Funny weather here at the moment - plenty of awful days, but plenty of (for winter) glorious ones as well. Yesterday was a glorious one, Everybody was enjoying it.
That was my local deer park. If I just stood by the perimeter rails, they got curious and would approach me. If I lifted my camera to take a photo, they turned around and walked away. So I have a lot of photos of deer’s arses. This was the best I could do.
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(I think that’s correct - deer is the plural of deer, therefore deer’s arses = the arses of multiple deer. Yes? No?)
Interesting news from today. We took a walk around Lingfield, on the Surrey-Sussex border. That’s where I found a cattle egret colony a while ago, and sure enough we saw seven birds there today. Only the second or third time I’ve seen them this year.
A little further round the walk Mrs T spotted this guy:
Pretty neat camouflage, huh? Only about 20 meters away, and surrounded by housing (admittedly not very dense housing). I keep banging on about urbanization of wildlife, and I’m convinced it’s happening. In a few years we’ll think of urban deer in the way we think of urban foxes now.
Probably a young roe deer. After a while it wandered off - and met up with a pal, but too far away for a worthwhile photo of the pair.
I’ve bagged a nest like that. In the middle of the night, my gf holding a flashlight on it while I climbed a stepladder and slid a contractor bag (heavy plastic) around it then snipped off the branch.
Once I had it secured, my gf asked, “now what?” which I’d never considered. I took it to work and put it in my dumpster.
I’m not suprised that you did not notice their presence before, as I have found the bald faced hornets to be relativley harmless unless messed with. I had a nest under my deck one fall and could hear them buzzing around down there but they never came up top and bothered me.
They appear to have chased away or killed the yellow jackets that used to build multiple nest on my deck and did like to mess with me.
I think albino and leucistic are different, and you can tell from the eye color, but I’m no sort of expert and not confident at all about that. Plus, I can’t tell eye color from the photo. I think what we need to do is page @Tamerlane on this one!
Yes, I was saying I’ve only seen leucistic animals, which seem to be more common than true albinos. I think albinism is linked to short life in prey species.
I did a bit of googling and this suggests that for squirrels, albinism isn’t quite so much of a problem. But it’s not what you’d necessarily call an unimpeachable source:
Squirrels tend to be found in parks where predators are few and people handing out snacks pretty common. Plus:
Scientific research carried out in 1997 by Glen Jeffrey (University College London) and Joana Visa Esteve (Barcelona University) showed that albino squirrels eyesight is not as defective as other albino mammals. They are thought to only have a 5% reduction in vision, compared to the non-albino grey squirrels.
This could be why scientists believe that the only albino animal who can actually survive and live a full life is the albino squirrel.
In birds, leucism specifically refers to a lack of melanin in the feathers only. The bird produces melanin but cannot deposit it in feathers. Their feet, for instance, are pigmented.
Let me introduce you to Mirabilis jalapa, the wonderplant:
Easy to cultivate if it is not too cold around your place, this plant has a warm place in my heart because my grandmother grew one in her garden. It is called galans de nit in Catalan.
I’ve never seen that for sale here, but I can certainly look for it; a hardier variety would probably do fine here.
It occurred to me after I posted that I did have a rose that surprised me with different color flowers at one point, but as roses are often grafted onto rootstock here, that’s not so surprising. The plant I bought was sold as a miniature rose, but once I planted it outside, it grew quite large and the small, pale pink, wonderfully fragrant roses of the mini version morphed into the larger magenta version of the rootstock.
In other nature news, today was woodpecker day at the watering hole! I saw two sapsuckers, a flicker (!), and assorted downies and hairies. I got photos of all of them except the flicker - and I sure wish I had (my camera was still in the house when I saw it). I will watch for it and hope it comes back.
I wish I’d gotten a photo of the flicker, but I didn’t have my camera out. They’re such beautiful birds and it seems the only times I see them, the weather is terrible and they’re picking around for bugs on the ground, so the photos end up sucking too.
