I’ve been watching 3 young buns in our backyard in the last few days. They really frolic around compared to the older bunnies.
Playful bunnies!!
Saw a woodpecker on my suet as I was rushing out the door to work, and I’m almost certain it was a flicker, which I’ve never seen before!
I snapped a few quick, blurry pictures before rushing out earlier, and looking them over … yep, definitely a flicker!
As I emerged from the dentist office yesterday, I was startled by an eagle that swooped across the road with a large snake dangling from it’s talons.
I’m watching two pairs of brown-headed cowbirds picking at the seed I tossed out. It’s interesting how closely the pairs seem bonded to each other: it’s clearly 2x2 and not a small flock of 4.
A friend of mine who is a hardcore birder, told me he IDs birds by asking, “how is that bird not a brown headed cowbird?”
His reasoning is that the brown headed cowbird is the most generic bird in existence, so it makes a good starting point.
Today’s nature encounter, a male and female green anole. They were too skittish to pick up gently, but calm enough to allow fairly close photos. Pretty sure I was buzzkilling their canoodling. (Multiple photos in the link.)
Nice closeup.
The anoles I came across outside my hotel room in Marathon Key weren’t as shy as yours…
I saw a black snake for a split second. We have several large Loropetalum bushes in a row in front of the house and there’s a water spigot on the wall behind the last one. I was walking around that last one to get to the spigot when I surprised him - he was just coming out from behind them. He shot back into the bushes like he’d been launched.
This is why I never step behind those bushes - I can’t see what’s on the ground back there. So I lean way over to turn on the water.
See, I would have assumed they were completely promiscuous given the female’s laying habits. But turns out they swing every which way 
:
The mating system of Brown-headed Cowbirds shows similar flexibility, ranging from monogamy, to a mixture of monogamy and polygyny, to total promiscuity. The type of mating system seen in a given area is influenced by the spatial distribution of host nests and by the sex ratio (proportions of males and females) of the local cowbird population. From here.
I actually think the adult males are relatively handsome birds, but then I do like that glossy/iridescent black so many blackbirds have. But I’ll admit the females can be a bit drab and arguably generic-looking LBJs.
Would this, perhaps, be seed purchased from your employed?
God, no.
… but once it gets a bit warmer at night, yes, I’ll be starting some seeds of the fun stuff. There’s a gardening thread somewhere around here where everyone is sharing their seedling tales.
ETA linky:
Under the heading of aptonyms, there’s a podiatrist in my town named Dr. Achille
Rattlesnake bite my dog. An unsavory outcome for all of us involved.
I was close enough to a hummer sleeping on a feeder that I could have reached out and touched him. He slept long enough for me to sneak inside and have hubs sneak outside with me to have an up close look. After about 7 minutes, he woke up, shook his feathers out, got drink and flew out to join battle again.
Arizona here, during the evening feeds there are at least 40 flying pigs at our feeders.
I understand that there are rattlesnake vaccines for dogs, @Gatopescado. Perhaps that might be worth looking into for your pack.
Wait, what? How’s your pupper, @Gatopescado ?
He made it through the night!
Glad to hear it!
Our grosbeaks are back.
I was idly looking out the kitchen window while putting away the breakfast dishes this morning and watching a group of six white ibis in my yard. This is pretty common - we had rain overnight, so worms and burrowing insects had likely come to the surface making easy pickins for the birds.
The ibises had been there about ten minutes when two great blue herons flew in about ten yards away. The herons then ran and flapped and squawked at the ibises and scared them all away. The herons then stood looking at each other and looking up at the direction the ibises flew for about about a minute as if to say “Well that was easy”. Then they both flew off in the other direction.
Wade bird gang wars?