In late October I went out for a quick bike ride around the neighborhood. We had a few cooler days but it was mostly still in the 80’s in the afternoons. I found a small promise of cooler weather ahead in these few red leaves.

I saw this yellow blooming plant all over the utility field. I looked it up and it’s rattlebox (also known as rattleweed, cat’s bell and showy crotalaria). It’s not a native plant and is invasive. It blooms in the fall here.

The little critters love the flowers.

The seed pods are toxic once they dry out.

This looks like bladderpod (or bagpod) but I didn’t see any orange flowering so I’m not sure. The pods are most likely toxic as well.

An Eastern phoebe was sitting on a bottlebrush tree.

Little critters along my ride.

I only saw this tiny gator on my ride. There are bigger ones here but they must have been hiding.

I saw a red shoulder hawk sitting on a light post near some woods and stopped to get a shot but he took off right as I started to snap. He flew into a tree and I walked over to see if I could find him and realized he was with a friend. It was that time of the year where all of the raptors were mating up. I wondered if this couple nested in this small stretch of woods but it would be hard to find them in there.