The Ibis have been hanging out for a couple of days now.
Well, here it is the middle of May and I’m just getting back into action after being away for a while. Good news! Someone is showing the St. Augustine Road Fish Management Area some love – a few benches have been installed around the lake and the little fishing dock has a new railing. So better late than never with my April in the St. Augustine Road Fish Management Area edition.
We have to walk about a quarter of a mile to get to one of the entrance gates into the park. I’m guessing that over the years, people have dumped house plants along here. I don’t know how else to explain so many obvious house plants grown wild in this stretch. But there are also lots of wild berries along the way:
I always thought these looked a little like hibiscus so I assumed they were related. I finally got around to looking it up and learned this is Caesar Weed, a mallow, related to cotton. This info came from an interesting site, Eat the Weeds.
Caesar Weed in bloom
The honeysuckle was so fragrant:
The mulberries are ripening and ready for the birds:
A clump of bugs on one of the mulberry trees. These look a lot like assassin bug nymphs – that’s what I thought they were when I first looked them up in my bug identification book – but they are Leaf Footed bug nymphs. I find the adults around once in a while. They have a very pronounced, flattened projection on their hind legs that gives them their “leaf footed” common name. The Citrus Guy blog has photos of the adult and explains how to tell the nymphs apart from assassin bugs.
And last – a gator – yay! This picture is cropped a lot. The gator was way out in the middle of the lake. We see them all the time but I can never get a photo that looks like anything more than a log. So this gives me a chance to use my joke: What is the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? Answer: One will see you later and one will see you in a while. Well, our grandkids liked it. See you later.
