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Vakal posted:Are mutations in frogs a thing? I'm wondering as my cat brought a frog into the house the other day and while I was returning it to the creek behind my house I noticed it had a small pink arm growing out its side. It totally is. I lived in a place in western Oregon once that had seriously tons of these little mutant dudes. I felt sorry for them but also kind of proud that they kept chugging along with extra legs and poo poo.
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Jun 30, 2023 05:15
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wheatpuppy posted:My house this year is just swarming with spiders, none of which I am capable of photographing clearly. Yeah. I have a bunch of non-web spinning spiders here, which is fine by me since according to my reading, they will eat ticks. Also a bunch of cellar spiders, but ticks don’t generally amble around in cellar spider range. I’m in the basement and have gotten a tick by walking out the basement door to a little patio outside, so i started getting all paranoid that they would wander and infest me while i sleep. I really, really hate ticks. The spiders aren’t out where I can see them right now.  One of the big wolf spiders was apparently in my robe the other night since I brushed something tickling my off and realized it was a wolf spider when i heard something hit the ground. It was fine. Nice guys, these wolf spiders. From a quick Google, I think all of the big brown ones are “rabid wolf spiders,” which is a bad-rear end name for a wolf spider that doesn’t bite humans without a lot of provocation.I don’t know what the little, black chitinous wolf spider are. post="532875359"] It totally is. I lived in a place in western Oregon once that had seriously tons of these little mutant dudes. I felt sorry for them but also kind of proud that they kept chugging along with extra legs and poo poo. [/quote] The extra legs are usually caused by parasites during development. Although there are also tons of other mutations amphibians get during development from other poor water conditions. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/502534/reason-some-frogs-grow-extra-legs Bored fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Jun 30, 2023 |
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Jun 30, 2023 10:03
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hello i just want to say that i love the name "boobook" how have i never heard of that before
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Jun 30, 2023 15:05
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my cat is norris posted:hello i just want to say that i love the name "boobook" how have i never heard of that before Yeah my wife and I were both very amused by boobook and morepork.
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Jun 30, 2023 16:14
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 Candy Striped Leafhopper. They have other names, but that's my favorite one. Fine, Graphocephala coccinea.
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Jun 30, 2023 21:48
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Enos Shenk posted:Candy Striped Leafhopper. They have other names, but that's my favorite one. I found one of those on our basil plant recently, they’re so fun looking.  Also a ladybug larva, which are much more metal than they grow up to be. 
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Jun 30, 2023 23:08
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Those have a range that covers where I grew up but I don't remember ever seeing one, I would've guessed that the color would stand out enough that they'd stick in my mind. Maybe they're too tiny for me to notice. Anyway, great thread. I've been enjoying it for a while, I just haven't had the chance lately to see much beyond squirrels and your usual town birds, which are great but never ending looking interesting on my crappy phone camera.
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Jun 30, 2023 23:14
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Is this a coyote call? It's very spoopy. I live here. https://ln5.sync.com/dl/8a57a0ab0/tam4taz4-hdbijf6d-ca7g4zt6-ghif3mdz
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Jul 1, 2023 06:27
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I'm not a pro on it but when I've heard coyotes there's more of a variation like they're chatting with each other. Could this be an owl or another bird instead? The call sounds the same each time to me.
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Jul 1, 2023 13:47
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Last night as I was going to sleep I felt an itch on my arm and scratched it and I felt my hand knock something off and I almost just rolled over and kept going to sleep. But in the back of my head I thought what if it was a tick??? So I got up and turned the lights on and sure loving enough there was a tick. I have no idea how I got to sleep in that bed after that but I do know that it followed a long period of having to check every little itch for ticks. I assume it rode one of the dogs in. gently caress off ticks ugh
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Jul 1, 2023 13:58
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Dillbag posted:Is this a coyote call? It's very spoopy. I live here. The Red Queen posted:I'm not a pro on it but when I've heard coyotes there's more of a variation like they're chatting with each other. Could this be an owl or another bird instead? The call sounds the same each time to me. Yeah, that definitely sounds more like an owl or some other type of bird to me. Coyotes I've heard have been higher pitched than that, and have a lot of yipping noises mixed in with longer yowls. No idea exactly what it is though, I'm very curious.
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Jul 1, 2023 16:06
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poverty goat posted:Last night as I was going to sleep I felt an itch on my arm and scratched it and I felt my hand knock something off and I almost just rolled over and kept going to sleep. But in the back of my head I thought what if it was a tick??? So I got up and turned the lights on and sure loving enough there was a tick. I have no idea how I got to sleep in that bed after that but I do know that it followed a long period of having to check every little itch for ticks. I assume it rode one of the dogs in. gently caress off ticks ugh bed ticks, a new nightmare 
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Jul 1, 2023 16:16
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Dillbag posted:Is this a coyote call? It's very spoopy. I live here. Almost certain it's Barred Owl. Sibley app calls this the "hoo-aws" call. Merlin ID couldn't figure it out though so???
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Jul 1, 2023 18:53
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Dillbag posted:Is this a coyote call? It's very spoopy. I live here. I can’t get the link to the sound to play on my phone, even on a different browser .
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Jul 1, 2023 18:56
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Almost certain it's Barred Owl. Sibley app calls this the "hoo-aws" call. Merlin ID couldn't figure it out though so??? Oh yeah, it's a bit higher pitched but it sounds like the second group of calls here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbL-LfGNMl4&t=24s We had occasional barred owls around when I was growing up, but I only remember hearing the first set of calls in there. Maybe they're just the loudest.
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Jul 1, 2023 19:12
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Nthing barred owl
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Jul 2, 2023 02:36
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barred owls are villains in your neck of the woods, driving what remains of the spotted owl to extinction beautiful birds though
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Jul 2, 2023 03:35
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Hello thread, it has been ages since I posted pictures (maybe since the last thread?) but I have racked up many over time, so here's a dump of the last like two years of random pics. Raggedy but pretty moth.  I don't have a wing-side pic of this one but it was neat.  A green hoppy boi.  A pair of the local turkey vultures taking a break on the neighbor's roof. These are usually a couple miles away, so it was unusual to see them here, let alone landed nextdoor.  Something of the mothlike persuasion.  Monchy boi.  Hiding in the shadows.  A popular friend.  Beetle.  Water Pigeon.  The funniest expression I've ever seen on a squirrel. Fat boi just squatted there for a while before trundling off.   Turts.  Distant swan. This next batch is a little bit cheating for the theme of the thread but they're neat pictures. A semi-local arboretum does annual butterfly raising, and they let them all fly around in the tropical greenhouse area, so you can wander through and see a few thousand butterflies. It's pretty neat, so I took some pictures of some of them.      Next up we have a groundhog being very cheeky on my front step. He wandered off before I could step outside for a real picture though.  Now for some spiders.  Not entirely sure what this one is offhand, I've looked it up before but I forget. It wanders around the house from time to time.   This is apparently an ant mimic, c. longipalpus. The first, dusty picture is it hiding above a doorframe. The second one is a week later. It seems to have lost a leg in the intervening time.  Extremely tiny orb weaver showed up yesterday.  This one was identified by my partner's spider group as Uloborus glomosus, which is pretty rare for here. She is quite small and is very attached to her eggs. Saving the best for last. Last year in the fall, we brought my partner's kalanchoe in from the porch, and a friend hitched a ride.  Well, we made the impulsive decision to not just toss her out on the porch for winter, and instead kidnapped her. We captured her in a little plastic box with air holes and, the next day, went out and bought some more suitable accomodations.  She took to them quite well. After some experimentation, we determined that she will eat meal worms when she's desperate, is rather fond of crickets, and loves flies when we can get them. Mostly it's crickets, but here she is monching on a treat.  My partner is quite fond of her and has named her Tinycat. She also went from "jumping spiders are pretty neat" to having joined like four different spider-focused communities and is planning to get more eventually.
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Jul 2, 2023 05:39
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that is wonderful. love lil' jumpers. also your "Beetle." is a blister beetle, so keep that in mind whenever you see another one, don't touch them with anything that will come in contact with your skin, because they really are no joke. and your battered moth at the top of the post is a sadly dilapidated Leopard Moth. even hosed up they're still real pretty. I get them pretty frequently around here, and they're always a sight to see, and when they open their wings they have bright orange hidden beneath their black/white/metallic blue wings.
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Jul 2, 2023 05:47
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Chinston Wurchill posted:I met this strange fly on the weekend. That's a signal fly in the family Platystomatidae, probably my favourite fly family that includes stalk eye flies https://youtu.be/2rGxK8oNF70 Slugworth posted:This guy was fluttering around in the dark last night, and I thought it was a small bat at first before he landed on the screen. I put my hand in for scale, but then forgot how perspective works, so allow me to just say, he was about the size of my hand. I've never seen one of those big beauties before. Last night I found this big hawkmoth chilling patiently on my screen door...  
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Jul 2, 2023 12:21
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Big Aggie is on the warpath today. This is after she’s chased off the male. He came back. He is actually closer and those feeders are the same size. I think he is literally half her size.  I’m pretty sure she kicked his rear end right at the beginning of the season, so he doesn’t even try to dance for her. Although he does dance frequently for all of the other ladies when Big Aggie allows them to eat. Between Big Aggie and myself, the other girl hummingbirds have correctly identified Big Aggie as the greater threat, so they eat on the sides of the feeders closer to me when she’s being especially territorial. Bored fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jul 2, 2023 |
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Jul 2, 2023 23:33
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big Aggie is my hero
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Jul 3, 2023 02:29
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The hummingbird fights are wild to witness here, you get a low thrummmmm for a bit as the first contender hovers near the feeder, and then a doppler effect level THRUM... SMACK as another one charges in and hits the first one Tiny tiny bodies and incredible forces
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Jul 3, 2023 04:07
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so a few years ago I think I posted in this or a previous thread about the trap I set to catch a squirrel in my attic, but when I went to get it, I found this guy inside it instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emYrekO2YeI&hd=1 I released him outside the house, and he went from the back door to the forest edge in roughly 5 seconds, really impressive speed. Then over the winter, I saw him, now nicknamed Pop, hopping around in the snow and tunneling. A few years later, this past saturday, and I was sitting on my front step waiting for a delivery when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Poking out of a hole in the ground presumably initially dug by a chipmunk, he was sticking out like a periscope, and the moment I turned my head to look at him, he leapt out of it and bolted around the corner of the house. I'm sure he's still got ways of getting inside the walls of the house, even with all the repairs and new siding we've had done, but I'm not too bothered by him getting in as I am chipmunks and mice, and him getting in the walls is honestly probably good for dealing with that since I'm sure pests like mice are dissuaded from entering an area with the scent of a predator like a weasel. I'm just happy he's still around and doing his thing. god they're just the most adorable little murdernoodles. 
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Jul 3, 2023 05:20
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Captain Invictus posted:so a few years ago I think I posted in this or a previous thread about the trap I set to catch a squirrel in my attic, but when I went to get it, I found this guy inside it instead. Yeah, I remember when you posted that. Very, very cute critter. 
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Jul 3, 2023 08:25
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Dillbag posted:Is this a coyote call? It's very spoopy. I live here. It took me a while to get on a computer that could hear it. Its definitly a Barred Owl. I have a few families that live around me. Wait till they start caterwauling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12ioHWj-ZcI
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Jul 3, 2023 12:58
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Captain Invictus posted:so a few years ago I think I posted in this or a previous thread about the trap I set to catch a squirrel in my attic, but when I went to get it, I found this guy inside it instead. Weasels are amazing critters and you're lucky to have close encounters with your local one, they're pretty elusive little guys despite how common they are
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Jul 3, 2023 13:08
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Oh yeah, he didn't pop out of the ground until I had been sitting basically stone still on the front step for 10 minutes. And the INSTANT I reacted to him popping up he was gone in a flash. In the wintertime, seeing him leap up and then nosedive into the snow was something else, that would've been a viral video for sure if I'd been able to record it, it was wild. Just SPROING up in the air, nosedive, wriggle through the snow and erupt a few feet away. I presume he was trying to get the drop on some small rodent, similar to how foxes do that nosedive thing to catch mice under the snow.
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Jul 3, 2023 13:15
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Captain Invictus posted:Oh yeah, he didn't pop out of the ground until I had been sitting basically stone still on the front step for 10 minutes. And the INSTANT I reacted to him popping up he was gone in a flash. Out of curiosity, does he turn white in the winter? Apparently it's a genetic thing and climate change is actually loving weasels over in some areas where it used to snow a lot, where they still get their white coats but there's so little snow on the ground that instead of serving as camouflage it makes them stand out more.
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Jul 3, 2023 13:25
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he doesn't! or at least didn't that year. that's the only reason he was visible in the snow, because you'd see this little brown bullet ZOOP through the snow and air.
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Jul 3, 2023 21:33
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Yay! One of the big wolf spiders was hanging out in my bag pile when I walked over to grab them. Now I have a decent picture of one. It was slow-mo walking while I was taking the picture, but didn’t put the super speed they usually have on.
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Jul 4, 2023 05:25
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Captain Hygiene posted:Yeah, that definitely sounds more like an owl or some other type of bird to me. Coyotes I've heard have been higher pitched than that, and have a lot of yipping noises mixed in with longer yowls. I was going to say based off of no experience whatsoever that I thought coyotes were more yippy. but i've been up for like 30 hours, so I'm going to fight anything that makes any noise while I try to sleep I'm waiting on my orb weaver to arrive. I got two evergreen shrubs on either side of my porch, and I normally get one that builds a giant rear end web between them. as long as they build high, we're good, otherwise I gently remove it with a stick, but they make like the most picturesque webs. blight rhino fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Jul 4, 2023 |
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Jul 4, 2023 07:06
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Captain Invictus posted:so a few years ago I think I posted in this or a previous thread about the trap I set to catch a squirrel in my attic, but when I went to get it, I found this guy inside it instead. I've never trapped an animal, but that dude seems chill AF Like, pet levels of chill. I'm fairly certain I have squirrels in my attic. I hear them occasionally, and there is a giant poof of ivy and shrubbery around the far side of my roof, where the vent is or whatever. I'm cool, if they're cool. am i going to die from like toxic poop or whatever? They don't really bother me. blight rhino fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jul 4, 2023 |
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Jul 4, 2023 07:11
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This is going to be a very anti-squirrel post so scroll by if you don't want to see it You need to eradicate them asap if they have really set up shop in there. Not only will they destroy everything in your attic and bleed and poo poo everywhere(seriously they bleed a lot, they like to fight), but they will never stop trying to get back in, so extermination is the only process for ones that have already nested inside because they are fully capable of destroying anything you try to plug their entrances with. They dismantled any impediments and got in anyways. They are far more damaging than rats or mice imo. It took replacing both the siding and roofing and fixing a significant amount of stuff on my house to keep them out for good. Not specifically for them, obviously, but before I had that extremely expensive work done, it was a good 8 years of battling the little bastards, must have exterminated two or three dozen of them over that period. Four separate extermination companies(including one that caught SIX, it wasn't just one or two squirrels up there, but a community), 5 handymen patching entrances, a motion sensor robot owl thingy(that they destroyed, like seriously hosed it up and tore its head off), fox urine(that they ignored). nothing stopped the little monsters, they would always eventually get back in, because once the scent of "home" is in there they will never stop trying to get back inside. They annihilated everything in the attic and poo poo everywhere. Not only that, but they will not stop at your attic. One day I was hanging out in my room when suddenly a gigantic, immensely fat and poofy squirrel just kinda sauntered along the edge of my couch and perched on it, looking at me. It had been chewing a significant hole in the wall underneath the couch for who knows how long. I lost my poo poo and, after it jumped all over knocking tons of stuff over, finally caught it. Mom wanted to release it, I said it'd just come right back inside, so we came to a compromise that we would release it 20 miles away(before I knew about the laws forbidding that) and paint a spot on its back to see if it would return. It took a month or so, but it made its way back somehow, same paint spot. They are vicious, destructive bastards, I will never forget going up in the attic once to see the damage and having them crawling along the underside of the roof SCREAMING at me. I hate that I have to say all that because they are also the cutest and cleverest little shits. But you need to treat them as a serious threat because they are incredibly destructive once they get a foothold. Edit: oh yeah, had some incidents of chewed wiring too, so ignoring them could potentially lead to one burning your house down from a poor snack choice. They also traversed the walls down to the basement and did some damage down there too, also dying in the walls and seriously stinking up the place. Also they would routinely bring in ticks and fleas. Captain Invictus fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Jul 4, 2023 |
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Jul 4, 2023 08:52
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Just make friends with the squirrels imo
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Jul 4, 2023 15:28
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blight rhino posted:I'm cool, if they're cool. I empathize with the inclination to coexist but wild animals in your house aren’t ever cool. At minimum they create large amounts of filth (which is bad for you and your home even if you can’t see it) and at worst it goes down like the squirrel apocalypse just described. (At worst-worst you get hantavirus from rodent poo poo but idk how common that actually is) the yeti fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jul 4, 2023 |
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Jul 4, 2023 20:21
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the yeti posted:I empathize with the inclination to coexist but wild animals in your house aren’t ever cool. At minimum they create large amounts of filth (which is bad for you and your home even if you can’t see it) and at worst it goes down like the squirrel apocalypse just described. AFAIK hantavirus is more a concern in the southwest, or in places that manage to mimic those general conditions.
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Jul 4, 2023 22:24
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Somebody mention large amounts of filth? I had a loss down in Ocean City NJ some time ago - suspected rodents in the ductwork. One thing about the coast: the wind is always blowing. So when I removed the inspection plate on the furnace  I got a face full of nasty. After retching for a bit and cleaning up my face as best I could, I stuck my camera in the opening:  Raccoons.
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Jul 5, 2023 01:35
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 The bears are awake!
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Jul 5, 2023 14:21
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I was collecting petrified wood yesterday and I had to evict this weevil from a particularly good chunk.
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Jul 5, 2023 19:22
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