Growing in our office. Maybe this doesn't count since it's captive...
This was my first Audobon Society trip. One participant originally identified this observation as a Cinnamon Teal, but other participants corrected it as a Green Teal.
My favorite observation of the day! For some reason I find egrets simply hilarious. And this snowy egret doing some wading on the shores of the Albany Bulb was no different.
Engorged female dog tick, light greenish-gray in color, about .5 inch long. Poor doggie!
This flock of waxwings has been hanging around Mulford for the past week or so, squealing away the afternoons.
I found this wasp near a light on my house. The light was surrounded by araneid orb weavers (probably Araneus). Once the wasp got somewhat stuck, and the spider shot out to nab it, but being rather large and heavy, the wasp fell out of the web in the nick of time. This guy was pretty chunky, maybe 2-3 cm from head to the end of the abdomen.
These things are creepy. And fast. And creepy. Scutigera coleoptrata, according to Wikipedia
I saw this guy on a screen door in the dead of night. (S)he was pretty big, though it was a few years ago so I don't remember exactly how big. Paonias excaecatus, I think.
I need to figure out how to distinguish the White-tailed Kite from the lighter male Northern Harriers. This one had tapered wings and seemed slim overall, so I figured it was a kite, but another guy out there seemed to think it was a Harrier.
At least 4, perhaps as many as 6 individuals seen within about 100 meters of this location over the course of several months. This is down from an average of at least 10 individuals in the 1980s and mid-1990s.
Possible in the family Desidae, but I'm not sure. Plenty of these in the amaryllis (?) in the median outside of Cheeseboard. Somewhat tangled, ladder-like webs, with retreats. I collected it for my spider biology class.
Update: Turns out it was a desid, and there's only one in the area. Noice! Also, I think there's a spelling error in my spider manual...
1 in talus field above Evolution Lake, Kings Canyon National Park, CA, USA. Not uncommon to hear or see 4 individuals while hiking trail on north shore of Lake.
2 adults seen throughout summer of 2007. Likely nesting on south side of river.
Nesting in pond with 6 young. By mid-September, there was no sign of adult or any young. There was most likely predation from resident goshawk and possibly coyote, but 2 ducklings may have survived and moved by early fall. This was the 2nd year Mallard had nested in this pond.
One of the lowest elevation pikas I'd heard or seen in quite sometime (about 8,000 feet). Likely as a result of global warming, their range has gone up about 1,000 feet + in the last 100 years. As recently as the 80s and 90s I would routinely hear pikas in the lower part of the canyon here.
