Birds and Butterflies!

A few days ago I watched the first flight of a gulf fritillary butterfly (shown above) after it emerged from the chrysalis; I was babysitting it for Nancy and had the fun of watching it emerge. The butterfly took a little while to fly off, flapping and drying its wings before it was ready to fly. Then off it went high up into an oak tree.

The next day, I watched a small bird (maybe a finch?) bobbing back and forth wildly as it rode on an anise hyssop wand, eating the seeds from the dried flower pod. The bird was too heavy for the branch so the branch kept falling over to the ground and then popping back up, but the bird held on and kept eating.

It had a pretty yellow breast. We have house finches with red breasts and also these small birds with yellow breasts (not sure what they are). My pictures aren’t great because it was hard to focus while it was in motion and I couldn’t get very close, but it was still fun to get a few photos. Maybe someone can identify it for me.

I’m still working on the gardenia, and getting some medical appointments done while on my time off. My side injury seems healed, and we have family coming this Friday through Sunday.

Hope your summer is going well!