Hectic and HOT

Arrived at CMO with hubby and loader around daylight. We worked on the road until around 11 AM, then ate lunch and headed back to town. There I got in my pickup and came back to rake the road. So it was 105° this afternoon when I was doing that. But after it's worked up with the loader it has to be done. I've learned that after it rains it's too hard to rake. It packs in. Not that it's ever going to rain again, but still....

Gotta go meet Kelly for banding early in the morning so I'm drinking lots of lemonade and heading for bed.

I watered a few very needy plants while looking for odes and other interesting stuff. I've learned to stop thinking that I know what I'm photographing because I'm usually wrong. The other day I thought I was photographing a Blue-eyed Darner female and it turned out to be a Turquoise-tipped Darner male (see previous post). So I turned on the water feature in the same spot today and soon a darner appeared that I thought was the Turquoise-tipped. Figured I'd try different camera settings  because of the shadiness. Ended up taking over 50 shots of it. Turned out it was a Blue-eyed Darner male. But at least now I know it's a Blue-eyed for sure and not an Arroyo Darner. That individual anyway. No telling what will show up next.

Tomorrow afternoon Kelly and I will surely spend some time looking for odes. I always see more with his help so I should have some more interesting pics tomorrow. Here's one I took of a snake catching and eating a little frog. The big frogs can take half an hour or more to consume but this one was gone in less than a minute. I think the snake is a Western or Checkered Garter Snake. Something like that, anyway.