Whoa. So cool to see so many together!
Let’s see if I can post a (very short) video, of my idiot cat thinking he can catch himself a turkey dinner.
Audio on for the concerned clucking.
No worries about the birds, Monkey (a.k.a. the dummy) came shooting back into the house like his furry butt was on fire.
I have no doubt one of Mama Birds gave him what for.
The turkeys don’t seen very worried…
They shouldn’t be. I mean, they’re mostly fluffy feathers, but a wild turkey is taller and (at least optically) bigger than a housecat.
Also, I don’t think he was expecting a 4-coalition of defensive mommas, or for the babies to be able to move so damn fast. (They can hustle when the need arises! With much “gobble gobble” of course.)
We saw a collection of big soaring birds swirling skywards on an updraft. When we got closer, we saw that it was a family of bald eagles (five or so; probably mom and pop and their chicks), and a family of red-tailed hawks. All the birds were trying to exploit the same column of warm air, and were engaging in a bit of dogfighting while they did so. It was something to see the hawks try to dive-bomb the eagles, and the eagles executing tumbling counter-maneuvers at the last second so that the hawks had to encounter the huge yellow talons.
Bald eagles are newish to this area, and I’ve seen them a couple of times, always within spitting distance of a big lake.
Yesterday, I saw the biggest caterpillar I’ve ever seen or heard of, easily four inches long and thicker than my thumb. My mom told me it was probably a tomato hornworm, and that they can sometimes get that big. How big is the adult form of those things!? I can’t imagine any sort of moth with that much mass.
The moths are big, but not huge.
That gives me the willies.
These are my most recent yard critters. An owl
A blue-tailed skink
The babies! I’m thinking Larry, Darryl, and Darryl.
Also, a great big rat snake in the barn. It might the same one we relocated some weeks ago.
So, is the barn an acceptable location for it?
If he would stick to eating rats instead of eggs! If we see him at some convenient daylight hour, we may try to relocate him again, if not, I guess we can share the barn.
We have two peach trees in our yard. One blooms and fruits early. The other has fruit that is just getting ripe now. Every day this little buck visits the tree to see if there’s anything on the ground for him. Surprisingly, the squirrels don’t seem as enamored of these peaches as they were with the other, earlier one - that tree was stripped right quick.
I’ve been going out and picking a few for us, and then picking some more and tossing them on the ground for him.
Oh good! He is so sweet (and so are you).
Welp, I’m going to get leprosy now.
I was sitting outside and something noisy was beside my chair. I aimed the phone screen down (not the flashlight part, just the glowing screen to get a little light) and saw a cat staring at something. I thought it was a possum’s tail beside me so I grabbed it. But instead of a squishy, scaly tail it was a sharp, heavily armored one. I’d grabbed an armadillo. I was holding it in the air by the tail while it thrashed around and trying to manage to turn on my phone camera with just my left hand when it got loose.
They are a recent arrival to South Carolina and that was my first ever encounter with one. I’m sad that I didn’t get a good look and photos. Maybe I’ll get another chance before all my bits fall off.
My goodness! Wouldn’t a possum bite you for grabbing its tail?
Also, my condolences about your bits. 
This morning my husband and I stood at the window and watched a herd of deer move through the yard, including the three fawns, who had the zoomies. Life is beautiful.
Nah, possums are pretty chill if they know you. And I feed my locals table scraps, they pretty much ignore being touched. If I’m in their way they’ll literally just walk right over my feet. Which is why thinking I had a possum under my chair wasn’t remotely suprising, but an armadillo was. (I knew there was an armadillo around that someone else had seen, but I hadn’t. I also have a groundhog that I haven’t met yet.)
While I was having dinner, I saw this large, fast moth buzzing around a pot of flowers. I had my camera, and banged off about 50 shots, and was able to get a few decent ones.
Striped Hawkmoth:
I believe I have identified the insects I keep seeing in my bedroom and bathroom as house centipedes. They are clearly different from the ones I used to see that I thought were silverfish. My only concern is that they are supposed to scurry away when they see people but sometimes they just freeze and one actually climbed on my foot. There are also some tiny ones but I assume they may be babies.
Everything I read says to leave them alone since they eat other insects. However, I can’t be sure since I failed insect collecting in seventh grade, which was the only F I ever got and was traumatizing because I was convinced it would keep me from the honors science track in high school which would mean I wouldn’t get into a good college and would never get into Medical School so my hopes of being a doctor were dashed by some stupid insects. ( Yes I was slightly neurotic as a child. I ended up with an A- for the course and have been a licensed doctor since 2993 so I may have overreacted but to me my world was ending and nobody cared).
In any case, do I get rid of them or let them be and is there another oblong insect with multiple pairs of skinny legs that might be what I am seeing?
ETA: image
Are you that doctor with the bright blue TARDIS?
I am also that doctor who can’t proofread.