Today's walk report: 081513

Flutter and buzz...

If you've never seen or been very close to a carpenter bee the first thing which will impress you if you are is their size. More than once I thought a brown one coming into peripheral vision was a baby hummingbird. The second thing that will impress you (if you're inclined to be close enough) is how loud the buzz they make can be.

First there was the same Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) I've seen many times before but I think the lighting was better. It's coloration looked better saturated than in the last image I took.

Here's an overhead shot of the brown carpenter bee.

Here's the two of them. Once again it was a challenge with manual focus, shooting into this small thicket of reeds.

That's it. All the other shots got away. Looks like the college kids are done with summer session so I may have some extra days coming up with camera in hand.

Today's walk report: 042813

Whatever kind of turnout they had for the "Farm Walk" it was all clear by the time I hit that side of the campus. Thank you.

I see a lot of lizards. For the most part I believe they are all one form or another of fence lizard. I mislabeled my JPEG here and I think this is probably a female northwestern fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis.) If anybody ever wants to call me on any of my IDs for anything you're more than welcome.

Some species of Nymphalidae on silver sage, there's only about 6,000 of them so... Actually I think I have tried to ID this butterfly before but I'm too tired to go back and look. Besides the fact that nobody cares and only about 10 people even look at this blog at this point.
Update: This is a Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui).

Carpenter bees (the genus Xylocopa in the subfamily Xylocopinae). Sometimes when they fly past quickly and are out in my peripheral view I think it was a hummingbird.

Bumblebee. Any member of the bee genus Bombus, in the family Apidae. There are over 250 known species. I haven't been happy with any of perhaps a few 100 bumblebee shots so far this year.

 

Young Allen's hummingbird. I had a few Anna's hummingbirds literally 15" from my face today, just hovering, I think mocking me beause I had the wrong lens for a photo op.