Morning, mid-drought; flying insects

I'm at the farm, and this morning I was out early. The sun is too bright before it even clears the trees on the horizon, but its color is honey gold, the shadows are still long, and the air pleasant. The birds enjoy it; I could hear a mourning dove crying as well as maybe ten other kinds of birds, busily singing at whatever tasks of sex or territory or homemaking they were engaged in. It was all very lively.

But by ten in the morning, the heat had descended like a wave from an oven. The birds had dropped out and it was almost eerily quiet. It was the sound of merely surviving. A dog in the distance. Two squirrels crashing through some huge oak trees. A single crow. ...And the insects. Dozens of grasshoppers flying with every step you make through the grass, a cicada in a tree, and of course the bumblebees and dragonflies and butterflies. They're not bothered, even when the grass is withered, the pasture is full of dried weeds, and even the honeysuckle is wilting.