Wow, Halloween is just around the corner, can you believe it? 

Nature here is trying it's best to get into the mood (and worked with the little she got) by coloring these Leather Stem / Rubber Bushes (Jatropha dioca), a pretty orange!

..... and for a splash of  yellow!

 

Back-lit grasses are always pretty!

Not much else is going on here. Since we're not doing any traveling this Fall I've started to at least 'travel on paper' by looking for contenders for our next Spring destination.
We're thinking South Dakota, especially the Black Hills. It's a very touristy area with lots of campgrounds and golf courses so lots of possibilities! 

We'd like to stay out of the busiest areas like Keystone or Rapid City, so I'm thinking of Custer or Hill City instead,  maybe Spearfish or Lead. Anybody has some advice?
Of course a lot depends on where the jobs are. We'll see.

In the meantime here's a few nice close-ups of the 'bug' life around here!

           A gorgeous Flame Skimmer or Firecracker Skimmer (Libellula saturata).

Cloudless Sulfur butterfly

 

 


And a Chilocorus stigma,commonly known as the twice-stabbed lady bug/beetle. How's that for a name? Twice stabbed .....
 

There has been a colony of bats living under the eves of the restaurant and bar roof-overhang for the longest time now. Of course they're harmless themselves but their droppings do make a mess on the tables and patio so finally management decided they had to go.
(too many complaints of 'something in my soup' I guess)

I borrowed this picture from Wikipedia

They're Mexican or Brazilian free-tailed bats, very common in Texas and even the official 'state bat'. When the bug (mosquito) population plummets in the winter they usually migrate to caves in Mexico.
The tail of these bats stretches further than the hind leg membrane, hence they are named "free-tailed" bats. They're the "jets" of the bat world being very fast flyers.




After consulting with the Rangers at the Barton Warnock Visitor Center next door it has been decided to try to entice them to move into these very nice and modern bat-apartments.

                            

They put up 3 of them, I hope it'll work!

Next up also isn't a bug but a bug-eater:

Peekaboo!

Can you see me now?
(Black-throated Sparrow)

And here's a 'bug' that has me stomped. No clue what spider makes this interesting cone shaped 'hide-away' in it's web. 
And although I HATE spiders with a vengeance and you can reduce me to an incoherent blubbering mass if you ever stick one in my face,  I thought this one's at least fascinating.

See the 'nest' in the middle of the pic?

I googled around some and finally the people at Bug-guide.net came up thinking it's the nest of a Coneweb Spider aka Desert-shrub Spider in the family Diguetidae. 

They decorate their inverted-thimble nests with the husks of their prey, like pirates!

 

That's the spider in the bottom pic. It's really not that large, I enlarged the picture. 
Still too big for my comfort-zone though, I used all 42x zoom my camera is capable off!