This morning we watched from our living room as two turkey hens and at least twenty recently hatched chicks ate some of the corn my gf put out for wildlife. After they’d eaten their fill and moved on, eight mallards walked over from our pond to eat some corn. Then three deer arrived and they and the mallards squabbled for a while over the corn.
I don’t think it counts as “in nature”, but a few weeks back spider eggs hatched inside my van. There have been attempts to whisk out the webbing. Today I noticed that at least five baby spiders are still there, spinning small webs here and there.
Wondering what they could possibly be eating in my van leads me to wonder what a spider that small would be eating anyway. They are tiny.
I was surprised to see a raccoon on one of our birdfeeders in the middle of the day. I took a picture, then went outside and was surprised to see it was a squirrel with a raccoon-looking tail.
A sighting of the rare Squicoon!
Oh cool!
In a pasture just off the roadside I saw a nice clutch of vultures feasting on a dead calf.
Loads of dragonflies and damselflies- at least 5 different species of them, including a few I couldn’t identify.
My son found one of the young finches that use our feeder dead on the ground by the sliding-glass door.
In more happy news our hummingbird feeder is buzzing with activity. If you consider Hummingbird Thunderdome happy, that is.
Off road on the bike today, I had two deer run across the trail just in front of me, mommy and junior.
Nice karma: I was only on that trail because it was a cold August day today, so I could wear longs (as opposed to shorts) for protection against tics in the long grass sections that route takes you through. If I have to protect myself against deer-borne tics and Lyme disease, I deserve to see deer!
j
For the past couple weeks, a large (Banana?) spider has set up shop right outside the window of our office/computer room. It’s easily the size of a lady’s palm. Huge, beautiful web; I saw it snag a wasp last week and make short work of it. Yesterday, I glanced out the window and saw something four inches long and green hanging from a single strand about four feet down from our eight legged tenant. It was one of our Florida lizards caught by the tail and I thought it was dead. Tapped on the glass next to it and it turned its head towards me and said Can you help a brother out? My wife freaked, so I bolted for the leaf rake and freed the little monster without damaging the web at all. It sat on the window sill for a few minutes looking around then ran off. The spider gave me the finger (I think it was a finger).
I know, I know: natural selection says I should have left Mr. Lizard to his fate as he’s too stupid to breed, but then I wondered if the spider would have been a four-course meal to the lizard and I messed up his dinner plans. What’s a hooman to do?
I think the finch family (minus one 
) Knows something is up. Laura is supposed to pass over us this afternoon/tonight. They have been at the feeder all morning gorging themselves.
Snails making snails.
Making this involved two 10-minute sessions of lying on my side on the ground holding a phone just in case anything interesting happened, but it paid off with probably the best nature video that I have ever made. Main video is sped to 8x realtime, zoomed clip at the end 4x.
Earlier in the day I had found a bunch of really small snails. (Video at 4x
)
Awesome job burpo! I too have been known to grasp the lingua franca of the small creatures when the situation is dire. 
I’ve been meaning to take a picture of one of the banana spiders in our yard. You better believe I keep an eye out for those things and remember where they are, because they’re terrifying.
Darren, you have amazing powers of patience. Maybe a little music next time to help them along? I’m thinking, “Slow Hand” by The Pointer Sisters.
Egad! The spider tales will keep me up tonight.
Banana spiders are not cute.
We’ve had an Owl nesting right off the yard by in a thick tree line. I’ve seen his shadow on the ground at twilight. I assume he’s hunting for the many rabbits that think my garden is their personal buffet.
Mr.Wrek has seen the Owl down at the pond.
While walking in the hills this morning, we saw four deer. It was a doe and her two almost full-sized doe fawns, and they were all being followed by a young buck. He looked like he was growing his very first set of antlers, as they were just one velvet spike each, with no forks. He was hopefully following them and trying to make their acquaintance, but the does were having none of it. In fact, the mature doe was doing some fancy sproinging into the air away from him as though demonstrating both her disinterest and her physical fitness. We saw them later as we returned, and the young buck was nowhere to be seen.
Today I saw numerous male and female House Finches, three Rock Squirrels, a male and two female Broad-tailed Hummingbirds, a male and a female Lesser Goldfinch, a juvenile New Mexico Whiptail, a juvenile Prairie Lizard, a Black-capped Chickadee, a White-breasted Nuthatch, a Sharp-shinned Hawk, a Canyon Towhee, a Common Raven, a Pine Sisken, a Turkey Vulture, a Cooper’s Hawk, a Western Bluebird, two Chipping Sparrows, an Evening Grosbeak, a male Black-chinned Hummingbird, and a Pine Grosbeak.
Don’t look, Beck!
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I’m not sure that’s a banana spider.
Yellow aphids. Sucking on the all the milkweeds Not sure how much harm they do but I search and destroy on my perimeter patrols.
One of these guys: Grey Fox
Standing in a brushy area across from the gas station where I filled up. Seen plenty of red foxes around here, but this was my first grey fox sighting. Pretty cool customer. Just looked at me for ten seconds or so, the turned and walked back into the woods.
the dragonflies are FINALLY out in force. The sky’s full of them, and they are now gorging on the bumper crop of mosquitoes we’ve had, the worst I ever saw. That was thanks to the 7 inches of rain my neighborhood got (7 & 1/8" per the rain gauge) 3 weeks ago. We’re able to go outside now without mosquito netting impregnated with DEET.