Two curiosities

Haven’t been in much of a blogging mood the past week or so, and thus haven’t been in search of subjects, but I’ll throw down two quick ones because… um… I really have no idea why anymore…

As the treefrogs become more prevalent in various areas of Walkabout Estates, I’ve been seeing some patterns of appearance and can tell a few apart, somewhat, simply by these habits. One of which turned out to be very recognizable, but I neglected getting good photos of it while I had the chance, and then it disappeared for a few days. But it reappeared, and I shirked not this time.

green treefrog Dryophytes cinereus with odd blue spot on back
This green treefrog (Dryophytes cinereus, and I still can’t quite keep that in memory and I’m still annoyed that they changed it,) sports a distinctly blue spot on its back, for reasons completely unknown. The spot is quite centered on the spine, which might make it genetic, or it might be an injury sustained to the spot in contact with the surfaces it had secreted itself into somewhere. For the time being, this makes it easy to know that I’m seeing the same individual, but how long this might last is anyone’s guess. Yet it’s definitely bright blue.

While at the neighborhood pond, a red-shouldered hawk wheeled overhead briefly, and I fired off a few frames. Close examination showed something interesting:

red-shouldered hawk Buteo lineatus scratching face in flight
The frames that showed the detail weren’t the sharpest, but sufficient to illustrate that the hawk was scratching its face while flying – either that or on the phone, but it wasn’t displaying the typical inability to maintain a regular speed nor stay in its lane like most of those I see dicking with their iTwats when driving, so I’m going to go with scratching. I’ve never seen this before and I would have thought it might make their glide a little erratic, but I suppose there’s no reason to believe this and it displayed no evidence of difficulty as I watched – I didn’t suspect a thing until I saw the details after unloading. But you gotta admit it looks odd.

There will be more along shortly – I have photos, I just don’t have the motivation to explain them right at the moment. Won’t be long though.

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