Here’s a shot of a woodpecker I somehow managed to get. Taken out the window of my computer room, from a distance of about 50 feet.
Pick the pictures you want to see. A little bit of everything…
Lovely photos all! I enjoyed looking at every one of them.
Here are some amazingcaterpillarsof a fruit-piercing moth that appeared on my akebi (chocolate vine) this summer. They were as thick and as long as my forefinger and had glittery blue and yellow spots on them.
Wow! Those caterpillars are downright psychadelic!
When I saw ONE on my creeper, I was fascinated by it and took loads of pictures. Then I saw another one… and another and another and then I began to feel really creeped out by them. They were ALL OVER the bush, munching away, and the ground all around was littered with tic-tac sized caterpillar poos. Shudder.
I did a bit of reasearch and found that the moths are regarded as a serious pest because they pierce fruit with their proboscis and suck out the juice. This leaves a hole in the fruit which then rots. As we live in a fruit producing neighbourhood, I am afraid that they got sprayed. I felt mean but there were so many they were stripping my vine naked, too.
We saw this: http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w119/ignatz1957/000_0002-1.jpg before we found this: http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w119/ignatz1957/000_0006-1.jpg
We have toads, too, but no pictures of them.
Girl Hermit, after doing a little research, it looks like my guard spider is most likely your basic mundane Barn Spider. I guess I have my very own Charlotte. 
The only weird thing is that Wiki indicates that barn spiders take down their webs during the day (along with most other orb spiders), but ours seems to be hanging out on its web pretty much 24/7.
[Indy]
Why did it have to be snakes?
[/Indy]
Here’s a Periwinkle aka Myrtle.
Here’s some Azeleas
Here’s some Irises
She’s not in the backyard but in your face.
That’s a female Brown Anole! I had pet anoles of a variety of species for a few years. They’re energetic, inquisitive little things. Female browns are distinguished by the white dorsal stripe, and lack of or very small dewlap.
Cool! I’ve tons of those around my house.
One was a critter that made its home on my front porch a couple of years ago. The other is a near-complete reptilian skeleton that I discovered.
Thanks Mahna Mahna. Someone upthread mentioned an orb weaver too and I googled a bit and found this: this photo of an orb weaver that looks close too.
We gave our dad some anoles as a birthday present…to put in his greenhouse for bug control. It was always fun trying to find them.
At the San Diego Zoo, anoles are used as Hornbill food. If you have a keen eye, you can see a few escapees scampering around in the foliage outside the cages.
Can I cheat a little bit to brag about where I live? It’s only kind of cheating, because the trail to get there literally starts in the parking lot, and after a couple miles you get quite a lot of nature, and that’s pretty neat.
