Birds, Bugs, Blooms

This past Saturday, I took a drive up Iron Mt. Road/Hwy. 16A...I.M. Rd. runs up the NE corner of Custer State Park and further N beyond the park, to the tourist town of Keystone, which is near Mt. Rushmore...the tourists were thick, what was I thinking?! No guts, no glory...

First find was this large 'shroom growing up through a hole in a fallen tree...

A hoary comma managed to pose for me...

Talk about baby blues...one of the bluet damselflies...

An ebony jewelwing damselfly? I've found a site to ID odonata by state/county... it indicates that the ebony jewelwing is not found in this part of S Dakota...I beg to differ...

A small wood nymph...other wood nymphs have spots on the bottom wing as well...

Still within Custer Park, this spotted towhee was crooning away from a treetop, never pausing due to my presence...another one somewhere nearby was echoing his call...

A skipper on bee balm...there are too many skippers to ID this one...

Dakota Lake...I stopped to see if the gentian was in bloom, but instead I found....

Possibly a female or juvie brown-headed cowbird, on one of last year's cattails...

Bugs, on the prairie coneflowers (that look like black-eyed Susans)....

The pink deptford, photo is at least double the actual size...from the Carnation Family...

...And instead of the gentian, the Canada tickclover, a.k.a. showy tick trefoil, a legume...this is a wildflower lifer for me! It's uncommon in the Hills and the first I've seen it in five years of wildflower hunting...

Moving on N., a green bug on a sign, warning against digging due to buried fiber optic cable...it doesn't say anything about loitering...

Finally, a photo of a grasshopper sparrow that has a touch of light in the eye...they've always come out with 'dead' eyes before, and I've taken many photos...

I looped over to Ghost Canyon Rd. but didn't see anything of real interest like I did the first time I drove thru there earlier this year, except a small flock of Canada geese by a watering hole.