Continuing my stroll through Veterans Oasis Park, I caught a glimpse through the bushes of two birds along the lake's edge.

Fortunately, the one closer to me came closer still and I was able to get a nice photo of a Common Gallinule (identification compliments of Safari's database). The Cornell Lab of Ornithology provided additional details — "The Common Gallinule swims like a duck and walks atop floating vegetation like a rail with its long and slender toes. This boldly marked rail has a brilliant red shield over the bill and a white racing stripe down its side. It squawks and whinnies from thick cover in marshes and ponds from Canada to Chile, peeking in and out of vegetation".

Wow! Another huge Yellowbell plant almost jumped in front of me — for sure, it grabbed my attention — practically begging for a photo. I was happy to oblige.

Then I met up with another fantastic Desert Willow tree.

This closeup reveals the beauty of its flowers.

I needed help to identify this huge shrub but it appears to be a Broadleaf Hopbush, a species of flowering plant in the Dodonaea (hopbush) genus that has a cosmopolitan distribution in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions of Africa, the Americas, southern Asia and Australasia. It is a bit unusual to my eye but one source suggested it as an alternative to Oleander in the Arizona garden both for aesthetic and durability reasons.

A small rabbit crossed my path. I assume it was looking for food but there was not much vegetation nearby so it hopped away looking elsewhere for nurishment.

I found another nice stand of Cattail and decided to look it up online. Wikipedia says that it is "known commonly as Southern Cattail or Cumbungi. It is found throughout temperate and tropical regions worldwide."

And WOW. I found an incredibly beautiful scene capturing the lake and the far shore framed by the marsh grasses just in front of me.

Dragonflies were flying all around the edge of the lake. They would land on a stalk of marsh grass but wouldn't stay long. I was lucky to catch a shot of this one.

Then I was fortunate enough to photograph a second dragonfly and decided to learn more from Wikipedia when I returned home.

"A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of dragonflies are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threatens dragonfly populations around the world. Adult dragonflies are characterised by a pair of large, multifaceted, compound eyes, two pairs of strong, transparent wings, sometimes with coloured patches, and an elongated body. Many dragonflies have brilliant iridescent or metallic colours produced by structural coloration, making them conspicuous in flight. An adult dragonfly's compound eyes have nearly 24,000 ommatidia each."