This bizarre fellow was identified when I first took the picture, but did I label it? Of course not.

Woah horses!!

Heres one to top them all....

Being invaded!

Lol jk. They are part of my Halloween decor.

Here's are real one...butterfly moth. I get lots of these and they are too busy to care how close up you get.

Jaynine I love your catnip inspector ;)

Dragonfly.....

Huge spider with a perfect web. Wish I could have got a better picture....

This post was edited by lilsprout on Mon, Dec 22, 14 at 20:08

toad with bug in his sights.

Dragonfly on Costmary

Flies at work.

April 14, 2014.

Dragonfly on Porcelain Vine

Peek-a-Boo

Faster than a speeding bullet...its a plane, its a train, no, its hummingbird on Standing Cypress.

Loquin's Admiral, these guys actually dive bomb you if you get in their space.

aftermidnight, who's the peek-a-boo, is that a froggie? I'm wantin to trade some toads for you guy-ses frogs. They have a lot more class.

TexasRanger, yes it's a little tree frog, stayed in the greenhouse all spring, but left when it got too hot in there.

The local admiral is gorgeous! There's so many photos people have posted its hard to comment on them all but I have really been enjoying seeing them. Its so interesting to see how different the species are in various parts of the country.

Believe it or not, I am about out of critter pix, I've been scraping the bottom combing through shots going back to 2010 but I found one more.

Here is a classic combo--Monarch on Liatris during the fall migration.

Yellow Sulfur on Desert Marigold

Marvelous thread! Johnny Mantis is really a "Jane"--the abdomen tells you--the "Johnny's" is thin, the "Jane's" is wide.

Here's a Phoebe friend:
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Cooper's Hawk:
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Mama California Towhee feeding Baby:
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These guys are comparing notes:
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Unfortunately these guys don't have much of an appetite.
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I'm loving this thread, and the photography wow! I'm almost ashamed to show mine.

Western Swallowtail on mock orange

Pine White on solidaster.

I have enjoyed everyones photos. Here are a few of my garden helpers.

Bee on monarda

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Butterfly
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Swallowtail caterpillar on bronze fennel
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More great pix from folks.

@hoovb- I think your Coopers Hawk with those steely eyes and vivid yellow by the nose may be a Red-shouldered Hawk.

Cooper's Hawk on my arbor.

tj

tsugajunkie ~ I think you're right. A Red-shouldered Hawk visited us just last week...the first one I've ever seen (I had to get the bird book out). He/she hung around for hours and just sat there when I went out to take pictures. I didn't get a great shot like hoovb's, though. Your Cooper's Hawk is beautiful.

This post was edited by jaynine on Tue, Dec 23, 14 at 23:41

More bird friends~Evening Grosbeaks

This is a terrible shot (taken through a window and screen) of this unusual visitor who's been around for a few weeks now. It's theorized that he's a hunting dog training session escapee. I'm happy he made it to our feeders and hope he can survive the winter.

Amazing thread!
Thanks everyone for the great photos and information.

hoovb, love those photos especially that dragonfly pic. Is that Frick & Frack?

Lacewing on Curly Tansy

Monster!

This one helped plant the melons.

The best garden friend I've ever had...

Looks like a shadow of Hoovb's Natasha or Boris doggies. Min

Was away for a few days and almost missed this 'good bug' thread. I spend many hours out with my camera harassing the poor critters into allowing me to take their pictures.

Some great pics here, but I didn't see any of this couple. The Pennsylvania Leatherwings are in my yard in great numbers, and if they aren't in hot pursuit of aphids, they are doing what you see here.

This time of year I don't have to go outside to take pics. Every winter my DH and have a few house guests that we care for. A drop of water and a little nourishment placed on the kitchen window sill now and then keeps them around till spring. On a sunny warm spring day we open the window and they fly away.

Those sp-sp-spiders are way cool jaynine. You guys seem to have more variety and you beat us out big time in the size department. The Okies I see seem to always be the yellow/black striped ones except I've come across three black widows in my yard over the years. When you see one you KNOW, no need to get a book out to check for sure. I've never seen brown lacewings, just lots of the green type. I suppose they are good guys too if you just leave them alone, we take them to the ravine up the street and put them under the bridge in a protected dark place.

gazania, the frisky leatherwings look a little like lightning bugs. I had to look leatherwing up since thats a new one on me, info says they are voracious predators, good guys for sure. Cute ladybugs, sort of an indoor pet thing it looks like?

I thought everything would be bigger in Texas, TR, even your spiders. Do you have scorpions? My mom said she found one in my crib with me in Tulsa a long long time ago. Eeek! Min

min3 --- I'm just a humble Okie, not a proud Texan (Texans know they are better than us and everybody else for that matter even including Californians). Texas Ranger is a shrub. I grabbed a handful of leaves last fall by the drain hole in our courtyard wall and guess what was in it, a black widder. I liked to had a heart attack.

OK, -ha!- we are two Oakies then. I'm long gone tho.

Do you look for the widder's red hourglass? because I've seen other glossy black spiders that look much like them. I try to check (with a very long stick!) before I kill one but they don't cooperate well at all and I'm jumpy as a cat. Min

Here's a little guy you might have seen when you lived here. I never see them in my yard of course but this one was up the road a piece (as they say in Okie lingo). We used to have horned toads & box turtles which I almost never see anymore but we have lots of armadillos, mostly seen as road kill since their defense instinct is to scare predators by darting out in front of anything that moves. Its a bad mix with cars.

Roadrunner. My totally favorite bird.

ps. The black widows are big, shiny and blue-black with that distinctive, unmistakeable, well defined red hourglass. They make me think of tall, black, pointy spiked high heels, truly truly evil, not to be messed with and scary, my heart races and I get weak in the knees when I've see them.

I love roadrunners too- they are so long, slim, fast and funny.

My favorite garden helpers here in N Ca are quail- short, fat, slow and also funny: they have a lot of very long quiet discussions under the junipers beside my deck. I wish i could speak 'quail'. Min

What wonderful photos! Thanks everyone for sharing.
I, like many of you, plant my flowers for the pollinators and friends!

I just have a camera phone right now, so I miss a lot of the neat discoveries in my garden. Was shocked to have a hummingbird twice in my garden this summer. Ordered a Major Wheeler Honeysuckle already for them this summer.

Also missed taking photos of a toad who spent weeks in my garden... whenever I came prepared for him I couldn't find him. He used to hop out from behind plants and about stop my heart. One day he stopped making an appearance.

A few beauties I did catch with my camera phone... asking my hubby for a digital camera for my birthday in January. Might make it easier to catch some of my visitors. :o)

Michaela

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Oh, I wish we had Road Runners in our yard and Quails having conversations under our trees!

Love the California quail.

I think of that 'Born to Run' Bruce Springsteen song seeing the roadrunners "Where we really wanna go and we'll walk in the sun, but till then, tramps like us baby we were born to run".

According to Wikipedia, fastest run clocked at 26mph.

This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Wed, Dec 31, 14 at 19:23

Ditto jaynine

LOL, love that "Spike" Here is my spike and a friend. Many Spikes and all different kinds of bees, ants and beetles swarm over my Quick Fire Hydrangea. I spend hours watching all the activity there.

Michaela, I'm really looking forward to what you will 'catch' with your birthday present! Don't forget to post new photos for us here. Min

Several more pics from around my yard.

Note pic 4 Look closely to see the smiley face in the eye of the Fritillary Butterfly

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This post was edited by gazania on Thu, Jan 1, 15 at 15:18

Tex-I think the red and black beetles are blister beetles. Don't let one bite you, they make a blister and if you scratch it, the liquid will make more blisters. They come in grey and black also.

He looks like he walked out of a Tim Burton movie!
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