Evening Walk

 

After dinner this evening we walked along the creek (which is mostly dry) to look at what was in flower and what was visiting the flowers.   There is a large patch of sweet smelling milkweed - the bees are busy visiting the flowers but no sign of any Monarch caterpillars or butterflies.

Plenty of life on this plant - appeared to be a reddish brown aphid.

 

A very dark winged damsel fly was fluttering around by the stream.

 

Under the bridge there is a sheltered patch of water which contained some enormous tadpoles - 2-3 inches long.

 

Judging by the loud noises that we heard under the bridge and along the stream bed, these may be the offspring of American Bull Frogs which are huge.  We will return with a better lens to try to photograph them.

The final photo capture on our walk was this beautiful flowering tree..

 

Close up the flowers are delicate but spectacular..

 

Further along the road we found a bush that was illuminated by the setting sun and the colours were quite different.

 

 

On to another tree in the shade - the bees were visiting enthusiastically but seemed to be having some difficulty scrambling over the delicate petals..

 

 

The tree seems to grow quite freely at the roadside and is a type of mimosa, known as Silktree Mimosa - presumably because of the silky fronds of the flowers.