I have been trying to come up with an interesting introduction to this post, and I've got nothing. I went for a walk today, and hardly saw any bugs, but I saw other things, so that is what I am going to show you. But the first thing I want to show you is something that I saw from my window...
I didn't say I got a good view of it from my window...
So, the window photos aren't good–I went outside, and cautiously approached to try to get better pictures without scaring it away...
Backyard Bird of the Day: Turkey vulture
There were several of these flying around my backyard skies yesterday. Today I looked out and saw two of them land on a snag way back from the house. One of them flew away pretty much right away, but this one stuck around for a few minutes.
My camera sensor is filthy. I cleaned it last week, and did a terrible job...
After the vulture flew away I went to get the mail, and heard the buzzing of bees as I walked past the rock garden. In spite of the gloomy, rainy, chilly morning, there were a few bumblebees bobbing among the flowers. Backyard Bug of the Day:
Their wings flap so fast that this bee looks like it doesn't have any.
I had the telephoto lens on the camera, because I had just been taking pictures of the vulture, so this was challenging, and ultimately I gave up. One thing I have learned from taking photos of bugs is when to give up and not push myself to do things that are not going to work.
In spite of the threat of rain I took my camera on my woods walk today. I kept zoom lens on because I didn't think I was going to see many bugs, and I was right. So here's what I saw...
Earth star mushroom. For years I found these in the woods and assumed they were from a nut or fruit. It makes me happy to finally know that it's a mushroom. That white part on top was once round and full of spores. I have never seen one like that, though.
Mostly I saw a lot of frogs today. In the small pond (where I didn't see any yesterday, even though it was a much nicer day weather-wise)...
There were water striders on the small pond today, too, where there weren't any yesterday. The small pond was quite a bit smaller today than it was yesterday.
I checked on the salamander eggs in the big pond, and could get a slightly better look with my zoom lens. It was dark from the heavy cloud cover, and hard to see with the reflections on the pond, so this was really the only one I could see with any clarity. It's hard to see, but you can kind of tell that the larval salamanders are developing tails.
Just as I was thinking that I haven't seen frogs in that pond, which is good for the salamanders, because both frogs and tadpoles would be happy to eat them, when a frog jumped into the water right in front of me. Well, there were frogs and tadpoles in the pond last year–big tadpoles–and enough salamanders survived to adulthood that there are eggs there now, so I am going to hope for the best for the future salamanders.
I think this is a raccoon print.
Anyway, more frogs...
I mostly saw this species. They blend in nicely with the mud and rocks in the stream.
I saw a couple of this species, but this is the only one I was able to photograph, because I almost stepped on the other two, and they jump into the water and swam into hiding before I could react.
There is a herd of deer that I often encounter in the woods, sometimes up to 5 or 6 deer. Today there were three. They fled when my husband and I approached, as they usually do, but when my husband had seen one of them earlier he had what he called a close encounter. It stood and looked at him for a bit before bounding off. The ones we saw together were much more wary.
Deer can be practically invisible.
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