At work my building is a big faraday cage, so sometimes I have to go outside to send/receive texts. I was wandering around yesterday looking at my phone and ran into two groundhogs who stood their ground!
Pretty strange behavior. I backed away after getting the picture. They live under an old shed behind the building.
So cute! I remember the first time I saw one. My brother and I were about eighteen years old, on a road trip with my mom, and saw this creature alongside a scenic lookout in North Carolina. None of the three of us knew what it was until a kind stranger identified it.
A good friend of ours in St Martin, Kali, loves to tell the story of his visit to the US. A cousin who lived in Ohio paid for Kali’s flight to attend his wedding. It was his first/only visit.
He was admiring his cousin’s garden and cousin complained about groundhogs eating his vegetables. Kali pictured roaming bands of warthog-like creatures and was frightened.
When he eventually saw a groundhog and his cousin told him what it was, he cracked up. Telling the story he laughs maniacally about it. And he says, “Ground Hog” as two distinct words.
Today I saw a zebra swallowtail, which I haven’t seen around here in ages.
And, a juvenile mockingbird stretching his/her stubby wings whilst perched on our front porch railing, looking every bit as jaunty as a full-grown adult.
We’ve been hanging out by our pond most evenings, having a beer, feeding the koi, and watching the six mallard ducklings grow. They’ve become acclimated to us. They are just a little smaller than the adults now!
Simi likes watching them as well. Yesterday he fell in.
Very picturesque! Fell in = “go for unauthorized swim”?
Heh, no, he truly fell in. Kizzy loves to swim, but Simi never tried. He fell in, then gracefully doggy paddled to shore.
I was driving around Marina del Rey California (a section of Los Angeles county centered on a large boat marina) and a funny looking bird hopped in front of my car. Fortunately:
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I didn’t run it over
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I took a quick photo before the guy behind me got too mad
Black-crowned night heron, a lifer for me.
I live very near there, and I’ve never seen one. I’ll have to look for it. I mostly see (and hear) crows. I have no superstitions about them. I rather enjoy them.
This isn’t something I saw “in nature,” but my sister was watching the women’s US Open golf championship at Pebble Beach last weekend, and there were Canada Geese on the course. They were right near the cliffs by the beach. One of the golfers had to walk somewhat close to them to get to her ball, so I was able to get a sense of scale. I didn’t realize how BIG they are. Honkers in more ways than one!
A mockingbird was harassing a crow–lots of jawing and swooping close enough to swipe it. Finally, the crow flew onto a roof far enough from the mockingbird that the latter stopped its behavior…only for a pair of sparrows to team up against it.
Oh yah. And they produce much poop, which can make a grassy slope a dangerous place. Canada geese are an endemic hazard in my region. I still smile when they are honking overhead though.
This is not my photo, but I found it in my NextDoor feed (that’s a kind of nature).
The coyotes in our neighborhood are very healthy looking. This is a block from my house. Oh, and it was 6:00 am.
In r/whatsthisbird the black crowned night heron is the bird people see that totally shocks them as being out of place.
In Oakland, CA you used to be able to regularly find a couple hanging around the dumpster behind a KFC for easy pickings . Like most herons they’re not picky when it comes to where they get their protein.
They’re awesome birds and not often quite as fully urban as that (the above is a bit of an exception, right next to an urban rookery), but somehow they seem a little less noble scarfing down fried chicken rather than catching crayfish in a pond .
I saw three rabbits while walking the other night (two together, and another a few minutes later), and last night, in a driving rainstorm, I saw a deer unconcernedly nibbling from the lower branches of a tree.
Four turkeys crossing the road in front of my car this morning. Two were molting, with feathers trailing down as if they couldn’t wait to leave the bird.
I just took a bunch of pictures of an owl hunting in my yard. They didn’t turn out, but I was thrilled to see him.
That would be very cool to watch!