Beer, Bikes and Bugs of every color

A beautiful weekend here, perfect for outdoor stuff - temps in the 80s Saturday, maybe 90s Sunday. The Tour de Fat Festival was great. It's a bikes, beer and green freak party. The March Fourth Marching Band mentioned in a previous post was not there, at least I didn't see them, but they had the (Austin-based) Asylum Street Spankers, a good group from Colorado called The Reals, and a circus-y performance by the Handsome Little Devils, AKA Squirm Burpee Circus -- who specialize in Jitterbug and Juggling with some Pyrotechnics thrown in. Mr. B had some success riding the crazy bikes but I didn't even last a minute - found myself a 3-wheeler and thought it was a winner until I realized that it had to ridden facing backwards. A little too tricky for my non-existent skills.

Sunday was spent mostly browsing at Whole Foods and seed-heading the wildflowers in the yard (and trying to get pictures of various critters). This mantis was hard to photograph, as his camo is so good, our (new) camera's autofocus usually didn't recognize him as the subject of the photo. He is eyeballing me! Trying to figure out what the hell I want, I'm sure. Click to enlarge. See him?


Here's a pretty moth (above) with very intense iridescent blue colors on his back. I have still not identified him. I need to send it over to What's That Bug? Does anyone know what this is? [EDIT: see comments for the answer] Another critter we are keeping an eye on is this Anole who really wants to live inside the screened porch. Maybe he/she feels safe from predators in there, but is really only safe if Jax isn't out there. For Jax, lizards = tasty. Before he was brought indoors for good, he was once spotted with no less than two lizard tails sticking out of his mouth. Bad boy!! Jax's porch time has now been limited because of the green guy. Below is a shot of a much more common butterfly, a Monarch enjoying the later stages of the Orange Cosmos flowers.



Tags: anole - blue moth - mantis - Tour de Fat