A garden from the compost heap

  All kinds of veggies are growing from my compost heap this year.    Here is one of 3 papaya plants, sweet potato, tomato and cantaloupe, and bird house gourds (which I planted.  Not shown are green (pinto) beans, orange seedlings, and earlier in the year Dill.

Bathing Pileated Woodpecker

 Pileated Woodpeckers are becoming ever more common here on the western edge of their range in Bastrop County Tx. and they regularly come in for water during the warm months...I have never seen one bath in the water features however and by gum, I did not see this one either....The critter cams caught it...I wish I had actually had a photo of it dunking, but have the cams set at 30 sec. intervals so it must have been a quick swim.

Crow Pellet

 
 I saw one of the crows regurgitate this pellet this morning so I promptly went out to photograph it in situ on the platform feeder. The crow was still in the oak just over head.  I went into the house for something like a coin to show scale and within the minute or so I was away the crow had flown back down and had completely scattered and shatter it's fresh pellet

  Note the "diamonds" in all that rough.  Actually they are small pieces of quartz gravel along with some other gravel.

Carolina Sphinx Larvae feeding on potent Jimson Weed, Datura stramonium

  It must be higher than a kite as this plant is highly hallucinogenic and made famous by the late Carlos Castaneda.  This insect species is often called "Tomato Worm", "Tomato Hornworm" etc.