The beautifully named Ebony Jewelwing is found in southeastern Canada and the eastern U.S.

The male has a metallic dark green body and black wings:

The female is duller brown with smoky wings that have white spots near the tips:

They live near wooded streams and rivers but can be be found quite far from water:

Jewelwings eat a long list of foods including mosquitos, aphids, gnats, flies and beetles:

They are preyed on by mallards, robins, red-winged blackbirds, turtles, frogs, fish, bats and water striders:

Also common on this day were these butterflies:

Other life:

Some botany:

Highland Creek:

NATURE POETRY

Deep in the greens of summer sing the lives
I’ve come to love. A vireo whets its bill.
The great day balances upon the leaves;
My ears can hear the bird when all is still.     – Theodore Roethke (1908–63)

Miles Hearn