I mean, isn’t there obvious precedent? Blow it up!
Another annoyingly didactic post, because I just learned something new today and I thought it was neat 
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Black oystercatchers, one of the most flamboyant of the Pacific coast shorebirds. They actually don’t eat oysters much. Mostly it is rocky intertidal critters - I was watching this pair systematically slaughter a bunch of mussels, limpets and chitons.
They’re pretty monogamous and if you see a pair, they are almost always mates. Can you tell who is who between these two?
How about now?
It’s the eye flecks around the pupil - female is on top. Well, probably. I was finally sorting through all the pictures I took of this pair and I was noticing the pupil looking wonky in a lot of shots. On googling it is apparently the most accurate way of sexing them in the field as it is an at least weakly sex-linked trait. The genders are otherwise essentially indistinguishable unless you use molecular techniques. But it’s not 100% accurate, just 90+.
Basically a perfectly round, unblemished pupil seems to be almost 100% male. A lightly flecked pupil, defined as kind of a little dirty smear, is overwhelmingly male and somewhat rarely female (this is actually more obvious in the first photo if blown up, but I wanted to get the same side in profile to compare the same two eyes directly). A strongly flecked pupil, defined as a little more extensive and solid black coloration, is overwhelmingly female and only very rarely male.
So the sexing of these two is not certain, but extremely likely (he/she who has more eye flecking in a pair is usually the female).
A very mellow cape toad
Rat snake in the barn. He got himself hung up in the plastic netting, so we cut him free and then took him for a ride out to the prairie where he can live with his family and friends.
But who’s going to eat your rats now 
?
Eh, somebody else will come along! This guy’s been eating eggs lately. I gave him a stern talking-to but he wouldn’t listen.
Heh. We have rat snakes that keep our barn rats and mice under control. Every few years one of them discovers a way to get into our chickens’ nest-boxes, and begin eating eggs every day. That quickly leads to obesity.
Those snakes get relocated. Last summer I relocated a rat snake that was seven feet long!.
He’s lucky you found him in time! We’ve had a couple get hung up in deer/plant netting, but found them only after they’d expired.
Oh, poor things! It couldn’t have been very nice for you either.
The sun is up now when I come to work, so I can actually stuff. LOL
Today - this entire week in fact - I’ve seen a rabbit between my back door and my car. I’m thinking it can’t be coincidental but, on the other hand, I can’t be sure it is the same rabbit, either. We’re talking about lush, green grass, manicured bushes and hedges, and a gazebo. There are no vegetables growing anywhere in the vicinity. So, what gives? Is he trying to panhandle a treat out of me? LOL
Rabbits eat lush, green grass. And they are crepuscular, most active at dusk and dawn.
I always notice rabbit activity as their populations vary year to year. A few years back we had rabbits everywhere. My gf spent her spring putting up chicken wire to protect all the nests around the house. Then predator populations swell a bit and rabbit populations go back to normal.
Yuck! Well, no wonder he’s fat! LOL
We have no coyotes in our community. If any are seen, they get rid of them.
Birds of prey love rabbits.
Good point, but we see very few of those in our suburban area. I was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan last summer, and there were eagles everywhere! Were I a small mammal, I’d be quaking with fear.
Grass makes up a major part of a rabbit’s diet, but I would not put it past a rabbit to beg shamelessly for an apple core or grape.
Well, he’s waiting for Gadot because a poor relationship I had with one rabbit adversely affected my view of all rabbits. Since I no longer have a veggie garden, however, I should move on emotionally.
I have the same feeling about deer.
Heh, the deer leave our landscaping alone in exchange for the fifty pounds of shelled corn we feed them each week.
The park workers added little bird nesting boxes around the lake a few years ago. I think they were intended for bluebirds, but this tree swallow seems happy with this one:
It’s the eternal struggle . Bluebirds and tree swallows co-occur and love the same nesting boxes. Both are good natives and not threatened, so it is not much harm in either taking advantage. Bluebirds are heavier, more robust and very aggressive birds and in one-on-one conflicts will usually eject tree swallows by force - literally drag them out physically. However tree swallows in numbers will can overwhelm bluebirds via harassment and win out.
The answer is to vary spacing out the nesting boxes. One pair of bluebirds can dominate one isolated nesting box, but being territorial over hunting grounds will not tolerate other bluebirds nesting too close to them. Tree swallows aren’t nearly as territorial (being exclusively aerial hunters) and will happily nest much closer to each other. Far-spaced nesting boxes - bluebirds more often win. Close-spaced tree swallows in numbers will more often do so.
Interesting thing about bluebirds, particularly the western and eastern varieties. They love ecotones - particularly edges between open fields and tree lines. When Europeans first arrived in the future US they were almost certainly rather less common, but with the development of ubiquitous small-scale farming with massive forest clearances they became much more so. Then when small-scale farming began to decline as a viable economic activity in the 20th century, the little checkerboard of tree-edged fields began filling in as they were abandoned and bluebirds declined again. And early conservationists, not necessarily realizing this, were aghast at the decline of the eastern bluebird as the common bird of their youth became more scarce! Hence the nest box campaign to try and increase the bluebird populations to the human-boosted numbers they once had .