Nothing too exciting this week, so I’m making up for it by providing several different things – quantity instead of quality, the bywords of the US.
Let’s start with one that I discovered while mowing, and thus had to resort to the smutphone to capture, which once again convinced me how much they suck.
The mantids have not been highly visible on the property, and
Last night I took The Girlfriend out to the side of the driveway (livin’ large, you know it!) because the previous evening I’d found that the overgrown spot was loaded with newborn Carolina anoles (Anolis carolinensis) all sleeping on the tall weeds there. Not quite as many there last night, seven as opposed to the eight that I’d seen the night before, but it was still
Last week’s Find was still fresh on the, um, server memory thingy, whatever, when I got the first clips of this week’s. A few days later I was able to add to the stock, so we have a couple of days worth of observations, which also added in the number of other species appearing. So without further ado:
Now, this was not a total surprise, because we’d been down at the neighbor’s
The other evening I was out, for some reason without the camera, and witnessed something that I knew was going on from time to time, but usually too far off to do anything useful about. I debated about specifically trying for some pics, which would require a nighttime stakeout, but never got beyond the contemplation stage.
Then tonight, I lucked out a bit.
North American raccoons
The other night I checked out the waste can outside the door to Walkabout Studios, otherwise known as the Magic Bucket of Variety (the can, not the studios,) to find that it had snagged yet another capture. This one was a small-ish wolf spider (Genus Lycosidae) and I noticed as I tipped it out that it looked a little odd. A closer inspection told me why, and once again I got the camera in hand.
I don’t know, I think this was three nights ago, I just didn’t post it then. But while doing something else in the yard, I went past a dog fennel plant that was starting to get a little tall and found this:
Now, “a little tall” is relative to the surrounding grasses, which weren’t topping 20cm, but this was a bit less than a meter in height, and far
While occasional Estate Finds are kind of lackluster, others serve as the first time that I’ve witnessed something cool, and this is one of those – though be warned, it’s also graphic and features nothing but snakes.
Yes, both of these species have been featured before – but not like this (geez that sounds like clickbait.) Doing some tasks out in the back
Heard the distinctive calls of the Mississippi kite (Ictinia mississippiensis) while working at my desk, which is somewhat unusual – I’m never at my desk they don’t call very often, usually wheeling overhead silently. So I went out with the long lens and eventually snagged a nice shot of one perched in a tree nearby.
The bird passing overhead is a blue jay (Cyanocitta
It’s been interesting living right on the edge of an ecosystem, and I know that makes little sense because we’re all within an ecosystem no matter what, but what I mean is, we can observe the behavior of the wildlife that uses the ponds throughout the year, at all times of the day and night, and so patterns emerge. We have yet to determine how regular they are, but we see shifts
Just a couple of things found while poking around at night, nothing earth-shaking.
The orphaned white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawns were mentioned in the previous post, and we found that they are not only regular visitors, they sleep over from time to time. These were taken from the vicinity of the door to Walkabout Studios.
Notably, this is not with the long lens, but
