White Milkweed and daily odes

White Milkweed, Asclepias variegata is common along our road and usually when it blooms one can find their first Great Spangled Fritillary of the season on or near it, no luck yesterday. It seems that the White Milkweed on the early sun side of the road is doing terrible because of our cold and wet weather and due to the fact that the highway mowing crew timed poorly and the trees are chest high where the milkweed is. I did see fresh American Ladies and Summer Azures on it.

The weather here has been chilly (64 degrees) and windy not the best for finding butterflies yet I did OK yesterday on my 1.5 hour walk up the road.

My friends Jeff and Will were over on Saturday night Jeff remarked that he'd never seen an Azure Bluet before. Well my yard is the only location in the state of North Carolina I have seen the species before. I have found it in KY and PA on DSA trips.

Both these Azure Bluets, Enallagma aspersum were found where Jeff parked his car on Saturday. The above photo is the female which was very hard to get to sit still for a photo. The lower photo is the male Azure Bluet. In all yesterday I saw 7 of them.

Below is a Common Green Darner with its exuvia freshly emerged in our pond with a waterlily behind it! Normally these guys emerge after 10PM and can fly by midnight. Guess the cool damp days have changed that as we also saw one emerging Saturday afternoon in the pond.

Below is my first of the year female Slaty Skimmer. I've been told by dragonfly collectors that this bug has the worst bite of any dragonfly they have ever handled. I've never had any bite me and I have handled a few of them. Last week I touched my nose to a Common Whitetail on our porch railing!

This photo below is a teneral male Eastern Pondhawk, Erythemis simplicicollis. The males start out green like the females then with age the males turn blue