Gone wild

This white duck must have gotten bored with life on the farm. Or perhaps it escaped the butcher's hatchet just in time..... 

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath. 
~ Michael Caine

Road Work

I saw on the internet that Arizona was dealing with some unusual traffic problems this morning. 

And it reminded me of this sign (also from the internet) that greeted motorists a couple of years ago on their way to work.

Have a good commute -- and watch out for rogue road signs....

Blooms and bugs

 

Echinacea visited by a bee. (won't you bee my honey tonite?) 

Black-eyed Susans with a Pine White butterfly, which, according to my butterfly book, is "a pest of pines and balsam firs in the West". 

And here are rose hips, sans bugs. 

Catching Trochilidae

Earlier this year I said I'd try to catch a hummingbird  -- in a photo, of course. I don't quite have the proper equipment, but here are a couple of attempts of a female Black-chinned Hummingbird. In this first one, she has her back to us as she's taking a drink. 

Here she's perched -- for a few seconds. Even when they perch, they seem to be vibrating. 

According to Wikipedia: The Aztec god Huitzilopochtli is often depicted as a hummingbird. The Nahuatl word huitzil (hummingbird) is an onomatopoeic word derived from the sounds of the hummingbird's wing-beats and zooming flight.

I'll finish this with a tableau of Morning Glories and Daylily we spied while taking a walk.

Bee-havior

I love the vivid red of this Rock Rose blossom, and by chance I happened to capture a bee in flight while taking this photo. The strange thing is that the bee looks to be flying upside down. I don't know much about bee flight. Do they do acrobatics while buzzing from blossom to blossom, like little stunt planes? Any apiologists out there who know?     

Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  
~ James Russell Lowell