Bumblebee Just Arrived At A New Flower – This is a good example of a Bumblebee showing summing all the previous images in this series. The head can be seen making the previous image that much more impressive. The glob of pollen on its hip is quite obvious as well. I had to crop this …
Bumblebee on Sage 2 – I took a lot of photos of this Bumblebee as it worked its way around the yard. It seemed to me to be a laborious task for the little creature to visit so many flower blossoms and scoop up all the pollen it could carry. But that is exactly how …
Bumblebee With its Pollen Stash – As the Bumblebees work their way around our backyard and the potpourri of native plants, they store the pollen in globs on their hips. If you look hard at this image you can see the pollen on the bee’s left hip. It is a darker shade of yellow than …
Bumblebee on Sage – One of the many wonderful facts about having one’s yard reflect the natural habitat of the area is that it then attracts many different species of wildlife. We have been so lucky to have Bumblebees enjoy nectaring on our Texas Sage, Salvi greggii, since we first installed it. I have always …
Female Black-chinned Hummingbird – I struggled with the identification of this bird. While my heart and gut told me it had to be a female Black-chinned Hummingbird, the markings were a little confusing. There is a bit of white line above the eye of this bird. The classic photos of Black-chinned Hummingbirds do not show …
Female Black-chinned Hummingbird – Our Texas Red Sage, Salvia greggii attracts many hummingbirds. We are relatively sure that the females build nests nearby in the neighborhood because their flight paths when arriving and departing our backyard seem to mirror one another. It is impossible to see where they go when they leave because the houses …
Checkered Setwing on Cactus – After posing so nicely on a bare tree branch the Checkered Setwing of the family Dragonfly moved to the very tip of one of our Century Plants and remained absolutely still allowing me to get photos of him with a less busy background. The background is the outside wall of …
Checkered Setwing – This is a dragonfly from the Skimmer Family. We frequently see these wonderful creatures hanging around the native plants in our yard. They are hard to catch in flight, but regularly they land on the ends of plants. This one spent several minutes on the very end of a small tree branch …
Backyard House Finch – Our backyard has long attracted a limited variety of birds. However, the limited species does not mean we see few birds. We have had days in the late spring and early summer when we have seen 15 or more species of birds. The House Finch is a common visitor to our …
Black-chinned Hummingbird Feeding on Texas Sage – Several years ago we transformed our yard into one that is more reflective of what can be seen naturally occurring in Central Texas. In doing so, we reduced our reliance on watering and fertilizing a lawn that is not natural to the area. Texas Red Sage or Salvia …