My Lajitas morning

I only spent a little over an hour at Lajitas. Trying to conserve myself and still do fun things. For the first time ever I didn't lug my Canon. I feel confident enough with my Lumix finally. Unfortunately, I didn't lug my purse either. Yesterday when I came to CMO I forgot to bring meat. So I figured after Lajitas I'd stop at the store in Study Butte and pick up a pound of ground beef. That couldn't happen. I'll survive two days without protein, of course. Just this constant commuting between Alpine and CMO. I invariably forget something.

Lajitas is a golf resort so I shouldn't complain when there are no insects there. No gnats, mosquitoes, flies, etc. But it is disappointing when there are so few dragonflies. The weather was great, although a little humid for me. Looked like they had gotten rain last night.

One of the highlights of the morning was seeing a pair of Neotropic Cormorants. I don't recall ever seeing a cormorant at Lajitas before.

No new odes, but realistically, every time I get a lifer ode the chances of another go down. It's always nice to re-familiarize myself with the odes at Lajitas that I don't get at CMO, like pennants, ringtails, etc.

Here are a couple from today.

Four-spotted Pennant

Red-tailed Pennant

I presume this ringtail is the "Southwestern" form of Eastern Ringtail. It looks identical to White-belted Ringtail, but the latter is rare.

The best, and about the only, butterfly I found today was this Southern Skipperling.

Finding so few odes at Lajitas I decided to head down towards the river where they don't spray. When I saw this sign I got hopeful, but right past it the road was barricaded. Wasn't any water in the tributary there anyway.

I drove past Lajitas and around to where the old river crossing used to be before 9-11. But  only saw a few odes at the river and none landed for photos or IDs, just zoomed past over and down the river.

Nearly home on Snake Road I saw this. Don't know what happened. Didn't look like it had been run over, or dead for very long.  A little snake with a big lizard...