Some Small Visitors at Camp

When ever you spend enough time outdoors eventually  you get critter visits. Whether you want them or not. Flies and mosquitoes come to mind. But often it is visits from less pesky critters and at times it worse ones.

Among the better visits was this tree hopper who was for reasons unknown to me. Perched on an empty Mountain Dew can.

My favorite was the little lizard. He couldn't have been much bigger than a couple of inches. Here he is under an abandoned shoe.

He scurried along the base of a tree eating small ants as he went.

My least favorite were the hornets, or wasps, or yellow-jackets. What ever you call them they can be annoying. Not to mention painful. I had a little orange juice and when finished I turned my glass over to keep the bugs out of it. Oh yeah, it didn't work. Smart me I didn't consider the fact that the table top  wasn't a solid piece.

One on the outside and another on the inside. See it  by a crack in the glass.? There was at least six total in my glass by the time I picked it up to wash it.

Have you ever heard the saying don't swat them cause a hundred more will come to their funerals ? Not exactly true you see they carry off their dead to feast on them later. Oh and I did not do the swatting here, I try not to kill anything not even hornets.

We did get visits from a humming bird but I never got a good photo. Here though I got yet another wasp who seemed to really enjoy the feeder. These are a different type than the others in my glass. However most people choose not to look so close.

Speaking of birds there were plenty of them. This pair of ravens made several visits. I sometimes think there are just trying to figure out what on earth we are doing there in those funny looking nest. From atop a dead tree they looked down on us and talked among themselves.

Several different birds used the tree. They were just far enough away I couldn't identify them.

OLympus C2500L macro all except the last two

Taneum Canyon area, Kittitas, Washington State

August 2009 by me