Discovery Journal

At first glance, this pollinator may appear to be a bee or a small wasp working this yellow coneflower for nectar or pollen. It is actually a fly: the Transverse Flower Fly.

A few more first bloom dates in the garden over the weekend:

The Great Black Wasp has been visiting the gardens every day. Unfortunately, it has been less cooperative about landing and staying put, so I have failed to get a good picture for a positive ID until yesterday. In the late afternoon, I finally caught this very large, very black wasp pausing to pollinate the 'Ice Ballet' cultivar of Swamp Milkweed.

Dragonflies were not the only critters out at the park today.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail made an appearance, visiting the Purple Coneflower

This morning, a festival of dragonfly species came out to take advantage of the morning sun and heat over at the pond and connected creek. The following are some of the species seen this morning.

A male Eastern Pondhawk was sighted along the boardwalk entrance to the park near the pond. He was moving from perch to perch along the edge of the thickets on either side of the walking path.

Monkey Flower is now blooming in the backyard rain garden.
First Bloom Date this Year: 7/17/2020

Breeding season is in full swing for the birds. The starlings and sparrows have been feeding young in our yard for quite a while now. With the sunflowers producing seeds, the goldfinch breeding season should be starting up. Today a juvenile Mourning Dove was hiding in the rain garden for most of the day. At the pond, a momma Red-winged Blackbird was feeding her young.

On our morning walk, we happened to see a Hummingbird Clearwing taking nectar from a Swamp Milkweed near the pond. While we have seen the Snowberry Clearwing (Hemaris diffinis) several times this year, this is the first Hummingbird Clearwing (Hemaris thysbe) sighting of the year. I thought this might be a good opportunity to illustrate how to differentiate the two species.