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extra stout posted:poop our their bones *clears throat* ...
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May 10, 2017 23:14
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the yeti posted:Thanks for the help! I haven't looked at salamanders with a serious eye for ID basically ever May as well post some other stuff I found! First, more Plethodons: P. glutinosus, flipped maybe seven or eight smallish ones in a relatively small area  P. cinereus I'm fairly sure, this was maybe the largest one I saw, most were little noodles and only had a red patch over the lower back  A tiny Scolopendromorph, probably Scolopocryptops sp.  A Pleasing Fungus Beetle, Megalodacne sp, probably M. heros  A mad noodle: 
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May 11, 2017 02:03
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I neglected to post winter bird feeder photos, so here are some highlights:  Our local squirrel Doreen, who filled the tree with peanuts and has since sadly disappeared.  A nice floofy chickadee.   We didn't get a lot of blue jays, but they always made their presence known with those distinctive calls.  This sparrow had some ice stuck to its beak the entire time it was visiting the feeder and I have to assume it affected its ability to eat and drink. Hope it melted before he starved!   Red-breasted nuthatches are still my fave.
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May 14, 2017 02:37
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Chinston Wurchill posted:
Hey these birds are upside down!
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May 14, 2017 06:51
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Hey Critterquesters! So I helped this lovely lady(?) below escape my store earlier this evening and didn't think to try and look up which Bombus she was until now.   Am I correct in thinking I might have been
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May 15, 2017 02:33
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little_firebird posted:Hey Critterquesters! This bee is male. That might make identification a little difficult. Whereabouts do you live?
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May 15, 2017 03:24
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Mak0rz posted:This bee is male. That might make identification a little difficult. Whoops, I knew there was something I was forgetting. I'm in Central Wisconsin.
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May 15, 2017 03:29
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little_firebird posted:Whoops, I knew there was something I was forgetting. I'm in Central Wisconsin. I'd wager either B. perplexus or B. sandersoni. Probably not the latter (it's rare). Need a better look to be sure. Regardless, it doesn't seem to fit the bill for a rusty patch. Sorry! You do have what is probably one of the first drones of the season, though!
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May 15, 2017 03:53
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I noticed this fella dangling from a tree, no idea what it is.  It's about the size of a nickel and in central South Carolina.
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May 15, 2017 04:11
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My dog likes to catch possums. I killed one a couple years ago. One that my dog got, and it freaked me out. I felt really bad about it. This time, she got the possum, left it at the bottom of the stairs, and I watched it wake up. The possum started visibly breathing. I tapped on the glass of the door, and eventually the possum's ear turned toward me. I said 'hey, wake up!' and it awoke. I said 'run!' and it got up and scampered away   Possums are cool.
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May 15, 2017 04:14
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 First Froggo of the year in Sweden a few weeks back during an unusually hot day.  First Toado of the year about a month later now that the warmth is becoming the norm.  A big pile of male toads desperately trying to get to the female in the middle which may not even exist. Finally:  Bonus Capercaillie! This one has gone a bit bird crazy (or cuckoo hohoho bird chicken jokes) and keeps hanging around people, walking up real close as if looking for something on you and then backing off a bit when you don't seem to display it. Not at all interested in food, local experts have theorized the Hip and Cool varied fashions of the youth hanging around the nearby school has made the bird confused into thinking they are unusually large and flashy males. Actually locally famous by now. Has been relocated to wildlife preserves several times but has found its way back every time.
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May 15, 2017 13:40
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To be young and horny toad again...
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May 15, 2017 16:43
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Potential BFF posted:I noticed this fella dangling from a tree, no idea what it is. Looks like some sort of long-jawed orb weaver based on the, uh, long jaws. Cool find!
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May 15, 2017 18:33
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Oh long jaws son
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May 15, 2017 18:35
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Chinston Wurchill posted:Looks like some sort of long-jawed orb weaver based on the, uh, long jaws. Cool find! male Lyssomanes viridis I think, a jumping spider (if you look you can just about see the big front eyes) some adult male Salticids do have those enormous jaws, S. scenicus is pretty well known for it
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May 15, 2017 19:08
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vaguely posted:male Lyssomanes viridis I think, a jumping spider (if you look you can just about see the big front eyes) That explains it then. I was trying to figure out what tetragnathid genus that thing belonged to but the eye pattern didn't make sense at all. I didn't notice the big eyes in the front.
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May 15, 2017 19:16
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 Carpenter bees I presume? Should I be worried about these guys living on my grandparents' front porch? They seem chill enough.
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May 15, 2017 19:31
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They're harmless, though they can be pretty damaging with their hole-boring. You could try hanging up a bee hotel if you like seeing them around! It might lure them away from those delicious porchy parts.
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May 15, 2017 19:57
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vaguely posted:male Lyssomanes viridis I think, a jumping spider (if you look you can just about see the big front eyes) Lyssomanes viridis looks to be it. I didn't even think to search for jumping spiders. He was incredibly skittish and I am not enough of a wildlife macro photographer to grab anything approaching a clear shot from the front. Thanks for the ID!
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May 15, 2017 22:19
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poverty goat posted:
Used to see them swarm around park benches and anything made of wood when I lived in Ohio. The ones patrolling and buzzing around are males, and they don't have a stinger. Impress your friends by acting like a moron and catch one in your hand.
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May 15, 2017 22:29
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Hey thread, not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I saw an American Robin chilling on my sister's car earlier tonight (like at 2 AM, still there at 3:30 when I got back) I shooed it away before I got a good look at it because I thought it was taking a dump but it just stared, which is weird because it's a robin. Its head feathers were all ruffled and it had some tinges of gray, so is it just an old robin that found a weird place to sleep? Sorry for no pictures, didn't wanna bother it anymore.
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May 17, 2017 08:41
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Was the chest speckled? If so, you came upon a juvenile robin who hasn't necessarily learned that humans = scary = I should flee. The flecks of gray and all the ruffled-looking feathers might have been some baby fluff still sticking out through its adult plumage. Either way, it's likely not something to worry about. If it was an adult robin being that unresponsive to you, chances are it was pretty sick and just hanging out waiting for The End. It also might have been dazed following a close encounter with a predator or a window, so it either passed afterward, or recovered and flew off once it had itself sorted. Adult birds don't really go gray the way mammals do, so while you can use plumage as an age indicator, it's not as easy to do at a glance.
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May 18, 2017 18:48
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saw what I think is a grey wagtail flicking its long long tail and gathering insects for its (extremely loud) chicks on the canal today  i got a couple pictures but they're basically the worst, just a tiny grey and yellow blob, sorry everyone
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May 18, 2017 20:59
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Last Celebration posted:Hey thread, not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I saw an American Robin chilling on my sister's car earlier tonight (like at 2 AM, still there at 3:30 when I got back) I shooed it away before I got a good look at it because I thought it was taking a dump but it just stared, which is weird because it's a robin. Its head feathers were all ruffled and it had some tinges of gray, so is it just an old robin that found a weird place to sleep? I've seen birds act weirdly lethargic and disoriented due to eating pesticide-poisoned crickets
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May 18, 2017 23:58
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Look at this big rear end in a top hat I found within 30 seconds of stepping onto my back stoop and shining a UV light around! It's not a bark scorpion, but I still wouldn't want to gently caress around with him.
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May 20, 2017 06:35
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my cat is norris posted:They're harmless, though they can be pretty damaging with their hole-boring. You could try hanging up a bee hotel if you like seeing them around! It might lure them away from those delicious porchy parts. They got into my dad's front porch, then woodpeckers started enlarging the carpenter bee holes in the process of trying to eat them. So that can double down on the damage! It looks like there was a gun battle.
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May 20, 2017 15:17
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Gator gators  Gators  GATORS 
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May 22, 2017 01:45
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Koboje posted:
This is a great toad pile; I dig it. They're in Sweden? Any idea what kind?
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May 22, 2017 02:18
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Those are common toads, Bufo bufo. Not a lot of amphibian diversity in much of Europe, unfortunately - the majority of any toad photos you see from Europe are going to be Bufo bufo.
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May 22, 2017 02:41
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I'm spending May doing fieldwork in Alberta - I work on restoring disturbed peatlands, though not with any critter-focus; this week I've been based in the town of Peace River, which is on the Peace river - hopefully that's not confusing. Today was an interesting day, despite being a day off work. I went for a Sunday Drive, which as usual means I drive to a park or some other nice place to for a walk and I see what I can see. First up, Sand Lake Provincial Park, where I found my first tiger beetle and my first dragonfly of the year. Plus, some hyperactive parasitoid wasps and a few other insects. Sand Lake Park Insects 1 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Sand Lake Park Insects 2 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Sand Lake Park Insects 4 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Sand Lake Park Insects 5 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Sand Lake Park Insects 6 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Sand Lake Park Insects 7 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Sand Lake Park Insects 8 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrThis didn't take as much time as I thought it would - the trails were all ATV tracks, mostly with deep puddles between the higher sandy ridges, and it was difficult to get very far. I found another place on the other side of the river (the Peace river has relatively few crossings, this isn't a densely populated part of the world), got a bit lost on my way there and scraped the bottom of my rental car - a 2017 VW Beetle I've named "Molitor" because it's black - on the gravel / dirt roads, and ended up at a part of the Peace River Wildlands. I'm not sure of the status of these areas - PR Wildlands are a series of discontiguous blocks of mostly aspen forest along the right bank of the Peace river, and I think hunting is allowed in the areas, and certainly I've seen plenty of signs that the trails are made and used by motorized vehicles, but I think they're protected from, say, industrial development. Around here, that means oil extraction. I walked in on an ATV trail about 300m to a clearing, where I put on my bug jacket because the mosquitoes - which are huge in this part of the world - were surprisingly awful, and poked around a bit. The trails out of the clearing were much too small for an ATV and appeared to be simply game trails. I spooked a couple of deer, possibly elk*, they crashed off through the bush before I could get a good look at them. Just down a trail I encountered a dead deer. I don't know enough about decomposition to say how long this deer had been dead, but it was missing its head, having been decapitated - I was approaching it from the front. It also seemed to be missing its feet, and had not been gutted. Most of the fur had fallen off and the exposed flesh was mostly black. I'm sure it was not killed yesterday, but beyond that I have no idea. It smelled like you'd think it smelled, but I was suprised how weak the smell was. Certainly, I didn't like it, but the smell was far from overpowering. Anyway, I had a look and took some pictures without getting too close (I won't subject you to those pics, this thread isn't the place for that I think) and thought about bears. * North American elk, not moose. Sorry Sweden. On my way back to my car I decided the mosquitoes weren't THAT bad and there was an interesting side trail to explore. Down that about 100m I found probably-fresh bear poo poo, clear bear paw prints in some mud, which I noticed when I looked straight down at my own feet, my boot prints were interspersed with the bear prints, and something weird up ahead - some orange tape and other obviously-artificial stuff. There was also this useless, destroyed sign:  Bear Bait 3 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr20 or 30 metres ahead, I found this:  Bear Bait 1 by Martin Brummell, on Flickrand this badly-faded sign on a tree:  Bear Bait 4 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrI could just make out "bear baiting" and after getting the photo onto my computer I can see it says "Caution" at the top and "129" at the bottom; the second-last row is a mystery to me. Then I turned around and saw the trail camera:  Bear Bait 2 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrI was putting all of this together in my head and I figured it out - I was quite proud of myself! Bear baiting, for pictures! The metal cage/box thing had something inside, and what was sticking out between some of the bars looked like neck vertebrae from something deer-sized, so my guess is the box contained a deer head. I waved at the camera, took a few more pictures, and then realized that I was standing right in the middle of a setup designed and built to attract a bear, and there was fresh bear sign not only nearby, but between me and my car. Plus, the mosquitoes were getting worse and some of the flying things bouncing off my face were NOT mosquitoes, and there was rotting meat nearby. Once I got back to Peace River I told my colleague, who I've been staying with, about my adventures. I showed him that picture of the site with the barrel and the chains and he said he's seen too many horror movies. The more I thought about it, the weirder the whole thing seemed - decapitated deer about 200m from a bear-baiting camera trap, badly faded, old signs, and no effort apparently made to set up any sort of monitoring of the rest of the carcass. I phoned Report A Poacher, told my story and gave the driving directions and coordinates (park at the north end of Birch Hills Range Road 24, walk west - the trails are obvious), and was told I had done the right thing in making my report and a Fish & Wildlife officer will check it out. I gave my name and phone number, hopefully if something comes of this they'll at least let me know. And whoever downloads the pictures from the camera will get a chuckle at me stumbling around trying to put 2 + 2 together, then taking pictures of a camera with my phone while my DSLR dangles from my wrist, while wearing my bugjacket.
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May 22, 2017 06:55
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There's been a very frequent visitor to my back yard this summer. 
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May 24, 2017 02:51
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Hiking this past Saturday and met this eagle while eating lunch at summit. It was a pretty big bird, and seemingly used to people, as it was walking around just a few feet away without a care in the world seeing if the snacking hikers would drop anything for it to eat. Kind of like a pidgeon.
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May 24, 2017 03:10
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Same site as last time, just a more upland portion. Weather was about 10 degrees warmer, which is apparently the difference between I scoop stuff up easy as pie and I lose a number of critters into the leaf litter. Some extras in here: http://imgur.com/a/hYRVn but here are the highlights: Saw a lot of flat backed millis in this part of the park :3  A red velvet mite in Trombidiidae!  I'd never found one before, so that was cool Couple of really nice red backed salamanders:   Desmognathus something or other, based on the white line at the eye and I think 14 costal ridges  Also I think Desmog sp. (other photos in the imgur album up top if anyone wants to play ID detective)  Dead ringer for Desmog. fuscus  Unexpected mammal:  After all this loving around with photos in that container I think I'm gonna cover it over with black duct tape, it's killing me not being able to get decently exposed details on these little guys.
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May 24, 2017 03:54
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El Burbo posted:Gator Where'd you take these? I live in south Florida and I haven't seen any gators (but then again the Everglades aren't that far...) But hey, there's a park by my place that has a couple of crocodiles!   
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May 24, 2017 11:35
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Kaiju Cage Match posted:Where'd you take these? I live in south Florida and I haven't seen any gators (but then again the Everglades aren't that far...) I took them while driving through Loop Road in Big Cypress. Lots of alligators along the side of the road, and the occasional black vulture and barred owl  
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May 24, 2017 20:16
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That black vulture isn't a bad-looking bird. Up here we have turkey vultures, which I have grown rather fond of, but they are not easy on the eye.
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May 25, 2017 05:34
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El Burbo posted:Gator aww
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May 25, 2017 18:58
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I was just in that exact area in April. I have some photos I'll have to post, saw tons of snakes.
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May 25, 2017 19:26
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El Burbo posted:I took them while driving through Loop Road in Big Cypress. Lots of alligators along the side of the road, and the occasional black vulture and barred owl Vultures are cool 
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May 26, 2017 11:41
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Indeed. Europe may not have a great diversity of toads but we do have something all Americas lack: Old World vultures!  Gyps fulvus (Portugal). From last summer.
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May 27, 2017 00:21
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