Huge, very colorful grasshoppers, the “Horse Lubbers”, are piling up in roadkill masses and slimed into the paved road off to the south, others of their kind cannibalizing the corpses and being squashed into corpses themselves to add to the buffet–a circle of death, a true desert noir story. Not many of them in the pastures yet. The name, Lubber, is intriguing–I ponder the etymology of the entomology. A big, blundering person who hasn’t got his sea-legs yet?

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Green Walking Stick insects are moving in the grasses. One Yellow-headed Blackbird flies over, now that they can be considered common here, as opposed to the ones that’ve been visiting all summer when authorities say they’re rarer than rare.

The Great Blue Heron at The Stockpond has become much less scared, the frogs become more so at least while the monstrous bird is around. They’re nowhere to be seen while the heron is on the hunt.