Like Being In an Oven Today

Today I met my friend Roger at the Butner Gamelands at Brickhouse Rd. It was 9:30am and already very hot, perhaps like a brickhouse oven. The trail we walked along was almost without any shade we lasted an hour before we got back to the cars.

This is Fine-leaved Sneezeweed (Helenium amarum) it was all along the gravel roads we walked and certain places had lots of Common Checkered Skippers, Pyrgus communis, we saw at least 25 of these tiny little butterflies.

Above and below Common Checkered Skippers, Pyrgus communis

Below is a very mature male Widow Skimmer, Libellula luctuosa perched over some rocks along the Little River.


Above is a female Swift Setwing, Dythemis velox found along the trail at Knap of the Reeds in Granville County the second place we visited today. Below is the male Swift Setwing we found at Brickhouse Rd. I don't recall ever finding a female of this species, so today was pretty lucky. On the photo below notice the reddish eyes I'd never noticed that before either.

Roger knows me well enough that when we are in North Carolina and a call him by saying: I've got a dragonfly over here and I don't know what it is! It must be something unusual, today sort of as I'd never seen a female Common Sanddragon, Progomphus obscurus before and this one was perching oddly for a sanddragon in the weeds. it took me about 20 seconds to realize that the yellowish-whitish cerci on S10 was the ID clincher. S10 means segment 10 the rear segment out of 10 abdomen segments.

Common Sanddragon, Progomphus obscurus female. She was very cooperative for photos as she let both of us take flash photos up close at the same time and when she flew up it was only to more a few inches. You sometimes get lucky to have a dragonfly pose like this, other times forget it.

A face only a mother could love don't you think?

Below is a Gray Hairstreak, Strymon melinus taked at Knap of the Reeds today. Our most commonly seen hairstreak in the southeastern US. Funny this year I have only seen a handful of them.

Pretty fun day except for the 90+ degree heat and 90% humidity.

Yesterday I mentioned the deer getting into the garden. Early today I chased off a 4 point buck and doe in the back yard. I came towards the porch to tell Meg and saw another doe on the road next to the pond, chased it off. Ten minutes later two fawn and a doe were in the woods behind the back yard, things might become hopeless for the garden here. Meg says we could just take up deer watching.