20170712 Rose, Coreopsis, White Water Lily, Heal All, Milkweed beetles, Monarch Caterpillars, Grass Pink, Elderberry, Softrush

Photo above:  Oft-photographed Big (Gereaux) Lake

The Highway 529 roadside showed some new sights….

This wild rose is in full bloom…

See the spider web attached to this Coreopsis …

Fragrant White Lily on metallic waterscape …

Heal-all in full bloom in lawns and roadsides …

A Red Milkweed Beetle is exploring the edge of this milkweed leaf….

Two more unidentified beetles on the popular Common Milkweed plant:

Two Monarch Butterfly caterpillars share a leaf with a visiting  spider …

Lunchtime in the milkweed patch….

A nice Dianthus ameria {or Grass Pink) along the roadside …

The (black-fruited) Common Elderberry is in bloom now.  Read Andy Fyon’s information about Red Elderberry (which is poisonous) and this Common Elderberry (which produces good berries for jams and jellies).  The Red Elderberry bloomed about a month ago.

This might be a young Differential grasshopper.

The grasses, sedges and rushes are blooming and “fruiting” now.  Here is a Softrush in full bloom:

And here is a  yet-to-be-identified plant, which we’ll keep an eye on:

Summer is upon us, at last.

Save

20170623 Rainy Day, hoverfly, Crab spider, Tarnished Plant Bug, Japanese Beetle, Cedar Waxwing, Great Blue Heron, White Water Lily, Wood Satyr, Tamarack Cones

On the way back from the Norse Brewery (along Hwy 69, off  Woods Road) we stopped to make some pictures of nature in the rain.  Here are some of them:

Tragopogon dubius (yellow salsify,[1] western salsify, western goat’s-beard, wild oysterplant, yellow goat’s beard, goat’s beard, goatsbeard, common salsify, salsify) gathering some raindrops…

A Tarnished Plant Bug resting on an Ox Eye Daisy petal:  Also: TPB

Click on this photo to see the water droplets on the various parts of this Crab Spider.

Notice the discarded parts of an earlier meal of this Crab Spider ….

What are those little red balls on this Syrphid Fly, (Toxomerus geminatus ?) aka Hoverfly or Flower Fly?

Green beetle enjoying the water droplets …

Japanese beetle (?) out in the rain, with water droplets on its exoskeleton.

Wet grass …

Wet day lilies…

Another hover fly …

5 Cedar Waxwings and a smaller birdie on a snag…

Duck doing a low pass over a GBH.

Little Wood Satyr on a dry leaf, under the canopy …

Fragrant White Water Lilies are ascending now…

This is the first time that I have noticed the Tamarack cones change from purplish to pale green.  Apparently I am not alone.

Mark Berkery just posted some more amazing images.