Midweek Musings. #2

Hello everyone and welcome back! It is an absolutely beautiful morning here, if you like cooler mornings. It was a bit too cool for me earlier, but it is quite nice now, and finally not so windy today. That part is very nice. It can be hard to get good pictures if it is too windy. Like it has been the last couple of days. Especially for photos of flowers or insects.

Oh, there will be a couple of insect photos today, perhaps, just as a warning to those who do not like that sort of thing. I finally got a picture of one insect yesterday that I have been trying to get for about a month now. And I found out what it is, a wasp, an ichneumon wasp to be exact. These wasps, which include many different species, are one of the largest groups of insects.

Blue Jay with his prize peanut.

This particular species is 1 inch (25mm) long. They are rather slow flying, which is good. Speaking of flying, I heard an owl a couple nights ago, a Great Horned owl, one of our larger owl species. I hear them fairly often but have never seen it. I have seen Great Horned owls however, just not the one around here. I would love to get a picture of one.

Red-breasted Nuthatch looking for sunflower seeds.

Speaking of foxes. Well, I am now. Anyway, there was one around here the other night, barking a lot. They have a rather unique bark that is easy to identify. The grackles are out here right now. The babies have left the nest now so 2 families are out here. They are kind of noisy. But the young ones are very comical to watch. They walk around picking up everything in sight to see if it is edible.

They try to run fast when one of the others picks up something, but they usually end up tripping and falling flat on their face. They are kind of noisy. But, they are gone now, they never stay for very long. Maybe they will eat some of those grasshoppers. There is a lot of them this year, which is kind of odd.

Common Eastern Bumble Bee, covered with pollen, flying towards a flower.

Speaking of odd. We had a lot of insects around here before, then the weather changed from hot to cool and all those insects disappeared. Gone. Nothing. Finally yesterday more started to show up again. But no butterflies, and there were a lot before.

Candy Striped Leafhopper. Kind of small at 3/8 of an inch (about 8mm) long. Very colorful insect anyway.

Not many bees either. Mainly the Common Eastern Bumble Bee. There are a few Golden Northern Bumble Bees as well. But so far no Orange Belted Bumble Bees and that is odd. They are a very common bee around here. Oh well. Hopefully they will show up yet. Well, time to check around the backyard for more insect pics. Have a wonderful Wednesday everyone and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2023 Steve McLeod.