80AcresOnline

When I went out yesterday about noon, I found four of these lovely pink waterlily flowers open:

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We had thunder and rain this afternoon for several hours, but around six, sun broke through enough to illuminate the newly refilled lily pond.  I went out to see what was going on with pondlife.   Two male Neon Skimmers, Libellula croceipennis, were harrassing  the four or five male Blue Dashers, Pachydiplax longipennis, and also pestering the two female Neon Skimmers who were ovipositing in the pond.

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A few pictures from a week ago,  May 30, and also from yesterday, June 5, as what’s blooming and in what abundance changes rapidly–especially in the hot, dry weather we’re having.  (We did get 3/10 of an inch of rain.   It barely wet the ground.)

Variegated Fritillary, Euptoita claudia, on Gaillardia

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Near Meadow: Claspleaf Coneflower and Lemon Horsemint

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The basketflower, Centaurea americana, looks much like a thistle at first…but the stem and leaves are not prickly at all.    It’s a favorite of Black Swallowtail butterflies (and Giant Swallowtails, if there’s enough moisture for the flowers to last into summer) and many smaller butterflies.  And also other insects.

Beetle flying toward Basketflower already occupied by Black Swallowtail

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Young Rana berlandieri with last of its tail showing.

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If you’re one of the people who hate and fear all snakes, this might be a moment to remind yourself that this one is merely an image in the computer, as well as a small, slender, agile reptile that is harmless to us humans.

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Because of time constraints (working on copy edits for new book) and weather, the brief walk on the land Saturday didn’t produce any usable bird pictures and I didn’t see any snakes or lizards, but I did see wildlife, large and small:

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We’re already drying up, though much is still green and flowers are still blooming…the long-range forecast is for a “mild drought.”   Last summer, in the worst of the drought, we reworked the backyard water feature (which had become overgrown with water irises, among other things.)   We started it before we had the 80 acres, designing it for wildlife use from the beginning, with sunny, shady, quiet, and fast-moving sections of varying depths and shapes.   In the extreme drought that ended last fall, it was crucial to our wildlife, because neither of the small guzzlers out on the 80 acres was big enough to sustain a good population of amphibians or odonates.

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Crane flies are odd insects with long legs relative to their body size–they’re mistaken sometimes for giant mosquitos, which they aren’t.   For such delicate looking creatures, they’re important in the ecosystem:  crane fly larvae feed mostly on fungi, decaying organic matters, sometimes on plant rootlets–some are predatory.   The adults are food for birds.  There are roughly 1600 species of these guys north of Mexico.

Here’s one of our craneflies I’ve seen just about every year:

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