Catching up.....

First, some wildlife that has visited our yard recently..... we keep a large patch of milkweed around, only in the hopes of seeing the occasional monarch butterfly.  We've been rarely rewarded for this, but this summer has been different, and I managed to catch a  few photos....

 There's a monarch in each of these pictures, sometimes a little hard to see, but the orange will jump out at you eventually.  In the second picture, you can see her kind of edge-on; she is laying eggs in this photo.

and here we have a lovely Western Tanager visiting our "pond" (an inverted garbage can lid).  They like the water source being close to the ground... it's easy to see from our windows also.  Other creatures seen here include Sharp-shinned Hawks, quail, the list is endless....