Quite the rebound!

The air was cool and still enough this morning for a little “evaporation fog” to form over the relatively warm soccer fields. It might be a sign of things to come.

Anyway, I was happy to find a bit more critter activity in the park today. I’ve been skipping my first visit to the pond lately in hopes of getting to the north end in time to see the owls, and on my way along the river today, I thought this great blue heron showing off its fancy neck feathers was worth the few seconds it took me to snap this picture.

As luck would have it, I did reach the north end in time to see at least one of the owls. I believe this is the big sister, and she was high over our riverbank. I did my best to keep my distance and snuck this picture through a gap in the leaves. She was mostly looking out over the water, but did flash me those big, beautiful yellow eyes a couple of times. I kept my own eyes hidden behind my camera, which seemed to do the trick, and she calmly just returned her gaze to the river.

As if that wasn’t enough, when I checked the river myself, from a bit farther upstream, look who glided in to do a little fishing: our osprey! Yay!

But wait! There’s more! If you order before midnight tonight, a murder of crows will chase a red-tailed hawk out of the trees above, and it will hustle across the river to perch in a tree right next to the osprey. Holy smokes, that’s a lot of raptors!

I eventually did make it to the far north end, and the pigeon chicks look bigger, but otherwise unchanged. For me, the more-interesting sight was this orb weaver, maybe a spotted orbweaver (Neoscona crucifera), working on the huge web it has in the branches above the trail.

At the pond, the wood duck ducklings are starting to fly over the water and look really grown up. Here’s one checking its reflection.

The pollinator garden was busy this morning, and here’s a monarch on a blazing star blossom.

I’ve been seeing these huge black wasps for weeks now, a gold-marked thread-waisted wasp (Eremnophila aureonotata) in this case, buzzing over the flowers and hunting for prey to feed its young, but one finally parked for a minute this morning.

There were several damselflies out today, and this American rubyspot was the prettiest of the bunch.

Here’s another striking big, black wasp but with quite the red abdomen and distinctive white marks on its antennae, which iNaturalist thinks is a Protichneumon grandis, but that species does not have a wikipedea page nor even a common name.

Finally, there was a red-spotted admiral really showing off its bright blue wings, and that’ll be the butterfly of the day, even if there is a little piece missing.