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Mama and Papa purple finch had their youngsters out for lunch on the lawn today. Fun to watch. I especially am amused at how the young continue to use the wing flutter to signal they are ready for the next bite while patient parents teach them to "make your own sandwich."
Hubby took down the porch light fixtures to paint. He surprised a family of 3 lizards living behind one of them. They aren’t the common green anoles, but gray and speckled. I’ll post a picture, but it’s hard to see.
They have moved out now, but what a great racket they had going. The lights attracted bugs right to their spot, which must have been nice and warm too.
Hubby took down the porch light fixtures to paint. He surprised a family of 3 lizards living behind one of them. They aren’t the common green anoles, but gray and speckled. I’ll post a picture, but it’s hard to see.
They have moved out now, but what a great racket they had going. The lights attracted bugs right to their spot, which must have been nice and warm too.
I think it's the brown anole, aka Cuban Anole, native to the Bahamas that stowed aboard ships bound for FL back in the late 1800s.
Gopher tortoises in my friend’s yard. It looks like a tussle between two males, there’s probably a female nearby. Apparently each sex has its own burrow, they get together as needed.
I've never seen tortoises like that before. Going to look them up. Looks like they have leather on their backs
Young robin, singleton, tentatively taking his first (?) bath in the protection of my hostas. He's as cute in his efforts as all young creatures are learning their lessons.
With all the fluttering going on another bird comes by to have a look. Mom swoops out of nowhere.
When the intruder has left Mom flies to the bath and gives Junior a sharp peck. What rule did he break? Maybe just a warning that other birds will be watching?
Fat, lazy orange cat comes down from her nap and stands by my computer chair waiting to be acknowledged. Her patience brief, after a moment she reaches up and lightly touches my thigh. Oh, all right. What is it? The door or a snack? I stand up. She heads for the door.
Time to lay under the picnic table on the deck and see what's going on in the back yard. She looks at me before going through the door, steadfast, green cat eyes as if to say, Reporting for duty. I watch. That's what I do - I watch.
^ Another nice post, Lodestar. Your cat story reminds me of a small dog we had. We could not get that dog to go "off duty" unless we put him in his cage, where he would be as happy as a clam and paid absolutely no attention to anything. Whereas outside of his cage, he was a yipster extraordinaire.
With the hot and humid summer weather we've been having, our resident Veery makes his way up and down the brook every evening feeding on the bugs and serenading us with its lovely song.
Sadly, we saw a black bear cub (likely one of two our neighbor said she saw with their mother earlier this year) ambling through our yard a few days ago. Breaks my heart to know they are out there, minimum four. Just not enough space for them over them long term. We are as careful as possible with the bird seed so as to not attract them.
Our bats are back, taking care of business in the evening sky and sleeping in the houses we put up last year. That's good, keeps them out of our attic.
And there are two owls now, although the new one is much more reclusive than our resident one.. (She comes so close that she sits on our porch railing quite regularly as she hunts. This railing is about two feet from our front door and when we peek out at her, she turns her gaze to us -seemingly completely unperturbed- and then turns back to the task at hand.)
It's hard to tell if the two of them are a mating pair or a mom fledging a young'un. I watched them messing around together above me on a branch one day and one was making the usual owl sounds but the other was kind of cooing.. I thought that might mean it was a babe.
We can tell when she is in the yard, bc the song birds and chipmunks make their alarm sounds.. A pair of nesting robins spent several days being very indignant while feeding their young, but it seems they made it. She has killed several field mice and chipmunks.
Never heard of a Veery before. There's a nice trill at the end of their song.
Wonder if the bears could be relocated. That sounds traumatic, doesn't it?
Years ago we had friends on a farm, a large boisterous family. You know the kind, always something fun going on out there so people were always hanging out. One of the girls helped the DNR with damaged animals who couldn't be released into the wild again.
She started out with a young wolf and he had a nice spacious cage outdoors with all the furnishings a wolf would want. As he matured she was given a bear cub and put him in with the wolf. They were friends but Mr. Wolf called the shots for the youngster and by the time we met them the wolf was in his dotage and baby bear had grown enormous.
But when wolf said, "Jump" Mr. Bear asked, "How high?" It was very amusing to watch this mismatched pair.
Today the purple finches brought their youngster to our finch feeder. It was having the most difficult time. It just couldn't get the hang of landing on the little perch in such a manner that he could feed. He'd try and then flutter to the ground.
Must be safe here right now as the pair didn't seem to pay him much mind.
Nobody bothers to worry about fat, orange cat. The other day I saw her and a baby bunny (who eats my flowers) sit all of four feet from each other. She looked at bunny; bunny looked at her. Maybe its little heart was trembling?
She finally showed some mercy and pretended to be suddenly interested in the pole which holds a bird feeder. Pretty disingenuous and I wondered what sneaky cat trick she may be up to. The moment she looked away bunny took his cue and dashed out of there.
Maybe some day she will surprise someone. I noticed that she had her hind legs cocked under her ready to spring. But she didn't. Maybe she's a member of PETA, er, CETA?
Her sister, RIP, was the hunter. But she was an also an inveterate gift giver so as a rule she'd bring me the live catch in through the cat door. Can't tell you the number of birds, chipmunks, mice, voles, baby squirrels, bunnies I've chased around the house to put back outside.
Yes, we still have the cat door. Yes, racoons and neighborhood cats have occasionally used it. And yes, fat, lazy orange cat still asks me to open the door for her.
I forgot to say I looked up gopher tortoise in Wikipedia and it said that they are considered a keystone species because their burrows can be used by over three-hundred-plus different creatures.
I forgot to say I looked up gopher tortoise in Wikipedia and it said that they are considered a keystone species because their burrows can be used by over three-hundred-plus different creatures.
My granddaughter told me that many animals use a gopher tortoise’s burrow during fire, hurricanes etc., when she was seven or eight. I thought it was just the wishful thinking of a little girl. She brought home a book from the library on gopher tortoises and she was absolutely right.
I have a pair of mockingbirds I’ve been seeing daily from the window above the kitchen sink. They are in our lemon tree and I’m not sure if they are building a nest or eating the Swallowtail butterfly caterpillars munching on the leaves. I am seeing strands of Spanish moss in the lemon tree that don’t belong, so a nest is a possibility. There is a birdbath beside the tree they use too and they always land on the tree and cautiously hop from branch to branch before perching on the birdbath.
Wonder if the bears could be relocated. That sounds traumatic, doesn't it?
.
The last time we saw the bear (a year ago or longer.. likely the mother of the cub we saw just recently) we called the EPA but they said there is nothing they can do. Understandable since it would be gone before they could get here.
I should probably also say that there are over 100 acres of heavily overgrown abandoned farm land adjacent to us, so it's not as unlivable for the bears as it could be. And we have only seen the mother bear three times in the past 4-5 years and now this cub only once. So they are doing a pretty good job of laying low.
But it still just doesn't feel right.. Seems more wilderness would be healthier. For them and for us.
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