Scattered, by the numbers

This time, when I went down to Jordan Lake it was at night, because I thought I might be able to see some moderately distant thunderstorms looking south. They had all petered out by the time I got there, and it was still World Snake Day, so I poked around briefly in the idle thought that a snake might be visible. I saw none, and indeed not much of anything, but walking along the water’s edge read more

Scattered, part of a series

Once again, clearing out a bunch of recent photos that aren’t related to one another and don’t make a narrative, but far be it from me to post something without words. I mean, c’mon…


On one of the trips down to Jordan Lake, I didn’t see a whole lot of action, though a couple of osprey (Pandion haliaetus) cruised overhead, perhaps hunting, perhaps read more

Crucial update

Sneaking this in before it becomes tomorrow, but I had to check and see if our new little friend had taken up a sleeping spot nearby, and indeed it had:


These are the seeds of one of the two hosta plants that our newborn Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis) was skipping around on this morning. In the afternoon we got another horrendous downpour (I’m not complaining,) read more

Well, now…


Had to feature a sudden find late this morning – if this guy had held still, I would have easily missed it, especially since I’d about given up on seeing one this year. This is a newborn Carolina anole (Anolis carolinensis,) scampering around on one of the hosta plants, appearing at a time when even the adults could barely be found. This might have come about read more

Just once, part 29


I was a little surprised to find that I’d only ever featured a long-billed dowitcher (Limnodromus scolopaceus) once before, because I was certain that I’d gotten other images of the species – and I had, even featured here before. Kind of. Here’s how it works.

The source that I’m using to find the ‘Just Once’ candidates is a dump from the database of tags read more

These are not snakes


No, I’m not trying to show off my amateur naturalist cred, and no, ‘amateur naturalist’ doesn’t mean I’m bad at getting nekkid – that’s ‘naturist,’ goober. And you still wouldn’t want to see it.

No, I’m referring to the fact that all of these were shot while I was looking for snakes for World Snake Day, which is still going on as I read more

It qualifies

Today, as you undoubtedly know, is World Snake Day, and while you might think this is one of those crass bogus holidays that I make up to feature some convenient photos on hand, this is for realsies. Knowing that this was coming up, I went out to find some world snakes to feature, knowing that at the very least I was in the right geographic area (the world) to do so.


This is a northern read more

Just once, part 28


This week we have a curious specimen that was rather obvious when spotted that one time, nine years ago, because of both its size and its coloration. This is an elephant mosquito (Toxorhynchites rutilus,) and it was surprisingly easy to catch when it was perched atop the car, less so to photograph even with the help of a terrarium – the top image was tweaked to remove read more

This evening’s display


Late this afternoon or early this evening – before sunset, anyway – we had some storms roll through, looking quite ominous for a bit, but what we ended up with were summer showers. The scattered nature of the thunderheads did let the sun poke through, and so we got a quite vivid rainbow for a decent amount of time, but granted, I boosted contrast on these for better read more

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