Design

The last of the field crickets are singing now, until frost stills them. I don't know which species they are -- I know we have several fall crickets, but I'm far away from my 'area of expertise'! Here's a link to a fall field cricket song from the University of Florida. The magic of digital. I love the seasonal waxing and waning of the nocturnal symphony of insect songs (and frogs, and birds, too). The symphony is at its peak in summer .

A great afternoon workshop about insects and plants provided an insight in how entomologists view a garden, and was a delightful excursion. Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home , and Jim Costa, Director of the Highlands Biological Station, led our workshop (part of the annual Landscaping with Native Plants symposium). Highlands, NC is just over an hour from where we live, so a relatively easy trip 'up' into the mountains.

There are a couple of Gordonia lasianthus trees (Loblolly bay) outside my office window. They provide an excellent year-round perching spot for birds scouting out where to go next, so if I'm watching, I regularly see cardinals and mockingbirds, and occasionally a bluebird or a goldfinch passing by. They're slender trees, with a loose (almost gangly) habit, but have beautiful flowers in early summer. Photo: Patrick McMillan Standing at the phone this morning, I was surprised to see a female ruby-throated hummingbirds systematically visit a number of the open flowers. Gordonia , a member of the Tea family, has open flowers with lots of stamens, ideal for the bees that visit, but it's hardly the sort of flower that you'd expect a hummingbird to visit. I couldn't tell without a hand lens if there was any nectar being produced (in addition to the obvious pollen reward), but perhaps the hummingbird was catching small insects that were in the flowers.