I was birding at San Jacinto Wildlife Area, May 2015, and saw several of these dragonflies. I had never seen this species before, so I was happy to get a shot of them.
This caterpillar was photographed while munching on the flowers of the desert mallow in Big Morongo Canyon, in Southern California.
This critter is the larva of the White Lined Sphinx Moth. This spring they are all over the desert wildflowers in Southern California. According to my books, they will eat a wide variety of plants, and thus at times have large explosion of numbers in the dry climate of the west. It appears that this is one of those years.
