She Did!… but…

My son and I went to Lake Lyndon and stopped at Porters Pass. I wanted to see if the coral broom was flowering. It was, but the flowers were sparse and very small, compared with the dead ones I saw last year. Conditions are very dry up there. Many plants were not flowering, or had poor looking flowers on them. I saw a lot of baby grasshoppers on the mouse-ear hawkweed flowers, and hairy colletid bees. This time there was no doubt about them being the South Island endemic bees with bright yellow hair. They were much bigger than the one I blipped a couple of weeks ago, almost as long as a honey bee, but much slimmer. They buzzed about close to the ground and I found it impossible to get a shot until one stopped and burrowed into its nest. I caught the back end as she disappeared into a little heap of sand covering her tunnel.

Lake Lyndon was a fantastic dark blue. The water level was quite low. At the near end masses of wild flowers covered the ground with deep shades of blue and yellow. I have posted photos of all this here.

Today is my 75th birthday. Among the birthday greetings I received was one from G**gle! I wanted to do a search and the front page had a celebration picture. When I hovered the mouse over it said Happy Birthday, and called me by my name. Creepy.