While walking a nature trail this morning, we saw a wild boar sow with her three piglets. Two were striped like proper wild boar piglets, and one was spotted like a domestic piglet. They were all feeding underneath a big oak tree, on acorns I suppose.
Was it scary (like seeing a bear) or not (like seeing a deer)?
Not scary, like seeing a deer. They were just grazing peacefully. However, in the back of my mind, I still remember that it’s a wild boar and I do not turn my back on them.
Here in South East England it’s an amazing year for buzzards (but ours are less threatening). It seems like every time I go anywhere even slightly rural I see them (and hear them mewing). We went for a walk with friends today and saw them on half a dozen occasions. Back in their (suburban) garden, we saw more in the distance, wheeling away - and a red kite overhead.
It was a very mild winter. I’m guessing that a lot of edible critters made it through to spring and have been busy producing more buzzard food.
j
Virtue rewarded. I went out to water a drooping plant and saw one of my pileated friends again. I was also treated to a long Woody Woodpecker-like vocalization.
‘Mewing’ is not the way I would describe the noise they make. It’s more screechy. Gnashing of beaks. Blood curdling pecks. 
Maybe English buzzards are nicer. 
Video of (English) buzzards mewing
This is going to sound like I made it up, but it’s completely true: I was out on the bike today on this road - the branches of the trees from either side of the road meet overhead, so it’s like riding down a tunnel. I scared up a buzzard which was in these branches, and so it flew down the “tunnel” just a few yards ahead of me, only a couple of feet above head height for maybe two hundred yards before it veered up and off to the right. Fabulous - and it’s the third time that sort of thing has happened to me this year (!).
As I said, there are buzzards everywhere this year.
j
3 redtail hawks recently fledged in our neighborhood. Boy, they sure are dumb when young. Kinda surprising to walk down a suburban residential street, and see 3 birds that large flap closely overhead, then perch in a tree - or on a roof - and start screaming.
On our bike ride today we saw a coyote that was so big, at first I thought it was a deer.
I was in the garden early. Saw tell-tale tiny cloven hoof prints.
I’m pretty sure Satan doesn’t live here, so it’s a new litter of feral piglets. The hotwire doesn’t deter them.
I must set up a
surveillance and sniper post.
Eh, I may let them have what’s left after I grab the last
of the butterbeans.
I’m so over the garden.
Today I saw a Western Tiger Swallowtail, two Rock Squirrel, two Prairie Lizards, a male and a female Lesser Goldfinch, two male and two female House Finches, a female Black-headed Grosbeak, a Colorado Chipmunk, two Woodhouse’s Scrub Jays, a White-breasted Nuthatch, two Mourning Doves, three Pine Siskens, a Black-capped Chickadee, and a Western Wood Pewee.
We had about an inch of rain this morning which cleared up about a half hour before my ride, so the wildlife was pretty sparse, just three deer and a rabbit. Again, I wished them all a good morning, mush to the amusement of the jogger nearby.
LIke I said, not much wildlife, but boy-howdy, the creek was about two feet over average,and was quite a sight.
This morning I saw some bald-faced hornets that had discovered a group of black soldier flies. I saw two hornets at once, but there had to be more because they kept coming back until they ate around a half-dozen of them, and they were near the same size as the hornets. I was sadly unsuccessful in getting clear photos of the eating because the were moving too much (often eating the fly on the fly) but here are a couple of shots of one of the flies they had apparently stung and dropped (look at the pretty pale blue halteres!) and one of one of the hornets not eating, plus a blurry shot of a snacking.
English buzzards are totally different to American buzzards-aka-turkey vultures. I am aware of this because I used to work in a gift shop, where we sold a range of cheap gliding toys which were claimed to be UK birds. The actual models were, but the packets had amazing Engrish on (they were called 'Bird Glidings for a start) along with pictures of completely different birds, including American ones with similar names.
Anyway, there do seem to be a lot of buzards here in the South West this year as well, I’ve had a few close encounters lately, including watching a what appeared to be a parent trying to teach a lazy baby to chase it for food.
Yep! Fledglings are a riot. Over on reddit in r/whatsthisbird people often post pics of fledgling hawks sitting on their deck railing, acting goofy.
I’ve been going around each morning with my gf as she fills bird feeders just to check out the crow fledgling that we are “training” to take food we offer.
Then there are Robins!
I have a family of purple finches that visit my feeder. For the longest time, there was one that could not figure out how the feeder works. It would sit on deck raising a ruckus while its siblings were eating happily away, an its very harried mother would ferry food to it.
Yeah- the early Europeans in America really didn’t think about the problems they were gonna cause for future naturalists when they named all the things after what they were used to. It’s almost like they didn’t consider future conversations on the internet at all…
Yesterday at Humphreys on Shelter Island in San Diego - a gull enjoying some leftovers
Awesome! I was just thinking this thread needed some pictures.
An armadillo. Not in the usual fashion (dead by the side of or in the road), but an honest to god, living breathing armadillo in a woodland setting. The Texas speed bump walks!