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.

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