Critters at Ernie Miller Park

Yay! The weather was, at least for a brief period over the weekend, really nice and not too hot. So I dragged hubby out to see some green, and boy, the first thing we noticed on a patch of prairie grass was this super green praying mantis:

Actually, the black and white makes it stand out even more:

Leaves...
...being eaten by huge nests of webworms (*ick*, but at least they're not spiders):
Those, and the deafening concert of cicadas high up in the trees, made the whole place seem kind of eerie..

But we also saw some "nice" animals, like a large blue heron (too fast for me to take a picture of),

and, finally, a lone baby deer across the creek (who didn't seem worried about us at all - I hope his mother was waiting somewhere in the wings).