More Flowers and Birds

A wonderful walk around the Boyce Thompson Arboretum on Friday gave us even more birds and flowers to look at, plus a lizard or two. The mescal bean tree has beautiful purple flowers. Note the black carpenter bee feeding on the nectar. We had never seen this insect before.



I'm not sure what kind of trees these are. Somehow, we left all our Arizona animal, cactus and tree books, as well as the hiking books, in our Colorado storage unit when we came down this winter, so we are just enjoying looking, without knowing what we are seeing, often.





The children's garden at the arboretum displayed a real rainbow of colors.



That area also had a human sundial. I am demonstrating how I can stand with my back to the sun and stand on the square for the month of the year and my upraised hand shadow will show the time of day. We were there right at noon.



Here are some of the other flowers we saw.



There were lots of hummingbirds around. I captured two in my lens. I think the first is a costa's hummingbird and the second a broad-billed hummingbird, but I'm not sure.



And two lizards stopped long enough to be photographed. I have no idea what either one is called.



There are also blooming cacti at VDO. Just look at these blooms we saw on a walk around the resort earlier this week.