Lauraven's Miscellany: Bald Hills Road, Part II

On Wednesday, I returned to Bald Hills Road, dragging along my friends Holly & D'har. As you might expect, they were kicking and screaming the whole time. The weather this week has been cloudy & sometimes rainy, with occasional thunderstorms. Not like last week's warm & sunny weather. So much for summer!

Anyway, I abandoned the idea of painting , and we three spent an entire day flower peeping, birding, insect chasing and reptile harassing. We had a fine picnic overlooking the lupine-draped slopes. The lupines are now past their prime, but still beautiful. There were lots of unripe seed pods which we coveted. I took photos of most of the flowers we saw, minus the itty-bitties and some others. I also had a few that were out of focus. Rats. Similar to when I start photographing for Bloom Day, I was amazed at how many flower species there were.

The lazuli buntings were elusive - until we finally saw one. We stalked two singing males for about twenty minutes. Then they were everywhere, misters and missuses out in the open on just about every tree and bush. Oh for a good camera with a 500 mm telephoto lens. We had some gorgeous views of the lazuli buntings, western tanagers, Steller's jays, black-headed grosbeaks, and a pair of red-tailed hawks soaring by. There were loads of other birds, such as acorn woodpeckers, Allen's hummingbirds and one olive-sided flycatcher.

While watching the bluebirds and western tanagers in an oak copse, we heard a familiar humming. D'har started to bolt, having encountered far too many ground wasp nests in the woods. But she stopped when Holly and I cried out "A swarm!" A tiny swarm of honeybees flew by, and was gone in seconds.

Butterflies, wild bees, all sorts of beetles and other insects were enjoying the flowers. Early in the day, we saw a fellow weilding a butterfly net. But we had the place to ourselves for most of the day. There were lizards - either western fence or western sagebrush; I didn't compare the scales. D'har found a coral-bellied ringneck snake that was trying to swallow what looked like a slender salamander. We bothered it enough that it disgorged its lunch and made its escape. When she came back to the same spot, D'har found it again, trying to reclaim the meal. I would have gotten pictures, but he was elusively tucked under the oak leaves.

Now and then, thunder rumbled to the north and south of us. We got alternating stifling muggy air and cooling breezes. We enjoyed a nice long walk along one of the timber roads. Toward 5:00, just as we began to think of tick-checks, showers and dinner, the heavy clouds found us and started raining.