Ragged

This is the first Hummingbird Clearwing Moth I've seen this summer, which makes it very late for a first sighting.  This is obviously an older one, showing a lot of signs of wear.  Which does not diminish my happiness at finally seeing one at all!  Some summers we have a dozen or more fluttering around in the phlox patch - since the phlox is just barely starting to bloom, we will have to wait to see if the moth population is healthy this year.  One thing to notice here is the little orange/yellow sacks on its legs - these are polinia which are encapsulated pollen sacks from the milkweed.  I'm not sure if any other flowers create pollen in tidy little packages this way, but it is only something I learned about in the last few years so worth mentioning.  

I met up with a friend this morning and we spent a couple of hours birding and bugging and chatting.  A great morning.  It was fairly warm and humid today so a shower was in order when I got home.  No doubt this will be good practice for the Amazon.  

Tonight I am going to work on moving a bunch of images off my Mac hard drive onto an external drive.  Like all things technology related, this will take me longer than it should, I'm sure.  

Hubs and I started watching Zero Day on Netflix last night - it's quite fast paced but well-acted (Robert DeNiro) and enjoyable.  And only six episodes so not really a major commitment.

xoxo
Debbi