by the end of the 2 hours excursion it was 98º and pretty darn humid.

Buckeye (Junonia coenia). Between chasing butterflies and waiting for dragonflies to land I was siding with the dragonflies.

This was a four image focus stack. Flame Skimmer (Libellula saturata).
(Anyone bumping into my stuff here--please comment to correct IDs if you believe they aren't right.)

Hide and seek.

Peek a boo!

Red eared slider turtle kicking it in the lily pads.

Family: Skimmers - Libellulidae, no ID. The Flame Skimmer above was rather aggressive about chasing this guy away and for my best photo op I had the wrong lens.

Female common bluetail damselfly (Ischnura heterosticta)

again...

and again...

Water lilies are always closed by the time I usually get to the pond, late afternoon.

It was getting really hot. I had walked over to a vending machine for a beverage and came back to this guy.

Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) on lantana. I had both a male and a female on this lantana. The female is somewhat larger than the male, other than that I think you need to be really close to tell the difference.

 again (this might be the female)...

Same dragonfly as before almost an hour later. This one was pretty much hanging out for me.

Then there was a 2nd walk, out the door shortly after 6 P.M., a mere 87º.

A shell of his former self...

Green fruit beetles, doing what they do. My understanding is they only go for overly ripe fruit and are therefore not a agricultural threat. This is not a before and after, these are two sets of beetles.

Turkey vulture, moon.

Cloud parade.

These birds and I were all waiting for the sunset. This was about 20 minutes to go.

and finally...
(that's a lens flare off to the left, I'm still on planet earth.)