When I lived in Miami my German neighbor commented about Florida:
“every time I go outside there’s something on the sidewalk that either wants to sting me or eat my house”
(a) That’s a remarkable caterpillar
(b) That link has more amazing pictures (caterpillar, moth, the whole shooting match) than a person could reasonably shake a stick at.
j
Thanks! I’m lucky to live in a somewhat rural area where I can see such interesting critters.
My daughter has been in Florida this past week visiting her brother and his daughter (her niece, my granddaughter).
She freaked out the other day when she saw an armadillo in their yard. What a crazy state!
Pickings have been thin recently. In the last few weeks I saw…uh… some geese in a field. A heron (it flew off when it saw me). A kestrel on a wire. Actually, that flew off when I cycled past as well. Yeah - not a lot to report. But then…
We went out to Lewes today. Walking back to the car through a park, we crossed the River Ouse on a footbridge - a group two or three people were staring upstream; I overheard one of them say “Kingfisher…” - and there it was, perched on a branch at the side of the river. Apparently it had just caught a fish, and was resting up briefly. We watched for several minutes as it skipped to another branch and eventually flew off upstream. Previously, I have only seen them in flight (with one exception, below), so this was a real treat. You don’t see them often - so infrequently that I can remember every occasion (and I’m still short of double figures for total sightings.)
I don’t think of a kingfisher as an urban bird, but it’s not the first time we’ve seen kingfishers in Lewes - the previous occasion was right in the town center, again from a bridge over the Ouse. On that occasion we watched a pair working up and down the river, occasionally taking a break and perching on the bank. Great stuff.
j
It is a relief to report that I have spotted a female cardinal making home here for the winter. Avian flu is still a concern but having heard cardinals but not spotted any all summer has been worrying as last year they seemed plentiful. And the chickadees settled in before the snow flew last night. Snow is gone now but still gray and cold.
I was in Florence, Italy a couple weeks ago and saw a cormorant and an egret fishing in the Arno. And a pigeon which walked down the stairs from the second floor of the Mercato Centrale with us. I guess it forgot it could fly?
Getting ready for Thanksgiving.
Or if you prefer:
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat…
More seriously, you know I said
OK, so this photo is from today - season of mists and all that - and this is just a few geese out of what I would estimate to be about 300*, all doing exactly what you see them doing in the photo. And making gobbling noises. They’ve been hanging around the same fields for weeks now - actually, I think numbers are building, because I wasn’t previously struck by the size of the group.
In my mind, the conversation went:
We migrating this year?
Nah. Too much effort, and winters don’t get that cold these days. We’re just going to hang around and chill, waiting for spring…
j
* - I could have posted a photo with much higher numbers, but you’d just be looking at dots in the mist.
Today in my kitchen I saw nature! With four dogs here, I don’t even know who to thank for this fine gift.
It is much to mild for november, but a nice autum feeling:
Mushrooms everywhere:
Decay (and more mushrooms, if you look closely):
There must be something underground that somemone likes very much. Wild boars, I guess. Wonder when we will see the first one face to face, and who will run faster and in which direction. Opposite directions, I hope!
What did not come out right in the pictures (too far away): two great spotted woodpeckers (recognizable by their red belly plumage) and a robin (also red). And very far away, flying high, a grey heron. Sometimes they stay here over winter. The frogs seem to be hybernating, last one I saw was three weeks ago.
We got our first ‘staying on the ground’ snow today. It is melting, but very slowly. I’m glad we good some good, steady, rain last week for the ground to suck up before the snow arrived. Expecting more snow tomorrow and the next day. I’d like to fly south for winter.
I had a chance to meet my new front door neighbor this afternoon: a young eastern cottontail. Judging by his ear length, he can’t be much more than twelve weeks old.
I wished him a good, safe winter, and promised to leave him some apple cores.
I was raking and leveling the spot by my house where a tree stump was just ground up when my efforts exposed a thumbnail-sized black beetle of some kind. I stood there and looked at it for a while as it scrabbled over the mulch. Then a largish brown anole ran over and with great effort stuffed it into his mouth. Then the anole looked up at me for a second, mouth stretched into a grin by the huge beetle, turned tail, and ran off back under some shade.
Obviously I feel for the beetle, but I do love watching the lizards hunt.
You might not like it when the Ibis all visit and de-bug my lawn…
So I was here this morning, wherein dwells these guys. Also these guys. A little drama ensued, unfortunately mostly not caught on camera. First part was, though. Mr.(Ms.) Mouse decided to very determinedly swim a wide channel from a mainland-attached marsh to a little marshy islet:
About a quarter way across a passing gull swooped at him (I really regret missing that shot). The mouse dived underwater and quickly swam back completely submerged and more or less doing a backstroke (I could see its pale belly underwater) and crawled back into the reeds right where I knew there were two Ridgway Rails hidden based on their recent calls. There was a commotion in the reed with the actual action invisible to me, followed by some agonized squeaks and then triumphant rail croaking as one threatened species presumably devoured an endangered one. Saw five Ridgway’s today and heard several more, but photos were largely unsuccessful. But a couple of earlier one from the same spot:
ETA: Actually if you look at that photo in that first linked wiki, I was standing at the end of that pier. The mouse emerged from the marsh grass that starts right behind the tip and was headed for that separate chunk of marsh on the right. Just to give you an idea of how far that mouse had to swim to make it across.
That’s quite a drama. Poor little mousie. RIP
Okay, Latin names are not my forte, but Ridgway’s rail = Rallus obsoletus ?
Obsoletus? Is there a newer, better rail these days, or do I just need to be educated?
(I’m guessing the latter.)
j
Ironically It IS the new better rail 
. It used to be a subspecies of the Clapper Rail, when it was referred to as the California Clapper Rail, Rallus longirostris obsoletus. Longirostris just means “long-billed.” When used as a specific or subspecific epithet obsoletus usually doesn’t mean obsolete per se, but rather “plain” or “worn out” and often refers to a lack of pattern. Ridgway rails are very, very similar-looking to the clapper rails from whence they were split (for genetic reasons) and are actually brighter colored. But they don’t have the same grey cheeks as the clapper and at a guess it might have been that which earned them that name.