nature sightings

i saw a geese

https://i.ibb.co/9r8MSTz/IMAG4140.jpg

(pictures optional)

my cat saw a baby lizard

https://i.ibb.co/hKMYP2v/5310-D0-AC-5986-4-F2-C-9-A64-BB016-D08-B2-F4.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EE_NXsgWkAArUaf?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

my dog saw a horse recently and has quite an obsession with them.

also in my local park there is sizeable colony of feral parakeets. I know there are lot of them dotted around London but we have them too!

but he/she hasn't been able to play with horses yet?

Your dog is a beaut, calz!

love that picture even if its foci are somewhat domestic

thanx gyac, he is a stunningly handsome dog even by labbie standards tbf

The only time Douglas has seen a horse in open space (with a rider) he froze and looked on in awe and kept a safe distance. But he's very curious and chill with them when there is a wall between them.

Thought this fucker might be a hornet - not much longer than a wasp but way fatter - turns out it's a hornet mimic hoverfly

https://scontent-lht6-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/0aded4eaf748eb593b3609e29cfeb639/5E3292F2/t51.2885-15/e35/71175326_2502203529838221_5677744433439880073_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-lht6-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=109

fucker? seems like a jolly sort of fellow

well now i know it's harmless, yeah.

Spotted in St James’s Park a while back

Greylag goose
https://i.postimg.cc/3JKtc4yB/0487159-A-143-C-41-C1-8-C05-2-D96-EBCD5683.jpg

Egyptian geese
https://i.postimg.cc/CMCv7HK5/1-DBD0-AD8-980-D-4-A06-9-F47-1-C0-CA36-A8035.jpg

Dinosaur
https://i.postimg.cc/FsDT5r3Q/F8071-C45-F265-47-BA-80-F9-67-A70729-D8-E3.jpg

Last Wednesday I was wilderness hiking and saw a grouse walking on the trail ahead of me. It did not stop long enough for a formal introduction. Later, at lunch, I saw a kestrel fly past. I was on top of a mountainous ridge at 4600 ft above sea level. There was fresh coyote scat on the trail, too.

Lately we have had a few of the local deer (both does and bucks) wander through our back yard. They seem to get restless at this time of year and move about more during the day.

wild deer started showing up in my area last summer. I wish I'd got a pic at least once, but seeing them is such an oddity for what is a semi-rural area that I'm always too lost in the moment to grab the phone when I see them.

Came across this badass yesterday.

https://i.imgur.com/rGp2kTV.jpg

(Florida Predatory Stinkbug)

all 3 of those words make me wince

me too! But apparently they are local to me and beneficial eaters of nuisance insects. Unlike the crazy invasive Brown Marmorated Stinkbugs that infest my house in winter time.

https://imgur.com/gallery/vAvhBC7

I saw a deer on the isle of islay

Also, these weirdos

https://i.imgur.com/Z4CyZ4i.gifv

(a pupal ladybug and what I think is a lacewing larva carrying on its back a mixture of lichen, moss, and the corpses of its victims!)

https://i.imgur.com/Z4CyZ4i.gif

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7u5xEJWkAEs77s?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

some yummy caviar spider's eggs I spotted on my hedge this summer.

“Hi we live in your yard” is also a good thred for this

I saw a white morph squirrel in a cemetery last month:

https://i.imgur.com/NMmLFCZ.jpg

Although these squirrels are commonly referred to as "albinos", most of them are likely non-albino squirrels that exhibit a rare white fur coloration known as leucism that is as a result of a recessive gene found within certain eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) populations, and so technically they ought to be referred to as white squirrels, instead of albino.

It was the first time I'd ever seen one, but I dutifully reported my sighting to Untamed Science's white squirrel project. apparently there are towns where residents make an extra effort to feed and shelter white squirrels (even going so far as to trap and release grey ones outside of town to eliminate the competition), which boosts their population over time in what amounts to a sort of selective breeding program. Marionville, Montana is the white squirrel capital of the USA, though theirs tend to be true albinos.

it looks like Andover, Massachusetts (where my squirrel lives) is a known WS enclave:

https://www.eagletribune.com/news/merrimack_valley/white-wonders-andover-is-home-to-a-colony-of-white/article_47009119-03a5-5f6c-b441-420ff3fc12ec.html

That's great! I was just looking up albino squirrels recently after listening to Weird Al Yankovic's The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.

The scenery was just so pretty, boy I wish the kids could've seen it
But you can't see out of the side of the car
Because the windows are completely covered
With the decals from all the places where we've already been
Like Elvis-O-Rama, the Tupperware Museum
The Boll Weevil Monument and Cranberry World
The Shuffleboard Hall Of Fame, Poodle Dog Rock
And The Mecca of Albino Squirrels

somewhere out there is the captain ahab of squirrels, running the untamed science project

these are all gr8, mad props to that camouflage bark bug and of course our universal friend the dark dinosaur

pretty sure that was a coyote that ran in front of my car this evening. don't think i've seen one in an urban area like that before!

Where are you/near what city?
There's a tract of "state trust" undeveloped land behind my house so I often hear a whole pack of coyotes going berserk in the middle of the night

i don't see unexpected creatures very often but i hear them, especially at night

mostly i don't know what they are sadly, they can't all be horrible geese or urban vixens in heat

Heraclitus: 'Nature loves to hide.'

Coyote was in a semi industrial area in Kansas City. It is near a creek with railroad tracks that parallel it, so that might provide a good corridor for coyote movement.

this afternoon I spotted a trio of white-tailed deer in the woods at the border of a condo complex:

https://i.imgur.com/nKKFmP0.jpg

they ran off when a lady with a dog walked by, only to reappear with seven of their friends in an adjacent field about 15 minutes later. I got a few more shots of them just before they raced around the perimeter of the field and back into the woods.

https://i.imgur.com/EDLzoJQ.jpg

A couple of days ago a bunny darted away from me as I came out our basement door. It flashed away so fast I thought it was just one of our neighborhood squirrels, except it ran into our garage, which is where I was going. When I came through the garage door I saw it hunkered by some flower pots, trembling, so I spoke to it reassuringly and left quietly.

I often see them in our yard, because they live in the empty woodlot across a dead-end one lane road that adjoins our yard. They come over to eat the dandelions. It's rare to see one this early in the year, though.

Saw what I’m pretty sure were three turkey vultures sitting in a tree this morning while I was driving to work

Was it a dead tree?

Probably not, but none of the trees have leaves yet, so it’s hard to tell at a glance

Sorry, that was an obscure campfire song joke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW77-qleewM

Took a walk with my daughter down to the river on Saturday and the gorgeous weather this weekend brought out all kinds of animal life, most of which I wasn't able to take a picture of.

• There were a couple things out of the corner of my eye that I believe were some kind of salamander, dropping off of dead tree branches into the water.
• Saw a turtle head swimming across the water.
• 5 chickadees in some sort of tumultuous fight. Mating or territorial behavior, I'm guessing.
• This little guy, a northern water snake. They are common around here and frequently confused with copperheads, but are totally harmless.

• The best thing I saw though was a muskrat, which I've never seen before. The kid and I both noticed it swimming quickly toward us, on the banks of the water. It jumped out of the water right in front of me and hit the bottom of my shoe. It turned out that the entrance to it's burrow was underneath the riprap we were perched on.

In a smallish park (about 200 x 800m) in the middle of suburbia (though linked to other open spaces) a muntjac deer dashing not particularly quickly across the grass between two wooded areas. Then a heron flying overhead and landing in a stream about 20m away, later standing and watching while we were about 10m away, before flying off. Also cabbage whites, a speckled wood, orange tip, and brimstone.

very grand!

I've found a couple of monster stag beetles in the garden over the last few days. We've got railway sleepers in a few places, a couple of which have rotted, so I wonder if they've been nesting in there. One is easily the biggest I've seen and christ he was strong - was properly trying to have me through my gardening gloves. Awesome. The downside is my idiot cat who keeps hassling them: he's tried to bring two in, in the last two nights, and I don't really know what else to do - 'they're endangered, you hairy idiot!' isn't working.

Just to follow this up, I'm sat outside tonight (amazing stitch of a new moon just above the horizon) and there's a symphony of stag beetles buzzing and clattering across the purpling sky - maybe 4 or 5 different specimens and they're such awful fliers, like helicopters in a hurricane. They keep crashing into the back door, or landing in the hosters - each time throttling the wings and sounding entirely confused about the whole endeavour. What a daft, magnificent creature.

brings me back to my youth scampering about nature reserves :) i didn't know they were that endangered! but like greenfinches or frogs i guess there's a reason i rarely see them nowadays

today i saw a couple turkeys in a park where i had never seen them before. they were running too fast to get pictures, and one of them took flight before i lost sight of it. they definitely seem more like small dinosaurs than most birds do.

https://i.imgur.com/b9ccrWY.jpg

Mottled Tortoise Beetle

Does anyone fuck with the iNaturalist app? I just started in the last week or so and haven't totally got the hang of it. But it's like having a Pokedex in your pocket - does automated lookups of pictures that you upload. It isn't always correct, but then there's a social component where other users can check out your pics and suggest identifications.

This little guy, a northern water snake. They are common around here and frequently confused with copperheads, but are totally harmless.

Also, learned that "totally harmless" isn't the best descriptor for northern water snakes, since they are pretty aggressive and will bite if you fuck with them. But they are non-venomous.

hummingbird hawk moth yesterday

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/sites/default/files/styles/node_hero_default/public/2018-01/Hummingbird%20Hawkmoth%202%20%28c%29%20Derek%20Moore.jpg

(not my pic)

Sweet! I saw one of those once - was very confusing, like looking at a platypus.

Jealous of you both, having just learned of the existence of hummingbird moths a few weeks ago.

Ha saw hummingbird moth for first time ever few weeks ago. In Creed CO. Got a great "live" pic of it feeding on flowers. Didn't know that's what it was til now.

Creede

1st one came and drank and fed on spilled bird seed and left. 1/2 hour later came back with a friend!
https://imgur.com/a/SLtB6Vi
Peccaries aka javelinas

Cool! I saw a snowberry clearwing this summer (on a trip to Six Flags, of all places).

https://static.inaturalist.org/photos/150726474/original.jpeg?1628965535

Hacking away at some neighbours bamboo that was encroaching on our property, I was alarmed by a rather agitated and forceful flapping. I looked up to see I'd exposed a wood pigeon and her large adult son or daughter sitting in their nest. Not the most expressive of birds, they carried on sitting there mutely while i showed them to my daughter. Then we saw two ladybirds having sex on the slide.

nature dogging

not a sighting, because lol nocturnal, but i heard great horned owls in my neighborhood last week!! and also back in march! in march there were 2 hooting to each other, this last time just 1 i think. did you know that the pointy bits on top of their heads are called PLUMICORNS and their eyes are CONICAL instead of spheres like ours?!?! so much love 4 owls, the loveliest fowls

I did not know that owls had conical eyes! Last week I learned that - for tawny owls at least - the females go 'twit' and the males go 'to-woo'.

On the basis that mundane back garden nature sightings are better than none:

Saw the mum and baby fat teenage pigeon from above sitting on our fence. The mum flew off to another bit of fence and her child followed her, nuzzling up and presumably saying 'gimme some food'. The mum flew off again, got followed again. And again. And again. Very much like the current relationship between my wife and our youngest daughter. At one point, intentionally or otherwise, the baby flapped her wing over mum's back so it looked like she was giving her a cuddle.

A month or so ago we got a garden pond - v small, 50cm across. Finally saw a frog! And some tiny - barely 2mm long - fish or fish-like creatures. My question is, how did they get there? Where did they come from and how did they travel?

Have you put plants in the pond? maybe eggs attached to the plants?

Could they be tadpoles?

Way too small for tadpoles - I think they might be gnat or midge or mosquito larvae :( will see if I can get a closer look at some. (Yes there are plants in the pond.)

Saw a Heron fly between me and a Swan's nest in town.
Saw loads of overgrown undergrowth I fought my way through to get to a part of the woods i hadn't been in. Thought about the local woods non well trodden areas versus a place in the forestry wood plantations in mayo I saw 10 years ago and wondered if I was remembering clearly or if the situation was significantly different that different things would be growing. I just got knocked out by that stuff in Mayo and was less surprised by the local stuff. May be more traffic in the area. Not sure if that's an influence.

Anyway seeing trees that have been allowed to grow for years and in weird forms. Undergrowth, and fun things like that.

mosquito larvae are pretty distinctive ledge. They hang upside down just below the surface and come up regularly to get air from a breathing tube at the end of the abdomen

midge larvae basically look like little worms (often red) and typically stick to the bottom of ponds

signed, someone with a container pond who has disposed of untold numbers of the tenacious little feckers

Definitely mosquito larvae. how much of a problem are they? I found one site which said you just need to wait for something bigger that will eat them to come along.

We went pond dipping in a bigger pond this morning, I caught a newt and two tadpoles. Then in a stream we found lots of freshwater shrimp, water slaters and mayfly larvae, and flatworms and/or leeches - all identified thanks to an educational sheet someone had.

"Come on up, and I'll show you my caligraphy..."

https://i.imgur.com/srtKhUF.jpg

Margined caligrapher flies

𝑜𝒽 𝓁𝒶 𝓁𝒶

I highly recommend the Seek app for plant/bug/bird/ identification (if you can get the bugs or birds to stay still long enough). It can pinpoint a species almost instantly if you can get a good shot of it. Only downside is that I have been meaning to take my phone out less, not more, especially outdoors & with the kids around.

Ooh, that'd prove handy for bugs and plants. I prefer to flex my skillz for birds (but I could probably do with a call identification app, of which there are many)

BirdNet is the call ID app I've been using for the past few years

At this point I can pretty much identify anything you're likely to hear in a Dublin garden by ear. It really is one of the most satisfying things you can learn

I'll definitely give that a try.

I've learned it all by ear over the years and a combination of transliterations in books (which, jeez) and https://xeno-canto.org. I can manage all the garden birds and a fair chunk of the rest of the woodland/farmland birds (wildfowl is another story).

Seek looks good. Thanks for the heads up.

transliterations in books (which, jeez)

yeah, these never even sound remotely like what I'm hearing

I highly recommend the Seek app for plant/bug/bird/ identification (if you can get the bugs or birds to stay still long enough).

I use the iNaturalist app. My wife found a similar app for rocks and minerals last week, but I haven't checked it out yet myself.

And yes, staying still for long enough is a problem with insects, for sure. I now almost exclusively refer to butterflies as "damned butterflies" because they are such a pain to photograph. I don't take many bird pics - they are usually too far away for my cell phone camera to get a good picture of. Either that or they're conveniently backlit by the sun.

Saw some American Goldfinches yesterday. Although they're not rare or anything, they're still kinda an uncommon treat for me.

My friends on their Lake District jaunt were highly impressed when I responded to their speculative WhatsApp recording with an instant 'Willow warbler' recently #braggin

The worst ever bird guide transliteration I've seen was my beloved childhood bird guide claiming that the Cetti's Warbler goes 'cetti! cetti!', which is just hilarious, it is more like 'cha! wurr-chacha-wurr-cha'

Cetti's are so explosive and acidic - and they always seem to be right there in your face, even when 30 yards away.

I'm convinced they use willow warblers as pretty much every 'bird' Foley effect on telly programmes - including the US programmes I catch (and often totally out of season). Anyone else noticed that?

Saw this wood louse infected with isopod iridescent virus, which turns them a bluish-purple color.

https://static.inaturalist.org/photos/206537054/large.jpeg

Things you were shockingly old when you learned: sloe = blackthorn, and they are fairly abundant, though none of the ones near me seem to have fruited this year - except for a neighbours hedge, so I'm finally getting round to making sloe gin. On my quest to find sloes I found some people picking rosehips for rosehip and lemon gin so maybe I'll give that a go too.

Oh I saw a heron on the towpath too:

https://i.imgur.com/jk2Mtb7.jpg

it's big boy day

Seen parakeets in Oxford recently, including one in our garden. They are clearly on their way up the Thames. I saw some in Old Windsor in 2018. Maybe they'll reach Cirencester before the decade's out.

And a very skittish egret in our local nature reserve.

The muntjacs in the woods behind our house are getting very brave. I find they quite often stand and stare at you like foxes do. Lockdown may be a contributory factor but I suspect one of my neighbours is giving them carrots.

heron watch #2 - went to a pond where in the summer we'd been pond dipping and caught newts and tadpoles. as i approached. with my 3 year old daughter on the back of my bike, i saw a heron. we stopped and looked at it through some long grass, it saw us and stalked away but only to the edge of the pond. it had something long and black in its mouth but i couldn't make out what it was. we walked slowly closer - i couldn't have been more visible in my red rain jacket, but it didn't fly away. it was maybe ten metres away, on the other side of the pond. whatever it had in its mouth it seemed to be repeatedly dipping into then lifting out of the water. finally i managed to make out, dangling either side of its beak and definitely kicking, the legs and feet of what was almost certainly a frog. a few seconds later it got swallowed.

Mother elk this past summer in Rocky Mountain National Park:

https://i.postimg.cc/4dpRZyCr/Elk.jpg

Nice!

egret in the slough next to where I work (Springfield OR)

two young foxes playing in the moonlight (Trinidad CA)

wild turkey just hanging out in the trees (Trinidad)

absolute cacophony of frog song hereabouts, sheer amphibious pandemonium, good god you never heard such lovesick frogs

That's my favorite harbinger of spring, the night all the peepers start peeping en masse.

it is pretty dang cute 💚🐸💚

tho they also remind me of the "honk if you're horny" tim robinson sketch

the frog orgy has run its course, barring a few lonelyheart holdouts, so last night it was quiet enough to hear a pack of coyotes whooping it up! once i'd made sure they were coyotes and not people howling (omg do you remember the early covid howl-alongs?!) i went out hoping to get a better earful, but no joy. the crickets had a lot to say, though, and there was a recurrent fluttering flutey hoot like that of a screech owl, and creeks trickling silver in the moonlight, etc.

I'm jealous of the cricket noise and have been all my life, you'd have to go the snake food section of Pets At Home to hear them where I live and that isn't a very pleasant way to hear them.

I usually see about one snapping turtle a year in my neighborhood. This lady, however, chose a local playground as a less-than-ideal spot to lay her eggs. After several frantic early morning calls to wildlife rehabilitation experts, we just let her finish her egg-laying (as is required by law in MD). Then a neighbor and I hauled her back to the river. Apparently, they lay the eggs really deep (one rehabber described the egg hole as "like a Pringles can") so there's a chance the turtles will be okay. I'm to keep an eye on the spot in early August to see if any hatchlings need help making their way to water.

https://i.imgur.com/qMaBcFb.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/irjZnVd.jpg

Also saw my first pileated woodpecker last week, at the same playground! I've wanted to see one of those since I was a little kid watching Woody Woodpecker. It was a majestic bird, but I frightened it off by pursuing it too eagerly in hopes of a photo.

Saw some good pelicans yesterday. I usually see them once a summer and assumed they were migrating, but apparently they hang out in Wisconsin more than I thought.

Played with the kids in a river in wales where otters and kingfishers have been seen, obviously didn't see those with kids around but did see and catch (and return) some crayfish, up to 12cm long! Probably not that impressive to those more familiar with these things but it was a shock to me that you can find crustaceans as big as that in our rivers. It was only last year that I saw tiny (1cm) freshwater shrimp for the first time.

goslings!

https://i.ibb.co/Pzyd9qV/IMG-20230602-142458274.jpg

Was sitting on a bench today and saw a barn swallow perched on a hanging cable directly under the eaves of a building. He was keeping a close eye on my wife and me, kind of stepping to left and right but never flying away. Then I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and realized there was a nest at the top of one of the building's columns about five feet from where he was perched. He was guarding his family. So we got up and left. Didn't want to disturb him any further.

Stag beetle action in the Chinaski garden, pt 1

https://i.imgur.com/o1v5ILR.jpg

Pt 2: I didn't know where to look

https://i.imgur.com/ZAMcTIk.jpg

Awesome!

https://i.imgur.com/XIyaX1H.jpg

Came across this luna moth just before sunset yesterday.

I saw a turtle by a path this morning. In an odd coincidence, I was listening to Supertramp, who have a song called "Hide in Your Shell".

the turtles in Central Park eat hotdogs. fishermen buy franks from vendors in the park and use them to lure turtles in the Lake away from their lines. i was surprised to learn they're not vegetarians.

walking down the high street i saw a guy crouched down trying to coax a remarkable looking golden hairy caterpillar onto a shopping back, though it was more intent on crossing the road. i managed to coax it onto a bit of paper and we put it on the only bi of scrubby green space near by. at one point my app identified it as a dagger moth but now it's not so sure.

https://i.imgur.com/s29gJWi.jpg

further searching reveals it to be a sycamore moth caterpillar.

So orange! I have also been coaxing caterpillars onto pieces of paper.

https://static.inaturalist.org/photos/305429330/large.jpeg

https://static.inaturalist.org/photos/305504763/large.jpeg

This one was an American dagger moth.

why are they so hairy

oh i also finally achieved my ambition of seeing a kingfisher - just the typical flash of blue across a river from about 30 metres away, so ambition updated to a better sighting.

In some species, the hairs are a protection against predators. On this guy, the long black hairs contain venom and can sting you. On other species, like the sycamore moth above, their fuzz breaks off in your skin if you try to grab it, leading to irritation. But then you have others like wooly bear caterpillars (from the Isabella tiger moth), where the fuzz doesn't seem to cause any harm at all.

yes protection against predators was my first thought, immediately followed by 'why are the non hairy ones so non hairy then' :)

neither of us caterpillar rescuers wanted to touch it so job done anyway.

around 2 a.m. i bumped into a trio of raccoons coming toward me on the path. two were lagging behind, pouncing on and grooming each other, while the third, the smallest, rabbit-sized, ambled up to me with frank interest until he was about a foot away. then he seemed to realize i was a human and slowly backed up, confused. one in the back noticed us and stood up like a little bear to get a look at me, and then they all faded into the shadows.

i bet if i'd had a snack with me i could have knelt and offered it to them, and we could have become great friends.

basically i want this

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2PWm13NnlJw/TsGT2s_bFEI/AAAAAAAALEM/MUgrwutDsXU/s400/raccoon-duct-tape-food-to-her.jpg

They're so adorable. I wish they didn't have such a problem with rabies.

Several years ago, I was chaperoning a group of 1st graders to a nature center field trip. I had a few braggadocious boys in my group who were claiming to have seen all sorts of animals. "I saw a bald eagle!" "I saw a deer!" "I saw a rattlesnake!" I'm 100% sure the wildest thing they saw was a squirrel. I know because we all stopped to look at it for like, 3 minutes.

After we sat down to lunch at some picnic tables, a girl told me in the quietest little voice "I saw a raccoon." And, absentmindedly passing out the lunch bags, I'm like "Oh where did you see it?" And she points, and quietly says "over there." And sure enough, the biggest chonker of a raccoon I've ever seen was popping out of a dumpster next to the picnic pavilion! So I gathered all my kids and we all hurried over to get a slightly closer look at this wildlife before it clambered up a tree. Her observation was the highlight of the field trip for all of us.

Anyway, here's a crappy cell phone pic of a bald eagle I did see (ha! ha! first-grade boys) while kayaking the other day.

https://static.inaturalist.org/photos/316077341/original.jpeg

wild turkey family

https://i.ibb.co/VpWf5s2/IMG-20230823-131146111-HDR-2.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/XSXfj4p/IMG-20230823-131152079-HDR-3.jpg

raccoons near 108th st in riverside park emerge from a crack in the wall every evening approx 5:30pm before an adoring audience bearing scraps. they are celebrities.

a racoon licked my shin once while i was drinking a glass of wine in my friend's backyard in the middle of the night. i was startled by it's sweet kiss and jumped, then looked under the table expecting to find a puppy.

A herd of between 12 and 20 deer, depending on the night, shows up in the field behind my apartment building pretty much every night. It's been a few weeks, maybe two months, so I've been able to watch them grow, which is pretty amazing.

heard squealing out the front and went to have a look and there were two urban foxes going through the binbags (only recycling so slim pickings). one wandered off, the other just curled up in the middle of the road (it's 02:30 and the end of the road's closed for water works so no traffic)

Speaking of foxes and the middle of the road, we have had foxes in our neighborhood for years. It's been fun to catch an occasional glimpse of them at night dashing into someone's yard late at night. But this year, for some reason, they've started shitting in the street. You can tell it's fox scat rather than someone's dog because there are usually some visible berry seeds or the occasional tuft of fur.

Used to walking past foxes in the middle of the day now as they gingerly wait between two parked cars for you to pass by on the pavement just a couple of metres away so they can get back to that tasty binload.

a deer, less than ten metres away, watching us over a fence for a couple of minutes. I'm no deer expert but I think maybe it was a young roe, not a muntjac.

also I've been hearing an owl at night, haven't seen it yet but someone on the street took a photo of it on sitting on a television aerial.

if using my binoculars to watch squirrels have sex is pervy voyeurism then i don't want to be right, squirrels have the cutest sex

most of the squirrel sex outside my kitchen window seems involuntary, a lot of chasing from branch to branch

aw, my little guys do lots of cute grooming and tumbling in the branches, the only chasing happens when an unwanted third pops up!

Am in Taiwan right now. Squirrels here small and dark brown ie black. We've seen lots of birds, mainly black drongos and night herons. At night as well as the aforementioned herons you hear night hawks squawking loudly. They're misnamed...not Raptors, but related to the nightjar. We've heard lots of frogs, but haven't actually spotted any!

drongos r so goth i love them

those bloodred eyes, hell yeah

it is very cool, imo, that you are in taiwan! and hearing invisible frogs! out here in boringsville, usa, i ~think~ i've maybe started to hear quiet froglike creaky croaks near marshy areas -- in addition to the red winged blackbird boys staking out nesting sites for their sweeties -- but it might just be bugs impersonating frogs for secret reasons?

A family of six deers in a field yesterday night on my run - God bless summer time

In seven months of running along the canals and other waterways of Birmingham I've seen plenty of herons, the odd egret and once only the glorious blue flash of a kingfisher. In two runs in Norfolk last week I was somewhat disappointed to see only one muntjac deer and nothing else out of the ordinary.

at home over christmas i saw a muntjac deer carcass by the side of the road (in the wooded area by a motorway bridge) followed about 5 yards further on by another. nobody has ever mentioned seeing live deer around there.

saw a couple of bank vole in the new forest on monday

i am envisioning harried little voles in 3 piece suits

they are carrying tiny editions of the financial times

just spotted in my inner-ish London front garden: a blackcap!

I really recommend the Merlin app, which identifies birds by their sounds. Know what the birds are before you see them!

https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/

It doesn't only work for birdsong; it can identify woodpeckers by their pecking!

learning to identify birdsong yourself (which you'll be able to do over time if you use one of the apps regularly) is genuinely one of the most life-enriching things you can do

what once was just pleasant background noise becomes incredibly engrossing - especially when you can pick out alarm calls and know something (e.g. a hawk) might be about to go down

Also when you know most of the common birds, anytime you hear something out of the ordinary you'll be desperately scrabbling for your app!

@girlinwhiteglasses on instagram has a series of cool posts for birdsong identification: "if it sounds like a..."

https://www.instagram.com/girlinwhiteglasses/

Regarding alarm sounds, I saw a hawk grab lunch from a nest the other day. Various other birds were in the air and branches around it, creating a racket. A few were definitely crows, but there were smaller birds in there that I couldn't identify.

We saw a Northern Flicker woodpecker on the ground we thought was dead. Turns out it was feeding - they dig for ants and beetles.

recently saw a yellow shafted northern flicker in the vacant lot outside my kitchen window... I jumped up, had no idea what the hell it was... I thought it might be somebody's escaped pet. Apparently pretty rare in the west, but not unknown in the winter

https://photoartflight.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/mg_3370paf.jpg
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/NFlickers2-yellow_McMullen-red_Steckel.jpg

Yes, recently I found out the same is true of one of the UK woodpeckers. The green woodpecker feeds mainly on ants on the ground and doesn't forage on tree trunks like the others.

Jeez that yellow woodpecker is beautiful.

Green woodpeckers don't drum either - only greater spot/lesser spot (and it's only in the spring for sexxy reasons, not, as one might think, to get food).

This magnificent giant Pacific Octopus caught off the coast of California by sportfishers pic.twitter.com/X3upclo62I

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 7, 2024

free him

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GMg802MW8AEadnd?format=jpg&name=large

because I have a big tree in my garden every summer I get a lot of bees, particularly these ones (chocolate mining bees- pleasing taxonomy, but these fuckers have stung my feet many times). This year I have a nest of them somewhere deep under my garden and they are in big numbers at the side of my house every evening. The garden is raised up 9 ft with a brick wall at the side and they are coming and going in between their nest and my world through gaps in the concrete render and drainage holes in the brick wall.

gamera say hi to me

https://i.imgur.com/mSfIWjN.jpeg

I saw two porpoises in san francisco bay yesterday, right by Pier 30/32... there must be a herring run or something to draw them that far in

not so much of a sighting but...

on the flat roof outside my window i noticed a pebble-sized lump of some pink foam recently. more each day until there were a good 5 or 6 bits of it out there. i think it's insulation from the roof.

yesterday i noticed they'd all been collected up and put into the little water bowl that's out there.

maybe it's experiment time...

(just been to have a look, no obvious source for the foam - the recent work has blocked the previous hole by the drain)

tiny tufted ducklings on the pond this morning and the first dragonflies of the year

A red kite soaring over the Phoenix Park in Dublin

They were reintroduced to Ireland about 10 years ago after going extinct in the 19th century

Apparently they're doing pretty well but that was my first time actually spotting one

those fuckers is BIG we saw like 7 in Wicklow proper when we were there last year

I counted 13 over a single field recently. The first I noticed very close to the ground and as I looked up it was just kite stacked upon kite as high as I could see.

Saw 3 barn owl chicks last night. There's an owl box in a local park; it's about 25 feet high and weirdly protected from view despite its relative accessibility. These 3 lads were just sat in a row, seemingly waiting for parents to return with dinner. Excuse shite image: didn't want to get too close + shit old phone.

https://i.imgur.com/1HU9586.jpeg

Looking again, I think they must be buzzard/kite chicks - and can't be far off fledging. Barn owl chicks have the oval face mask thing pretty much set by this age.

Yeah it would be interesting to find out what those are. Lots of raptors have open nests but this is obviously a hole nesting species

Owl chicks famously do that gross thing where if food is sparse, they eat the smallest chick instead

Was just discussing buzzards with my wife the other day. In North America, "buzzard" is a common term for turkey vultures. We saw one overhead, and she referred to it as a buzzard, and I got to explain the terminology to her (I just learned this myself within the last year).

Anyway, here's a cute stink bug nymph (and some ugly cuticles, sorry), probably in the genus Banasa.

https://i.imgur.com/zYqZS0I.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/nkHzlGS.jpeg

woken at 5:05 this morning by a squirrel coughing outside. 5 short human-like coughs followed by a noise you wouldn't think something that small and cute could make. repeat x 100.

7 magpies in the park this morning, a 3 and a 4 about 10 yards apart.

That was supposed to be a secret never to be told

saw a weasel in my yard, cute critter

two frogs in our 40cm diameter garden pond. where do they come from? hope the cat doesn't get them.

re: stink bugs, they're called shield bugs over here. do they actually stink?

There are a few families of shield bugs that are distinct from stink bugs. Stink bugs release a spray when threatenedm, but the amount varies between species. My wife attests to being able to smell their stench, but I have never noticed anything, even though I was the go-to stink bug exterminator when they invaded our house a few years ago. Those were brown marmorated stink bugs, which I was pursuing aggressively at the time because they are an invasive species, but my attitude has mellowed a lot and I just release them outside nowadays.

8 magpies and another 3 this morning. children's ITV themes won't help you here.

foxcub and parent on bowling green too, disobeying the rules.

3 + 8 + 4 magpies in the park this morning. i get the impression that some of these are new and that there's teaching going on here. the young magpies are about 80% the size of the older ones and slightly neater.

Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten a surprise you should be careful not to miss,
Eleven for health,
Twelve for wealth,
Thirteen beware it's the devil himself.

(but there are lots of variants especially for higher numbers)

I was well situated for wildlife last week, deep in a remote part of an Oregon wilderness area. I saw scat from black bear, cougar, bobcat, elk, and coyote, but the real fun is seeing the animals themselves, not just droppings or tracks.

On my last evening, camped six miles from a trailhead, a snowshoe hare began feeding on the edge of my campsite. At first it was skittish and ran away when I spoke to it, but it kept returning. Each time it seemed a bit braver and began looking at me directly while slowly hopping toward me, until it at last approached about 25 feet away while I was brushing my teeth and about to get into my tent. Everything about its behavior indicated it was consumed by a burning curiosity about me. I think it was still young and I was the first human it had seen up close.

twenty (or twenty one) magpies in the park this morning, too many to accurately count. and another one between the park and the flat.

highlight of saturday's twice-as-long-as-normal walk were the housemartins in barnes. none the north side of the river, looked like the nests there had been removed, but there were two or three on the south side, all being visited by multiple birds every 4 or 5 seconds.

omg, we just went to norfolk for the weekend and i had been hoping to see house martins (said location and said birds having awakened my love of ornithology 31 years ago). didn't see any, but on the last day a walk down the coast from sheringham to west runton revealed a clifftop colony of sand martins :)

last year when i did the same walk it was earlier in the year and the tide was out and you could see them picking up mud from the thames shoreline and flying it back

A couple of juvenile long-eared owls squeaking away with abandon at dusk in Phoenix Park. We just about spotted one of them roosting before it flapped away

Hares. One fairly close in a field by a country road, we stopped the car to take a look. Then in the field where we were camping they would come out at dusk to nibble on the grass. They can really flatten themselves down when they get spooked but not spooked enough to run off.

tharn
love a hare

Hares are definitely one of those animals I *thought* I'd seen but had only seen biggish rabbits. Then you see a real hare and you instantly know - the size, the lope, the aura of the things. Bloody love a hare.

A pair of Coopers hawks have taken up in a small wooded open space where I take my dog. Through the summer, they would regularly make their call buy have grown quiet in the last few weeks. But one said hi to us this. morning!

We stayed in a cabin by a lake in Kaslo this summer, a little town in the Kootenays west of Calgary. We sat out on the deck in the evenings and one time I could see our friend squinting into the trees that separated the cabin from the house next door. Eventually she said, 'oh shit, it's a bear'. It was a black bear and probably about 7 or 8 metres away but what with the trees and the ditch separating the properties, it felt further and not threatening. It sniffed at us a few times and sloped off, presumably looking for some bins to rifle.

3 1/3 mile riverside walk and all we saw was a duck, plus squirrels

Ran past a muntjac deer, close enough to touch. It was on the same path, trying to get out the way but it couldn't find a gap in the hedge!

A couple of weeks ago, I was taking a walk in a wooded area when I spotted this egg mass that looked very familiar.

https://i.imgur.com/E6uDOrA.jpeg

It belongs to the North American Wheel Bug. A couple years ago, walking in those same woods, I ran into these two guys:

https://i.imgur.com/hBTIMB0.jpeg

Wheel Bug nymphs! I was so struck by them at the time. Apex predators of the insect world, they looked like young lions or something, relaxing on a leaf instead of swooshing their tails on the savannah after a big hunt. This was a deeply memorable experience for me, and I've wanted to see an adult specimen ever since. With the recent sighting of the egg mass, I planned to go back to those woods soon and maybe try to watch some of the babies as they grew up.

But this past Sunday, I was walking home from my wife's parents' house (a few blocks away), and look who walked across the street in front of me!

https://i.imgur.com/CkG5klS.jpeg

The picture is not as good, since he was on noontime asphalt instead of a more sylvan setting, but I was thrilled to have the opportunity to make its acquaintance. This encounter was even cooler because it occurred next to a playground and all my photographing and fussing got the attention of a little boy and his grandma. They came over to investigate and I talked with them about insects for a few minutes.

I've been doing amateur insect observations for a few years now, and this year has had a much lower volume of finds for me. Some of that is due to weather patterns around here this year, and some of it might be that I've been ignoring insects that I've seen a dozen times before. But seeing this North American Wheel Bug really lifted my spirits.

yesterday a hawk carrying a pigeon swooped about three feet in front of my face and disappeared into the trees by the freeway.. I think it was a Cooper's, not a red tailed

peace, man, i found a wheel bug in july hanging out on some ironweed, definitely cool to see. i'm sure people who know where to look can find them easily, but they're a once every few years sighting for me.

Andy, that is an awesome sighting! I live near the water, so we sometimes see Ospreys flying around with stunned fish in their talons. I hadn't seen any bird-on-bird predation until earlier this year, when I saw a crow robbing some smaller birds' nest. There was a huge commotion from the other birds, but they didn't pose any threat to the crow, who carried away a tender morsel.

A few weeks ago, I saw some aerial acrobatics as a male cardinal attempted to take down a very large, flying praying mantis. The mantis glided to safety in a hedge, but it was one of the weirdest nature sightings I've seen.

Circles, I'm glad to find someone else who appreciates wheel bugs!

I had a really cool nature sighting this weekend, but I'll have to come back to it when I have time to type it up.

Ok, so my daughter has always been a nature girl, but in the last few years, as I've gotten interested in insects, she has followed suit. She rescues spiders from her classrooms at school, pets honeybees as they sip on flowers, but her favorite thing is moths, because she's a nighttime spooky kid. So last month, we started moth trapping, following this kid's instructions, essentially: https://antboyxander.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/build-your-own-low-budget-moth-trap/

Last Friday night, we set up the bucket trap at my mother-in-law's house, because our home is on a small lot and surrounded by street lights and neighbors' porch lights, whereas they live on a creek and have more darkness and woods. Here are a few highlights from last week's collection:

https://i.imgur.com/mfbnOBt.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/wQRu2oi.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/HXTzMob.jpeg

However, the coolest thing we saw that day was before we even checked the trap. Down in the creek, we heard a lot of splashing around. Our first thought was maybe a heron feeding on fish, but as we got closer, we saw two North American River Otters! Only one is pictured in the blurry gifs here, because when they became aware of us, they made a hasty exit. A few years ago, I had a "did I really see that?" kind of sighting; just a head briefly above water around twilight. But this time, we got a clear view of their size and they were playing together like otters do (as my daughter said, "are they fighting or, uh, trying to be friends?"

https://i.imgur.com/1HTHIdn.gif
https://i.imgur.com/ATxyj6H.gif

That is fucking awesome. Your kid is lucky to have you!

Moths & Otters is now the name of my new blackgaze solo project.

lol. I like it.

amazing! i see beavers swimming around in the different lakes and ponds i frequent but have never seen a river otter in the wild, awesome.

yesterday I took a lovely bike ride through a delta wetland reserve near out house and saw ducks, geese, cormorants, an egret, and a blue heron.

I love when I look out at the water and a cormorant just pops up from out of nowhere, having been diving under the water for god knows how long searching for fish. Always a cool surprise.

I like how they all hang out together looking evil

I've only ever seen them solo! But yeah, checking out a few photos online, they look like a formidable goth gang.

Those moth photos are great, especially the black and white dude.

A tiger moth from the Apantesis genus. That was our favorite as well.

I like how they all hang out together looking evil

I actually have a freaky horror novel called The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory (1986).. it's pretty good!

I like how they all hang out together looking evil

― go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Thursday, September 19, 2024 11:31 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

gotta get on that morning turkey vulture tip

just watched a bobcat stalking around on the big open meadow hill outside the window of my parents' condo!

That's so cool! I would love to see one.

There are thousands & thousands of winged termites coming out of the ground in front of my building and flying away... they must know it's halloween

I think they're termites, they look more like ants with wings

Sounds like ant queens and drones making their mating flights.

it's a national holiday in England

https://www.timeout.com/uk/news/flying-ant-day-2024-has-arrived-heres-how-long-the-swarms-last-and-why-they-appear-071824

my backyard has a chipmunk who caers not whether I walk past it

that's impressive, all the ones I have ever seen have been super shy and skittish

I just walked past a park that had a completely separate flying ant swarm... I guess today's the day

wild! TIL

I saw an owl in the wild for this first time yesterday - so cool. Of course it was the woods behind a library so it mkaes sense

Saw a heron gulp down a mouse. We were having lunch by the pond at work, when we heard squealing. The heron brought it to the water, dipped it a few times (not long), and swallowed it. I had no idea they caught small rodents.

Ya they eat all kinds of shit. I've seen GBH go after lizards and Great egrets go after varmints.

I've also seen GBH speak sea fish that are bigger than their heads and eat them in one gulp it is beautiful and upsetting.

speak<spear

I saw a heron gulping down a frog last year, got a low res pic of the frog's legs sticking out of its beak. It also dipped it in the water.

Maybe the GBH was just trying to help out a [City Baby](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music116/v4/e0/90/e6/e090e657-75fb-65d3-a832-015481332389/4050538764512.jpg/600x600bf-60.jpg).

Ah fuck, used reddit formatting there. Sorry.

Herons are also known as shitepokes /ˈʃaɪtpoʊk/, or euphemistically as shikepokes or shypokes. Webster's Dictionary suggests that herons were given this name because of their habit of defecating when flushed.[5]

imagine a huge fish flopping in yoru throat and you are thinking "swallow it" - this is pelican life

we have a lot of these weird night herons in Oakland, skulking around... they sometimes hang around Chinese restaurants & markets in Chinatown for some reason
"Quarkkk! Quarkk!"

https://mnbirdatlas.org/graphics/photos/BCNH_AshleyPeters_BBA.jpg

excellent!

in the last 20 years previous to 2024, I've lived here (in Montreal) and I've seen a total of 2 wild turkeys. This year I saw about 10 of them. So crazy to see such huge birds just casually walking around in my front yard.

yeah, I don't remember ever seeing wild turkeys as a child, now I see them all the time... fucking dinosaurs pecking around

They're definitely on the rise... I read an interesting online article about whether turkeys in California are an invasive species, but the author concluded that their DNA so closely matches 'extinct' wild turkeys (bones found in native american sites, etc.) that they're essentially a 'reintroduced' species and are pretty important with their scratching around, also as a food source for bobcats and mountain lions

(I'm just gonna stay on this thread for the next four years, btw)

I recently learned that bobcats have been seen a lot closer to my Maryland home than I would have expected. The closest confirmed sighting that I found was like an hour away, but I didn't think they came down out of the mountains.

that's good news! such a rare, beautiful animal to run into in the wild, I saw one on the hunt while hiking a couple years back.. s/he paid me no notice

I loved when we had a flock of turkys in our hood but they seem to have moved away. I was considering just buying baby turekys to repopulate the hood

I spotted a covey of quail on sunday in the east bay hills

i had a couple of peacocks on my porch for a few hours, just sitting in the sun relaxing, a couple years ago. never saw 'em again until about 2 weeks ago, so they belong to someone here (CA foothills) i guess!

Peacocks are everywhere here in this part of the San Gabriel Valley
https://laist.com/shows/take-two/hear-in-socal-the-peacocks-of-arcadia

4 jays within about 20ft this morning, have only ever seen them singly before, and then not often.

You can usually guarantee that if you see 1 jay, there's another around close by. 4 is pretty great though. Beautiful looking things, with the ugliest squawking cry!

My favourite jay fact is that they move something like 1 billion acorns in the autumn. They move them to the edges of woodland areas and return for the new growth in late spring. Oaks trees are relatively poor at colonising new ground; the relationship with jays is symbiotic.

Jays are one of those birds where the european jay and the american jay are totally different. so i'm talking about

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_jay

rather than these (which are very pretty)
https://www.birdsandblooms.com/birding/meet-jays-blue-jays-stellers-jays-western-scrub-jays/

('autumn' suggests you are too but the above clarification doesn't hurt)

and they did all seem to be intent on pilfering the fruit off the roadside trees, i could see the fruit in the beaks of a couple of them

ha

> The Eurasian jay (Garrulus glandarius)
> The genus name Garrulus is a Latin word meaning "chattering", "babbling" or "noisy". The specific epithet glandarius is Latin meaning "of acorns".

Hah - had no idea about that second bit! Amazing.

i caught a mouse in one of those catcha nd release traps but it was dead anyway :(

I throw unsalted peanuts out my kitchen window, attracting both scrub jays and Stellar's jays... the scrub jays are bold and will take them out of my hand

Yes, lots of (Euopean) jays around at the moment, caching acorns. At the recent RSPB exhibition at the Natural History Museum they had a game where you got to play a jay burying acorns, making sure you didn't do this in plain sight of the magpie, who'd eat them, and the cat, who'd eat you!

Jay has the worst cry of any UK bird, IMHO. Sounds like someone throwing up after a hard night on the booze.

the crows in kirkwall orkney sound pretty awful as well

Keep an eye out for those banded birds kids. Reporting them is fun

I watched a little bug get stuck in the spider web this morning at my window, swiftly dragged away by the large garden spider. then thirty minutes later, a blue tit hovered over and noshed on the spider.

update

turns out he hadn't scoffed the spider, must have been something else, cos the spider just showed up for his dessert.

i saw this over the summer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4pGjA1qBl0

Not that this is really a "sighting", because they live there and you can go looking for them, but this is a yearly treat to myself (Richmond Park):

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52611784954_a145929d9c_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52612010713_fef30a75f9_h.jpg

imagine if your horns fell off each year and you had to regrow

home for the holidays. two jackdaws on every chimney pot. goldfinches by the dozen.

Redwing Invasion Moment

It's all about jays round our way. The scientific name tells you what you need to know: Garrulus glandarius -- the talkative acorn eater. Although sometimes I wish they wouldn't be talkative: it's among the least attractive sound of any bird. Sounds like someone being sick.

Oh I had those in the trees too this morning! For a moment there it was jays and redwings. Then they all left it to the goldfinches and chaffinches...

it's among the least attractive sound of any bird

not sure what jay you're talking about.. but I always have Stellars Jays and Scrub Jays visiting out my kitchen window, and I love their annoying squawks; it's a nostalgic sounds for me

I painted my nails black as a teenager, and I always had Florida Blue Jays try to eat them--I'm assuming that they thought they were big seeds. I also remember two of them who I watched flying at and pecking a big buzzard that was about 20 sizes bigger than them both combined. It ignored them.

I definitely see crows chasing/harassing red tailed hawks around here, but I don't think I've seen a crow with that kind of courage

excuse me, a JAY with that courage

Crows are BIG. Way bigger than birds you feed in your yard! (Unless you feed crows, I guess.)

plus they hate hawks especially

like, legendary beef going back to ancient times

related:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1hnqd53/ive_angered_a_family_of_ravens_how_do_i_appease/

(Unless you feed crows, I guess.)

They started noticing me feeding unsalted peanuts in the shell to squirrels & jays, and now two hulking crows have been hanging out the kitchen window... they're far more wary, the scrub jays will take them right from my hand, but soon I hope to have an army of crows to do my bidding and exact revenge on all who have wronged me

Inorganic nature - an ice spike in my parent's bird bath. Having read explanations for how they form it still seems unreal:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54255808511_19b0a88528_c.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54256045454_1a22d0e19c_c.jpg

dropped from plane toilet iirc

An impressively weighty looking bird perched on the fence in my back patio, which I think is a northern harrier. Looks more like that than a red-tailed hawk. The squirrels that normally hang out on the patio are also present, I count four of them. One squirrel is just perched on the fence as if it's perfectly comfortable sharing the fence with this imposing bird just a few feet away. Another squirrel is darting up and down an adjacent tree, seemingly trying to pester the bird, which seems like a bad idea.

harrier has an owl-like face

That ice spike is amazing!

xp

Yes! That was what struck me at first, along with the size of the thing. Then I did a search and it seems the breast coloration of this bird - mostly white with dark spots - more closely resembles a harrier.

Harriers are also known as marsh hawks and when I spent a year as an environmental educator years ago we would often see them hunting in an estuary just off the beach. It was the coolest thing to watch because they fly super low, just above the plant life on the ground

Can thoroughly recommend the Wilding film on the BFI player. It's about the rewilding project at the NEP site in Sussex. It's beautifully shot and has a Jon Hopkins soundtrack to boot. Disclosure: I have a mate who works there and I've had a tour of the site. Amazing place.

https://www.wildingmovie.com/

Went into my back yard a few days ago and soon heard some rustling. Usually this is squirrels running around the trees, but this was especially loud, so I looked in the direction and saw a coyote jumping over the back wall into the neighbor's yard. I've been hearing them howling at night lately too, so I wonder if they're denned somewhere nearby.

Yesterday
I thought I heard a red-tailed hawk on the trail, just up in the trees
I looked for it, but saw no hawk... it was a Stellar's jay imitating a hawk

^ That's a common experience for me, although it's less common since the great horned owls have pushed the local redtails about a half mile away from their usual territory. I guess the jays get less of a kick out of doing their hawk-scream mimicry when the hawks aren't a daily menace to the small birds around our house -- and owls hoots aren't in their repertoire.

not sure what jay you're talking about.. but I always have Stellars Jays and Scrub Jays visiting out my kitchen window, and I love their annoying squawks;

Grasshopper: I'm in the UK, so it's the Eurasian jay (Garrulus glandarius), which is always referred to as just 'jay' coz it's the only one we've got. Nice and colourful like its North American counterparts, but while some of them having a scruffy mess of feathers like a nascent Mohawk, they lack the attractive crests of many of their occidental cousins.

it usually doesn't work when I post images so, fingers crossed....

https://cdn.sci.news/images/enlarge/image_1841e-Eurasian-Jay.jpg

that's a cool looking corvid!

Indeed it is, AtG! Apart from the magpie in its subfusc, most of our covids are very drab. Choughs have nice red beaks, but they're rare and confined to the coast.

recently we have had huge mobs of long-tailed tits descending on the garden en masse which is always a welcome sight, although as my wife's Polish we always refer to them by their Polish name 'raniuszek' (ran-NYOOSH-eck) which is not only a much better name, but stops me turning into HI DERE and envisioning go-go dancers with tassels.

They look unbearably cute and make a sound like a Trimphone from the 70s.

https://janadamski.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Raniuszek_01.jpg

raniuszek!

https://janadamski.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Raniuszek_01.jpg

RSPB #BigGardenBirdwatch results (last year in brackets): Blue tit 6 (+2), great tit 3 (same), robin 2 (same), dunnock 1 (same), wood pigeon 2 (-1), chaffinch 2: 1♂ , 1♀ (same), blackbird 1♂ (same), blackbird 1♀ (+1), long-tailed tit 3 (+1), coal tit 1 (same), nuthatch (+1). No shows this year: magpie, blackcap.

Quite a garden you’ve got there!

What knockers

a muscovy (?) duck has been hanging around the bike path

https://i.imgur.com/qlti4Gr.jpeg

it's at least the size of a goose!

we have a handful of Muscovies hanging near near the lake with the Mallards & geese... probably dumped there

first swift of the year in w12 (actually, w6)

(which feels late, i normally reckon on the arriving in apr, gone by aug)

delightful walk in kent yesterday, plus updates from my gf’s dad’s farm means there’s been a welcome surfeit of lambs, foals and piglets, all scampering their way about or in the case of the foal learning how to stand and walk.

saw a v unusually extensive old-style apple orchard yesterday, blossom out, long term unimproved grass beneath with sheep grazing. hops just beginning to climb their frames. cuckoos and skylarks.

what a day.

We spent several days last week at the Oregon coast. On Thursday, after three days of sunshine it turned heavily overcast, but not rainy, so when I went out for my walk the beach was quite literally deserted. Not a soul in sight for as far as the eye could reach.

After about a mile of beach walking I saw up ahead a congregation of several large birds standing on the sand. I thought some turkey vultures has found a carcass until I got close enough to see flashes of pure white on their heads. It turned out to be three adult and two juvenile bald eagles. One of the juveniles was pulling apart the final bits of a prey. They let me walk past within less than 50 feet of them. Seeing their huge talons and beaks made me a bit nervous, but I guess they didn't see me as a danger.

jeez.

I feel like I'm seeing more bugs and birds in London this year than I've seen in awhile. Seems good!

I just know someone's going to post a graph that shows everything in long-term decline but honestly I can't remember the last time there was this much stuff flyin around in my garden - bees too

the sound of skylarks above my first cricket match of the summer today was very welcome

wow at bald eagles, amazing. always thought they're an unfortunately named bird though.

only two nature sightings of note in a recent trip to sicily. a moray eel in a tide pool - this was pretty cool tbh, thought it was colourful seaweed at first then it saw it was clearly moving with intent, didn't know what it could be - an octopus tentacle?? - then out popped this fella:

https://i.imgur.com/7fV3nJt.jpeg

the other sighting was... a dung beetle! actually pushing a ball of dung.

grey wagtail hopped onto the wall 3 ft in front of me this morning, mouth full of food. saw me, hopped twice, flew away.

always a classic that

Pair of peregrine falcons wheeling around the spire of Salisbury cathedral. Noisy blighters.

solitary house martin by the thames this morning. i did go looking for them two weeks ago and saw nothing. tide was in though so he just kept circling.

We saw loads in Sicily!

i guess planes are quicker 8)

Saw a buzzard being attacked in the air by a crow at lunchtime today.

just saw a common grackle at an I-5 rest stop on the Grapevine (not my photo)

https://www.atholdailynews.com/attachments/93/43229793.jpg

okay, take from this what you will...

I went out for a walk this morning, and upon returning home, I heard an insane raucous noise outside my kitchen window. There was a raven on the telephone pole and a bunch of crows cawing at him and swooping. Both these species live in the neighborhood but I've never seen or heard such bedlam, and I wondered: "Is there gonna be an earthquake or something?" and then got in the shower

Now I just saw this:
UNION CITY, Calif. - An earthquake with a magnitude of 2.9 struck near Union City on Thursday morning, according to the US Geological Survey.

The quake hit about 8:15 a.m

Union City is a boring, nothing suburban town just south of Oakland, and I didn't feel any quake... but the birds were going bonkers right around that time

oh and last night I saw a mama skunk with two young skunks

egrets, I've had a few...

probably the same one i saw last time given it was about 20 feet away, but only the second time.

i have a photo but it's some way away and zooming in makes it look like it's ai generated

~100 swifts down by the thames this morning, two big clumps of 40 or so and stragglers between them, most i've seen. enjoying the high winds, is that a thing? feeding on all the tiny flies that have been blown upwards?

(could be the same 40 swifts moving ahead of me, i guess, but they were a good half mile apart)

a hare on foulness near the broomway. i don’t think i’ve ever seen a hare before and they’re a much rarer sight on foulness since the 1953 floods which wiped a lot them out (some had managed to climb trees) aiui

A first for me - a marsh harrier at the RSPB Otmoor reserve at the weekend.

late on Friday afternoon, we were sitting in the yard drinking beers when a large bird appeared flying in distance, maybe 50 yards away.. based on its size, I initially thought it was a great blue heron, but no.. it was a fucking bald eagle! Flying right down the street in Oakland

I saw it and a buddy saw it but the other dudes didn't believe us

It turns out there's a few breeding pairs near Oakland, usually nesting around golf courses... the article I found said that improving air quality has lured them closer to the bay. Pretty cool thing to see around these parts

I saw an eagle a few weeks ago. They're so majestic. Sometimes, I'll squint at some raptor in the distance, and wonder "is that a bald eagle?" But then, upon closer inspection, it always turns out to be an osprey. Then, on the rare occasions when I've seen bald eagles, it's like, there is no mistaking it, that is definitely a bald eagle.

I haven't been cataloguing as many nature observations this year. For the past few years, I got most of my insects while out walking my dog, but she passed away last fall. Since then, I haven't had as much of an impetus to wander slowly along the lines of bushes and grasses in our neighborhood, where arthropods are inclined to congregate.

However, my wife's vegetable garden provided us with this Harlequin Bug, which she found on her kale the other day. They are a stink bug that is known to be a pest of brassica-related plants. But they look really cool!

https://static.inaturalist.org/photos/526835568/large.jpg

And check out their eggs (not my picture)!

https://www.sciencefriday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/8539644393_b32646abd3_k.jpg

I saw an eastern giant swallowtail caterpillar today, which looks like an extra large bird poop. It was on a prickly ash, which is a normal host plant for them, but it didn’t really seem to be eating anything

A bit of a sad sighting here. I was at a campground in a reasonably remote area and there was a doe there who had clearly been fed by humans.

She kept approaching me in my campsite. When I clapped my hands and told her loudly to shoo, she only shied away a dozen feet. When I threw some pine cones at her she would immediately dip her head to sniff them and see if they were edible. She hoped they'd be food I was throwing to her. I had to resort to running at her, yelling threateningly to get her to leave. It was easy to see her ribs. She didn't look too healthy. Human food is NOT GOOD for a ruminant that normally browses on leaves and new growth.

That could be CWD. Not good, regardless.

Saw my first bears - mother black bear and two cubs tussling in the road - on Vancouver Island last week. Very excited.

Low level, but I've been seeing lizards in my front and back yards. More than I've ever seen before here.

i think the times are such that they no longer have to wear their human skins

I didn't know that white peacocks weren't albino by lacking pigmentation, they're just white. Also they know where the good tacos are in east Pasadena

https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/114/781/323/718/734/807/original/19a6a200a7a25893.jpeg
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/114/781/324/123/186/583/original/d37a19263645a37b.jpeg

i've been noticing more bees and butterflies and bugs in general in my back garden in London, which seems good. i have been planting more stuff like nasturtiums which they like so maybe that's why but in general i feel like there's more of this critical tiny beast infrastructure this year

Innumerable wild turkeys that gobble back at you
Mama deer and 2 fawns
A massive osprey nest
(multiple dense brambly thickets of blackberries, still about 2 weeks away from peak ripeness unfortunately)

Steve Shasta please update re: blackberry ripeness

that springtime shimmer has been off the leaves for ages now, they're dull and mature, i can feel summer ticking over into fall. goldfinches, finally! maybe they've been there a while but i only noticed them yesterday, and there were blue jays also, and flickers squeaking at everyone, and at dusk a family of crows paused in the bare upper branches before flapping off elsewhere to roost. the young ones have the most charmingly obnoxious voices. they all reminded me of my mom, who loved watching the birds in the yard and would recount their adventures to me every chance she got. so grief kicked me around a little, or at this point more like the memory of grief, grief's shadow. she's been dead near 5 years and it's okay, she'd been steadily fading for years if not decades and was more than ready to go, i think. a lot of people find comfort in imagining their dead hanging around them still, but i'd hate that for her. doesn't that sound like hell? watching the people you cared for stumble through life without you, never able to help them or speak to them. tldr: birds.

a sweet little downy woodpecker just now ❤️🖤

An oriental pied hornbill keeps dropping by my vacation spot in Cambodia

oh wow now that is A BIRD

https://stateofindiasbirds.in/wp-content/uploads/Anthracoceros_albirostris.jpg

Seen a few cool bits and pieces recently.

1) What I assume is a deer?

https://i.imgur.com/QdMirBM.jpeg

2) This poor wee fella

https://i.imgur.com/xOgrhrX.jpeg

3) We have a spider who lives in our wall - deep in a hole; only comes out at night, but can be coaxed out during the day if you tap in the right place. He shed his entire outer skin.

https://i.imgur.com/XJGSla9.jpeg

4) Some beautiful chicken of the woods.

https://i.imgur.com/rhXI3Cd.jpeg