A ghastly, enormous Eastern lubber grasshopper tried to rip my face off Friday night. You might have heard some screaming. It did at least climb up the back of my chair, and then when I turned around we were eye to eye! Brrrr! I hate those things.
My husband and I were walking the trails of a nearby park. I happened to looked up a trail that branched off of the one we were on. And there about 30 feet away were two black bears. They kind of glanced at us but continued to eat something off of some bushes or trees. I saw a lot of choke cherry trees around so that’s probably what they were eating. I also saw a lot of bear poop containing seeds along the trails!
^ Well, that answers that question.
Next: Is the Pope Catholic?
There are about a jillion of these little guys at my house. I took a picture of one of the noisy ones.
Last week I was on vacation at the Jersey Shore. I saw a humpback whale from the beach. I’ve seen whales on an Alaskan cruise but this is the first time I’ve seen one from the shoreline at home.
I wasn’t too far from where this story was from on the same day so there was video of the one I saw.
Today I saw a Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) near Dead Dog Well at the end of Dead Dog Leg Road.
Didn’t see, but heard last night: two Barred Owls.
From “All About Birds:” “Barred Owls have a distinctive hooting call of 8–9 notes, described as “ Who cooks for you ? Who cooks for you ?” This call carries well through the woods and is fairly easy to imitate. During courtship, mated pairs perform a riotous duet of cackles, hoots, caws and gurgles.”
It must be mating season, because a “riotous duet” was what I heard! “Who cooks for you” from the woods next to my house, and a fainter “who cooks for you” from a distance to the west. The owl closest to me was also cackling, cawing, and gurgling to beat the band!
Pretty neat!
The deer and ducks ate up all the corn we put out, so the turkey flock with their chicks came up to our front porch to eat fallen sunflower seeds.
While driving through Grand Teton National Park last Friday saw a Grizzly Bear with four yearling cubs crossing the road.
Yellowstone National Park was notable for what we didn’t see. There were lots of Bison but not even one Elk or Moose. In past years there have been plenty of each.
Tried to post this earlier (Beck! don’t look!):
Imagine getting a face full of that!
Loach, that’s pretty cool about the whales. I have likewise seen them from a boat in Alaska (at a distance), but I don’t imagine I’ll be seeing them off the coast of Florida anytime soon.
A slug really going to town on some mushroom cap.
(That was 30 minutes in realtime.)
Yesterday I saw either a common five-lined skink or a southeastern five-lined skink. I had never heard of a skink before. I don’t do reptiles but I saw this tiny lizard with a shockingly bright blue tail and I just had to google it. Thanks to the Virginia herpetological society I have now learned something totally new. I have also realized that I am stunningly uninformed about lizards in general. I blame the California public school system.
A mushroom that exploded. Here it is Thursday night and Friday night.
Hm. Has imgur stopped imbedding images now?
I was entertained by the tiny snail cousin wandering in for a bite.
I wonder if there’s any snobbish judgey-ness? (“God, at least I have a home even if I do have to schlep it around wherever I go. You’re all homeless and shit.”)
We’ve had a bumper crop of five-lined skinks this year. This is what they look like, very pretty:
Yep, that’s pretty much what I saw. I was just interested because I don’t think I had ever seen such bright blue in nature, especially since it was just the tail and the rest was normal lizard color.
I saw a field of dead sunflowers 
.
It was kind of cool, in a creepy, Stephen King kind of way.
Children of the Corn? No. How about Children of the Dead Sunflowers?
Yeah, you don’t see that every day. I wonder what it sounds like when the wind blows…