What a beautiful place!
Cool as all get out!
Stop with the photo-bombing!
Anyway…I was up to one of my favorite pastimes, watching herons/egrets hunt because you never know when they’ll come up with something interesting (usually when I don’t have a camera or can’t get a shot). This great egret had an excellent hunting spot, standing on a submerged object in deeper water. I took pictures of him for over half an hour methodically grabbing fish every couple of minutes with a probably 80+% success rate until he was full. Little bait fish, some pretty tiny.
Searching…
Striking…
Get anything?
Yes! Wait, what?
Huh. Mad skillz, but now what?
So this bird had been feeding like a metronome - grab fish, think a few seconds, position fish, gulp down fish. But this honestly seemed to throw it for a loop. I literally have a couple hundred frames of it just standing there like this with two fish flopping in its beak as it seemed to slowly be trying to work out the geometry of just how to deal with this little problem. But finally it just seemed to shrug and bent down to drop the smaller, less secure catch.
Then down the hatch. Sensible pragmatism. One in the belly is worth two in the beak 
.
Incredible shots.
On the Bayside Trail at Cabrillo National Monument today, an Orange-throated whiptail:
Nice! That’s one of those CA herps that has eluded me over the years (I only rarely have gotten much time to explore San Diego county).
Coming back to our rental house after my granddaughter’s college graduation this morning, there was a whole flock of turkeys in the yard across the street.
Beautiful multiflora rosa blooming in the park by the river:
Alas, an invasive species
Congratulations to your grand daughter and her parents 
Red kite, patrolling over the Green Belt just outside London. Some time later, I saw it (or another bird of prey of similar size) being chased into a tree by a lone crow.
Also an exurban fox, in the open in full daylight. They’re all over the town at night, but it’s rarer to see them by day or away from built-up areas.
As I was walking the dog early this morning, I heard bird commotion - squawking and flapping. I then saw a small-ish hawk attacking what looked like a woodpecker of some kind in mid-air. The hawk had the woodpecker in its grip but then the woodpecker just fell to the ground. I doubt if it made it. I hope the hawk went back to it and didn’t just leave it there. Mother Nature is cruel.
We found this yellow rat snake in our barn yesterday. I had seen a video on YouTube of a guy catching a rat snake in the woods; he just picked it up by the tail. It curled around to look at him and then hung still. So I grabbed this snakie by the tail, but he was a lot longer than the one in the video, and when he curled around to look at me, he was able to get a lot closer than I expected! I let him go, but then caught him again and held on without lifting him off the ground until Mr. Beetle got there with a bucket. Then we took him for a little drive in the country. I’d say he was six feet long at least.
Yeah, that’s a good one. I used to have one around that size as a pet (back when I still kept snakes as pets, that was decades ago). They’re generally pretty mellow in temperament as rat snakes go. I’ve never had one try to bite me and I’ve bitten by many, many (so, so many) snakes over the years . Not to say they won’t, just that they often don’t.
That reminds me - a couple of days ago we saw a heron being mobbed by crows. That’s a first.
j
Deer hobos:
Saw this black and yellow bird yesterday.
I only had my iPhone, and he was too skittish for me to get close enough for a good photo, so this is what I got:
This was in Durango, CO.
Any idea what it is?
BTW, I started a companion thread:
Looks like a Black-headed Grosbeak to me.
I concur.
Yesterday out on the (off road) bike in the Surrey countryside I was brought to a halt by the racket emanating from a pond a little way off the trail. This has happened to me once before, in the same location, possibly at the same pond, about ten years ago. That time I assumed ducks - but there were none, and I was forced to conclude frogs, Same deal this time - sounds somewhat like ducks, but evidently frogs. But… British frogs don’t do that. This time I made a recording.
My friend F, who is a birder but with wider interests, listened and reckons non-indigenous, possibly European Bullfrog, which might also explain why the racket was going on well after the regular frog breeding period.
Last night it rained heavily. We were in Shoreham-by Sea this morning, and there were snails everywhere - enough to make walking hazardous. We watched a crow picking up snails, taking flight, and then dropping them on shingle to break them open. Smart birds.
j