It took awhile to catch this big boy in my garage, and put him back outside:
I bet! He looks fast. What is it?
Maybe some type of Leopard Lizard?
Western/tiger whiptail at a guess. They’re somewhat variable in amount of pattern with multiple subspecies, but see that bottom shot for a reasonably close match.
Some type of whiptail, anyway. There are a few (in some places several) different species anywhere you go in the southwest and a couple of them can look kinda similar.
Nice catch, by the way - they’re elusive 
. I’ve spent plenty of time stalking them in years past only to quite frequently come up empty-handed.
Yesterday we went to Leeds Castle in Kent. Castle and grounds - very pretty castle, lovely grounds, and an unexpected highlight.
The grounds were great, as I said – one surprising and really nice thing was the number of alpha raptors there were – red kites and buzzards circling overhead. Ducks and geese, and other waterbirds, everywhere. A fun maze - and then there was a falconry display. Now, I do have reservations about falconry – they are wild birds, after all – but we went to the display anyway. And so far as it was possible to tell, the birds looked perfectly happy. So, three species on display: A Spotted Eagle Owl; Harris’s Hawks (mother and son); and a Black Kite/Red Kite hybrid (side note: the hybrid occurs in nature, so it’s not some funky interbreeding program). There were half a dozen handlers amongst the (very widely spaced) crowd, and the boss providing a commentary. They fly the birds through the crowd – very special to see them that close.
Last on stage (as it were) is the star of the show, the Black/Red Kite. And as he soars aloft, I realize that there are in fact two kites, flying together. I had just about enough time to think: But I thought there was only going to be one? before the commentator noticed, and explained. That ain’t their kite – one of the local kite population had seen another kite flying around and just decided to join in. It was an astonishing and wonderful moment – for 20 or 30 seconds the pair soared together, before the interloper flew off and the star got on with the show. Quite the unexpected highlight – though I have to say that the commentator did not sound stunned, so I wonder if it’s one of those things that just happens now and again. Glorious, anyway.
j
And here is the star of the show:
Fabulous birds. Plus a bonus picture - a spotted eagle owl taking off. Click for the full picture:
j
Wow, so beautiful.
So cool! We’ll be seeing a falconry display in Edinburgh when we visit in August. Looking forward to seeing these amazing birds up close.
Harmless black racer snek lurking in the garage:
White-tailed deer stopping by for a drink:
A funny little thing from being out on the bike today. You know sometimes birding guides give you a silhouette of the bird in flight? The idea being that if you see the bird flying in a bright sky, that’s all you’re going to have to ID it. So: bright day today, I’m on some small country roads, and naturally I’m looking pretty intently at the road surface - the roads in this country are in an appalling condition, so you better watch out. And as I was doing so, a shadow moved across the road. Kestrel!, I thought - and I was right. Those silhouettes work in more ways than I realized.
Here’s a photo from our visit to Leeds Castle that I completely forgot about - goose and goslings
Guys who know about such things - some sort of albinism going on there? (Though my colorblind eyes are seeing yellow in the beak.)
j
They look like Greylag Geese to me (may be wrong, just one photo can be deceptive) and those have hybridized and been domesticated and gone feral and been domesticated again in such a complicated way that you can find quite a variety of colours among them. I found a very similar pattern on a greylag Goose from New Zealand! Here: the third picture in the first row and the fourth picture in the fourth row look just like your bird, perhaps even a paler shade of white. Don’t think it is albinism, the eyes do not seem to be red and in the New Zealand flocks pictured they are much too frequent (see fourth picture in the fifth row) for a recessive mutation.
Interesting photos (and I’ll take the liberty of pointing out to all, that you need to scroll down to see the panel of images). Yes, I believe they’re greylag; and I have never previously seen a greylag that wasn’t, well, greylag-colored. Odd that just one is strikingly different, no?
j
I did not think of the possibility that on a different device the pictures might be down, on my laptop they are on the top right, I guess you are watching on a long and slender display, a phone maybe? Thanks for pointing that out.
And glad you liked them!
This. Minnesota has wild blueberries too. I stumbled upon a grower who had those delicious tiny berries growing in a rather large patch and I would go pick them every summer. It’s a bit painstaking to do so by hand because they are lowbush. But, disaster happened and his wife landed in the hospital so he had to sell the land to pay bills. There are homes there now and no sign of those lovely wild berries.
I go to a different, organic grower now. His blueberries are still better than store bought but they aren’t a patch on the ones I used to pick.
Today I saw Twilight Peak:
I was in the barn, and reached for something only to realize there was a big central ratsnake on the shelf.
Notice the dull appearance? It looks like he was ready to shed. The snake was also uncharacteristically grouchy.
I went around and found his head end for a closer look;
See his eye? It’s opaque, and he was very unhappy with me. I should have grabbed him for a closer look. Maybe he has retained spectacles on that eye.
Cool! Maybe he’ll leave you his skin as a souvenir.
Two unexpected sightings in recent days:
A groundhog at a construction site near a metro station
A five-lined skink in Maryland (the mid-Atlantic is not known for reptiles):
Worst skin souvenir ever was a few years back, in our basement. It was huge. Trapped and relocated mice and the snake left once there was no food.
We have a ton of those skinks at our house. They’re really beautiful little critters.