Nomad

It has been a good day, starting with a FT chat with my parents.  They are firming up plans to move to NJ and I am so very excited and happy.  It will be wonderful to have them close and to be able to spend time together and I am looking forward to introducing them to all of my favorite spots here in our little corner of NJ.

After we got off the call, I headed out to the garden.  It has been overcast all day with scattered showers and temps topping out in the high 80's.  If the sun was out, it would have been quite uncomfortable, but the cloud cover kept it fairly nice.  I found all kinds of interesting things in the garden including my 4th species of bumble bee for the year.  My favorite find, however, was this little Nomad Bee who I would have sworn was a wasp.  They are a kleptoparasitic bee species, commonly called cuckoo bees and they are known for laying their eggs in the nests of other solitary bees, primarily Andrena sp.  A cool find.  I also saw several Plume Moths and will put one in Extra - very cool looking moths and worth a look if you've never seen one.

The third wren nest has what appears to be 7 little naked babies in it now, probably hatched yesterday.  I have still not been able to get an accurate count of the Tree Swallows since mama covers them under the big white feathers.  The last good look I got, several days ago, showed two nestlings and 3 eggs so hoping the final eggs have hatched by now.  

And in 2 weeks I will be in Brazil - wow!

xoxo
Debbi