Oh good job, man! Thank you. 
Went for r a country stroll in rural Surrey today and saw- I dunno, flocks (?) - of butterflies. More than I’ve ever seen at one time, I think. Managed to get a snap of one - meadow brown.
Not much of a photo but a decent excuse to add that we stopped off at a pub and had a beer sitting next to these guys.
j
Damn. Click through on both photos.
j
Have you posted about that meercat pub before? I’m sure I’ve seen that somewhere on the board…
Yeah I have - same place - but this time (sheer dumb luck) I got the photo I wanted.
j
Meerkat pub is on my bucket list.
The toilet tank was running after midnight, went to check why…
(Had to decide if this was “nature” or “civilization”.)
I was fixing the stairs on my back deck this weekend, and I kept hearing a strange new bird call. It sounded like a man loudly imitating a crow’s kaw. I finally decided to use the Cornell Lab Merlin bird ID app - a ‘common’ raven. I’ve never (knowingly) encountered one, but I couldn’t get a glimpse through the trees.
Just after I came back inside from working, my 9-year-old followed from checking on his tomato plant on the deck and excitedly said, “I just saw a crow as big as I am!”
Keep it as a pet, name it “The Plumber.”
That’s adorable.
Poor snakie, just going for a midnight skinny dip! He looks upset that you caught him.
Black Rat Snake?
It’s a beauty.
Too bad the toilet was occupied after that surprise.
I was geocaching and I ended up next to a telephone pole that a woodpecker had pecked out holes the full length of the pole and had filled each one with an acorn. There were hundreds of them. And then as we were about to leave, the woodpecker appeared and started working!
In my yard we have lizards. Just common fence lizards about 3 - 5" long. Yesterday, I found this shedded skin. It looks lik it came from a much larger lizard.
I didn’t know that was a thing that woodpeckers did. Why? Does it preserve the habitat for the bugs, so there will be more there the next time the bird comes a-pecking?
I did not know either. I just now googled it and apparently it is a thing. How have I gone this long and have heard about this?
It’s interesting that they weren’t drilling holes from scratch, but enlarging the existing cracks.
Acorn Woodpecker looks like (who could have guessed! 
). They are collective breeders who usually live in highly territorial extended family “clans” a little bit like lion prides that closely guard communal “granary trees” like your telephone pole.
I’d guess from the elongated shape some species of Alligator Lizard. They’re quite common and kinda fun. I used to amaze friends by catching one and to show how pugnacious they are I’d let them bite my hand and then dangle them in the air that way. They didn’t like to let go once they had clamped down on the offending limb 
‘Cause the free wind is blowin’ through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there
Seasons crying no despair
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air.
Nope, the acorns themselves are the food resource and a scarce one. Oak trees are unpredictable fruiters - some years produce massive numbers of acorns, some relatively few if any. So cacheing them is a viable strategy for slim years. Scrub Jays bury them individually, squirrels squirrel them away, but Acorn Woodpeckers have gone the collective granary route. It’s the strategy that probably is what caused them to develop their highly unusual social structure.
This just in, there is a peacock at my front door right now. I have no idea where it came from - first time we’ve received it as a visitor.
“Excuse me sir, do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?”