We wondered one summer about the lull in yellow jackets around our front porch, but certainly enjoyed their absence. We were sad to find out that there was a bat living behind the shutter on the front porch and had to evict the guy. We named him Ed-Wahrd. The service he rendered was magnificent, but where we live, it’s not a good idea to house a bat that close to the front door.
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Dodge City?
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People here have noticed a distinct lack of honeybees here. Bumblebees still aren’t up to their former numbers, and now honeybees are getting scarce.
I blame Monsanto.
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I’m not sure where on the Oregon coast you are.
Magical, Randy! Thank you.
Are the little orange flowers some kind of “orchid”? I see them here, too. But I don’t know what they are. I need to walk down to the farmer’s swamp nearby. There are usually some growing around there.
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They look like it, don’t they? They are really delicate. I understand they are called jewelweed and are related to impatiens. They will nearly double the height there sometimes…I used to put my kids on my back and walk through there, saying we were walking through the jungle.
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Even reading about them makes me happy.
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Speaking of Dodge City I was literally just looking for this pilot dark version of gun smoke that was ultimately decided to be dropped and a few years later they made a lighter version of it. If you look up the radio drama series you’ll notice the first episode with Conrad in the series was released in 1952, roughly three years later.
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Not enought ‘likes’ for that praying mantis!
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Two different dragonflies to coaxed into landing on my finger.
C.O.W. Mushrooms I’ve found today.
Rustic Sphinx Moth
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Have you changed equipment? I don’t recall you getting quite this close before.
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I hope you get time to upload those images to iNaturalist! 
Coz they’re great.
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Walking through mixed swamp and woodlands with my 12 year old son yesterday…saw some flowers ( I think sunflower variation and a thistle), and some marsh-edge maples starting to tinge red despite the warm weather.
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No. Still my phone. Normally when it’s close ups it’s for keying stuff out and I never upload them. For about every 40 photos I take I upload 1-2.
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This is key for any presentation of photos. Only show your best stuff.
Eventually I’ll probably get a camera and begin to take better macro photos. It will help with studying too. Most of the photos I take are like photos of the base of the stem, photos of leaf cuts, tops and bottoms of leaves, flowerheads and seed pods. Different leaves to get different shakes and margins. That way when I’m at my house I can look back if the different between two species is how hairy the stem or veining is. I’m mainly planning on getting a camera so that I stop having 40-50k of photos on my phone that I can’t delete easily because if the time involved. I can’t mass delete by death scrolling hundreds of photos at once because they are interwoven with pictures of my friends, family, pets and so on. But with a camera I can take 40 pics of a plant. Key it out. Upload a few and the rest get deleted all at once and only the ones I upload are saved. Plus with a camera and macro lens I can get very good close ups that are perfectly in focus.
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Love the framing of the thistle. Great shot.
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