Huh, I didn’t realize you were another Clevelander.
You’re sure they weren’t turkey vultures? Those things are huge. Did they have the “fingered” wing feathers?
No, flat dihedrals, no tilting in flight (these banked, but slowly), TV’s have no white rump patches, shape of the wings way different, and while bigger than a Red-Tail, TVs don’t utterly dwarf them.
Common Buckeye spotted at the Pollinator Garden of a local park
This started out as a little fluffy cloud. An hour later…
Say, Mr. Snake, did you see a couple of eggs over here? I could’ve sworn they were there earlier.
So it looks like the big ol’ rat snake is still hanging around the barn. I actually came upon him when he was curled up in the tire with one big lump inside, sitting next to the remaining egg. At first, I said, “Hey man, get away from that egg! It’s mine!” and then I realized I’d really rather see him eat it. So I hung around and watched him do it, it was cool! I furthermore decided he’s welcome to live in the barn if he wants to. I’ll just have to pick up eggs a little earlier in the day if I want some.
Oof. Now I have heartburn (just like when I see a heron swallow a fish whole).
That’s just remarkable. Is it enhanced or “as it comes”?
j
Reporting back. We spent the afternoon at Warnham nature reserve, which is mostly a birding thing (we saw kingfishers!), but also this (below) - I mean, it’s an incredibly well known trope (if that’s the right word), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a frog sitting on a lily pad before. There were dozens of them doing it.
And for dinner we went to (of course) The Royal Oak Inn & Meerkat Retreat in Brockham. Our animal nut guest described it as “The perfect day”, and I’m pretty sure she meant it.
Fun quiz! What are these meerkats very intently looking at? (Click thru for the full picture).
Answer: a helicopter. They were immediately interested and stared intently til it disappeared. As our friend observed, it’s a thing in the sky - who’s to say that it isn’t an eagle?
j
Just slightly adjusted in the iPhone.
I find straight-from-the-camera to be a bit flat.
I came across this spider finishing up her web a couple of days ago, in my back yard. The two horizontal-ish support strands were over six feet long, running between a small cherry tree and an arbor vitae.
This morning on my commute I saw a rainbow. About 10% of my students did, too. I’m not sure if the others were less observant, or just weren’t in the right place (we draw students from a huge geographic area).
One way you can tell it’s heading toward fall here is the sheer number of spiders and webs that are showing up everywhere here - between trees, in corners on the porch, across the front door where I walk into it face first ….
A couple of common dragonflies. A male Blue-eyed Darner (three guesses where the name came from), which interestingly is missing a chunk of one wing. Probably a bird went for him - I saw an egret make an unsuccessful stab at a mating pair that same day. But it had absolutely no impact on his flight ability that I could tell - he was still zipping about rapidly when he wanted:
A much, much easier capture, a female Variegated Meadowhawk with the landing gear down (which has a scientific name with a great specific epithet - Sympetrum corruptum, “corrupt” because of the jumbled pattern). One thing I really find neat about photographing dragonflies as how light generally reflects off the eye in a hexagon pattern, reflecting the thousands of tiny hexagonal ommatidia that underlie that compound eye. You can really see it well in this one and the one above, with the grid underlying it shining through:
Correct 
!
My mom used to call them (the insects) darning needles.
Yeah, that was very common. “Darning needle-dragonfly, sew up these ears, so they not hear… Darning needle-dragonfly, sew up these eyes so they not see!” from Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).
I was actually making a joke about those VERY obvious blue eyes, but I like your reply better.
Just linking to the documentary thread, as I think this is a related-enough topic for this thread. Documentary of the ‘Big Year’ birding adventure of two non-birders and the world of competitive listers. Good fun.
Not my crowd, I should say. I don’t keep lists. But I have twitched a few times. Only a few, though - I try to resist the urge to chase the real crowd-drawing vagrants 
When I was a kid, I was told they were called sewing needles, and they would sew up your mouth if you lied!
Seen yesterday on my walk, a western fence lizard showing of its spots.
