More Firsts

As I said before, we are seeing pretty much everything earlier this year after the very mild winter. Last weekend brought Eastern Pondhawks:

and Blue Dashers, sorry for the picture quality on this but it was the first:

Amazingly I also found we already have Black Swallowtails. When the hurricane came through last year we cleared some of the planters out early so we could get stuff into the garage. In so doing I dumped largely caterpillar consumed fennel plants into the compost in the corner of the yard. But they survived and thrived and so we now have a 4 foot fennel plant in the corner, much earlier than normal. When I checked it out at the weekend for interesting bugs I found 2 Swallowtail chrysalis. Thats way early and based on the past its strange that they actually stayed on the food plant. I guess as there were only the two this will work as the plant isn't going to be consumed by others before they emerge.

Nice to see Azures in the yard too. We see less of these blues than we do the Eastern Tailed Blues but they are pretty too in their more subtle way. These are likely Spring Azures but several species are really very tough to tell apart. You can see how small these are when they perch on a clover flower.

 And finally another variety in the iris bed.