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Here's a Flat-headed Rock Agama from Kenya to get this thread back on page 1 
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Nov 20, 2014 23:08
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| # ? May 11, 2024 07:27 |
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Wow, that's a really pretty lizard! Too bad we don't have anything like that around here! (Not literally, since we do have them in Florida and they're an invasive species. Florida has pretty much everything these days.)
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Nov 21, 2014 16:27
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Sorry for the cellphone quality, but does anyone know what kind of bird this is?  
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Nov 23, 2014 03:31
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Looks similar to a Kildeer. They nest on the ground. They will pretend to be injured if someone threatens their nest to draw you away.
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Nov 23, 2014 03:39
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Sad Mammal posted:Sorry for the cellphone quality, but does anyone know what kind of bird this is? *Kinda* looks like a female pheasant to me. What's your location?
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Nov 23, 2014 03:42
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Southwest U.S. A friend was asking about it since he saw it around campus at UNLV. I was thinking a female ring-necked pheasant but just wanted to make sure.
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Nov 23, 2014 03:44
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InternetJunky posted:Here's a Flat-headed Rock Agama from Kenya to get this thread back on page 1 checking in to say holy poo poo, awesome photo
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Nov 23, 2014 06:22
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Flash Gordon Ramsay posted:Looks similar to a Kildeer. I want some of what you've been smoking.  As a bonus here is a ridiculous baby killdeer fuzzball. 
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Nov 23, 2014 07:49
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Dick Trauma posted:I want some of what you've been smoking. So THAT'S how they survive building nests in the stupidest places possible. I don't think even a cat could eat that.
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Nov 23, 2014 19:41
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Sad Mammal posted:Sorry for the cellphone quality, but does anyone know what kind of bird this is? It almost looks like a Chachalaca, but there shouldn't be any of those anywhere near there. The mystery deepens.
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Nov 24, 2014 06:04
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I meant to post these earlier. A friend of mine took these pictures while visiting Ghana earlier this year. 
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Nov 24, 2014 07:05
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vortmax posted:I meant to post these earlier. A friend of mine took these pictures while visiting Ghana earlier this year. Dude looks like one of those red, white, and blue popsicles in reptilian form. 
Unperson_47 fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Nov 24, 2014 |
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Nov 24, 2014 07:15
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A few critters from the past few weeks. Black Tailed deer  American Goldfinch  Dark-eyed Junco  Double-crested cormorant  Spawning Salmon  American Bullfrog   Western Redback salamander  Rough Skinned newt 
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Nov 24, 2014 07:28
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vortmax posted:I meant to post these earlier. A friend of mine took these pictures while visiting Ghana earlier this year. Another animal you can find in Florida, a red-headed agama. Pretty, though! Dread Head posted:American Bullfrog Do you have any other photos of this? I didn't know what else it would be other than Plethodon vehiculum (assuming this was in BC), but the front feet don't look right for the species, look more like an Aneides, though the coloration I can see matches your ID. Animal is a male, though - those projections on his upper lip are called cirri, and in most salamander species that have them, they're only found on males.
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Nov 24, 2014 15:42
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Dick Trauma posted:I want some of what you've been smoking. Yeah I have no idea what I was thinking. More likely had to do with what I was drinking. But worth it for the baby kildeer picture.
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Nov 24, 2014 15:46
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Dread Head posted:Rough Skinned newt After reading about how toxic these guys are if I met one I'd probably have the worst intrusive urge to lick it.
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Nov 24, 2014 17:25
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OneTwentySix posted:Another animal you can find in Florida, a red-headed agama. Pretty, though! Yeah I think I have a few more I will look when I get home from work, and yes in BC on Vancouver Island. The Red Queen posted:After reading about how toxic these guys are if I met one I'd probably have the worst intrusive urge to lick it. They are rather toxic but under normal circumstances they would not be harmful to humans. Although I think wikipedia said someone died as a result of a dare to eat a live specimen...
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Nov 24, 2014 18:17
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It's tetrodotoxin, the same toxin in puffer fish. I think you'd have to eat one to be harmed, though. I've heard that Native Americans used to use them to in assassinations - slip a newt into their food. They have enough toxin to kill 20,000 mice. There've been people that ate them on dares, and one died within six hours, despite having his stomach pumped. I breed a related species, Taricha torosa, and get worried that one might escape and have a pet find it, but they're pretty neat little guys otherwise and not harmful to humans - I handle them just fine.
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Nov 24, 2014 21:25
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OneTwentySix posted:I've heard that Native Americans used to use them to in assassinations - slip a newt into their food. The ole newt-in-your-salmonberry-cake, gets em every time. I've found Taricha in my pitfall traps and let my kids handle them, only later finding out they were toxic. I wouldn't be super worried unless you had open wounds and cracked the little guy open like a smelling salt, then managed to smear it around.
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Nov 24, 2014 21:41
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I am not not licking salamanders. 
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Nov 25, 2014 00:05
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axolotl farmer posted:I am not not licking salamanders. Nerd.
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Nov 25, 2014 00:08
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A speaker from Missouri's hellbender conservation thingy came to give a talk a couple weeks ago, and mentioned that they taste absolutely terrible. Apparently, Brady Barr came down to do a show with them, and somehow they got on the topic of licking hellbenders. Barr refused to lick one, until he said, "Jeff Corwin did it." So Barr licks it and just freaks out about how absolutely nasty it was, and then years later when they did some sort of show on the worse tastes in nature, hellbenders were number one. Cue my friend Bobby. We were going out looking for benders with the speaker the next day, and so Bobby decided that he had to lick one. He ended up licking two of them, but for some reason, our benders didn't taste bad like the ones in Missouri. Could have been the temperatures - water was high 30s, so they weren't as stressed and secreting defensive slime.
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Nov 25, 2014 00:15
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OneTwentySix posted:A speaker from Missouri's hellbender conservation thingy came to give a talk a couple weeks ago, and mentioned that they taste absolutely terrible. Apparently, Brady Barr came down to do a show with them, and somehow they got on the topic of licking hellbenders. Barr refused to lick one, until he said, "Jeff Corwin did it." So Barr licks it and just freaks out about how absolutely nasty it was, and then years later when they did some sort of show on the worse tastes in nature, hellbenders were number one. Interesting. Anybody have any reports on how other amphibs taste by comparison? The nastiest things I've ever put in my mouth were in order ripe olive, green olive, bitternut hickory. They are all stunningly, mouth-dessicatingly bitter. It has been most of two decades now, and I can't think about plucking an olive off the tree and tasting it without my whole face puckering up and making involuntary *pth pth* noises. (and then doing it again, because maybe the ripe ones are better...Science!) Bitternut Hickory tastes like when you get a bad pecan, but more, and every time. It also looks pretty much exactly like the delicious Shagbark Hickory.
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Nov 25, 2014 00:20
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A friend's friend (I can't remember if it's her colleague or her undergraduate mentor) licked a gopher frog once because he suspected that they might have chemical defenses, and immediately his tongue started to tingle, so there's definitely something going on with them. I try not to lick amphibians, though.
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Nov 25, 2014 00:24
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When I hosted insectary tours at OSU I would eat indian waxworms (Plodia interpunctella, if I remember correctly) as a trick to make the kids laugh. It's the only bug I've ever eaten that actually tastes good, they ate nothing but grain but managed to come off just like walnuts, which I like anyway. Here is a lovely illustration of a species called Spelaeodytes mirabilis Miller, 1863, scale bar set at 1mm. It's a cave-restricted member of the ground beetle subfamily Scaritinae, my favorite group. As far as I know, it has has only been found in one place, Dekica Cave in Herzegovina, and is unlikely to occur anywhere else. 
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Nov 25, 2014 00:50
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Slo-Tek posted:Interesting. Anybody have any reports on how other amphibs taste by comparison?
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Nov 25, 2014 03:26
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Cardiovorax posted:I swear, every time I think I've seen the weirdest sentene someone could possibly post. They go and totally redeem themselves?
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Nov 25, 2014 03:34
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Wooten posted:
Wooten posted:I live about 20 minutes from the ocean. Though my father in law (who's house I found the shrimp thing at) does go sailing on the ocean frequently. Not sure how it would have found it's way to that particular table though. This kind of got left behind in a position that bothered me. It's an amphipod, not a squished Isopod. Amphipods are laterally flattened (compared to most other dodecapod crustaceans), isopods are dorso-ventrally flattened (again, relative to other, similar crusties). Amphipods are massively abundant in many bodies of water, and many species will swim up into the water column from the bottom at the slightest provocation, never mind the species that spend almost all of their time off the bottom. They like to cling to any surface they can find, and can get caught in surface tension such that one could very easily end up on the deck of a boat if anything at all was pulled from the water or a wave splashed over the side. When they dry out, they can blow around and end up anywhere. **** Critters from a summer canoe trip in northern Saskatchewan. Apologies in advance for the dump.  Day 1 to Snail Island 6 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 2 Jumping Spider 1 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 2 Rescued Beetle by Execudork, on Flickr Day 2 Mother Wolf Spider by Execudork, on Flickr Day 2 Loons 7 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Flyclean 3 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Big Leech 2 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 7 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 8 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 11 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 13 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 16 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 19 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 20 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 23 by Execudork, on Flickr Day 3 Exploring the Forest 25 by Execudork, on Flickr
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Nov 25, 2014 23:37
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OneTwentySix posted:Another animal you can find in Florida, a red-headed agama. Pretty, though! Here is another photo I have handy. Also thanks for the tidbit about knowing if it is a male, really interesting! 
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Nov 26, 2014 05:11
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There have been a lot of really nice photos in this thread in the past few posts, so I'm going to do my part to keep the balance with this ridiculous ID request. I sent this photo of Innsbruck, Austria to some friends.  One of them immediately replied, "Just to the left of the clock tower there is something in the background that looks like a giant bird. What is it? zoom in and check it out." Unfortunately, it's a cellphone pic and this is the best I could do:  My best theory right now is that it's a Central European Giant Hummingbird, an as-yet undiscovered species. Does anyone else have any ideas? This is of course fairly pointless but it would be pretty cool to actually know.
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Nov 26, 2014 21:54
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95% chance it's a pigeon, because it's Europe and a city.
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Nov 26, 2014 23:20
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Yup, pigeon, crow, blackbird, starling, sparrow... pick a common urban bird and chances are you're right. Slow shutter speed (good pictures of birds in flight happen at 1/800 of a second or faster, I'm guessing your photo was at around 1/60), long range, wide angle all combine to give a blurry blob whenever a bird wanders through an "I was here" shot. Also I'm pretty sure that's a pigeon in the lower-left. ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 00:43
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ExecuDork posted:Yup, pigeon, crow, blackbird, starling, sparrow... pick a common urban bird and chances are you're right. Slow shutter speed (good pictures of birds in flight happen at 1/800 of a second or faster, I'm guessing your photo was at around 1/60), long range, wide angle all combine to give a blurry blob whenever a bird wanders through an "I was here" shot. There are three pigeons in the lower left and there is another between a sign and a person in the lower right of center. edit: there is also a bird standing on the light fixture on a pole near the top floor of the salmon colored building on the left. sleepy gary fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 01:23
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I haven't posted much at all in this year's thread, though I do have a huge backlog of pics that I need to dump. In the meantime, have this video of a bumble bee family sitting down for thanksgiving dinner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLkL3BWwZrs
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Nov 27, 2014 22:55
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So fluffy!
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Nov 27, 2014 23:42
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Dread Head posted:Here is another photo I have handy. Also thanks for the tidbit about knowing if it is a male, really interesting! Yeah, you had the ID right. Looked like the feet had some webbing in the first photo, which really threw me off. Very nice pictures!
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Nov 28, 2014 01:28
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Just had a Peregrine Falcon stuck on my balcony for about 10 minutes. Poor guy couldn't figure out the glass and was running into it over and over again. I had just finished putting on my motorcycle jacket, helmet and gloves and was about to go out and try to help him, but he ducked beneath the glass and flew off all fine and dandy. He had a ring around his right leg... I assume he was probably introduced into the city at some point?
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Dec 5, 2014 22:37
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kedo posted:Just had a Peregrine Falcon stuck on my balcony for about 10 minutes. Not necessarily introduced. There are now Peregrines breeding in a lot of cities, and it's not uncommon for the birds to be banded so their fates can be followed year after year. The bands have unique numbers on them so if you happen to have a photo that shows some or all of the band in enough detail you can probably figure out exactly where that bird came from. e: many US peregrine populations are re-introduced following the DDT problems, but I'd guess most of those original birds are dead by now.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:46
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Cool, didn't know that! Sadly all of the photos I took are a little blurry since the light sucked and I was using my phone camera. Oh well.
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Dec 5, 2014 23:09
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| # ? May 11, 2024 07:27 |
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You can probably google Peregrine Falcon + your city and find out if there are any nests in your area. Those birds tend to be minor celebrities, and might even have nest cams during the breeding season.
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Dec 5, 2014 23:18
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