2000+ Observations

a little green/blue-brown-yellow heron, probably no bigger than a dove, fishing in the shallow part of a pond at dusk. in photos 6 and 7, you can see the reflection of the moon in the water. the heron has a small divot in its right eye.

one of the bigger spiders I've come across in a while, mostly yellow (amber when lit from behind), with two black front legs, dark brown racing stripes on his head, and somewhat of a brown and yellow chevron pattern on the top of his abdomen, which is covered with fuzzy white hairs underneath. he was hanging out in some giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida) when i first spotted him. he started crawling around as he saw me photographing him, but he stayed close to trail instead of moving into the dense vegetation.

I've never seen two different kinds of dragonflies perching on the same plant stalk before. these dragonflies would even dart off to hunt and then return to the same perch. this observation is for the purple dragonfly. (the orange dragonfly is observed here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/14930514.) photos 8-12 show the dragonfly wiping its eyes/face after skimming the water.

a small green lizard hanging upside down with hands free. i was surprised to see this lizard hanging out in the grass, and I've never seen one hanging in such a way. i thought maybe there was something wrong with its hands, but they look okay in the photos.

a pale blue male damselfly attached to a yellow-brown female. they were at the bottom level of a man-made water cascade. i watched for a few minutes to see if the action would intensify, but they just danced around the area. i don't understand what exactly what was going on here. if the female wasn't interested, how long would the male hang on? if they were already done, why was the male still hanging on? there were at least 3 other males of the same species hanging around in this area (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15254900), though they didn't seem to notice the female or had already conceded. there was also another damselfly of a different species hanging close to these two for some reason: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/15254899.

This hawk came by this morning and hung out on my balcony. It must have noticed the house sparrows and other birds that hang out here occasionally and tried to get a quick breakfast, though there was no meal to be had this time.

the dull tan shells/exuvia of cicadas that we commonly see don't really hint at how colorful the actual animals are. this one flew across the trail, up into a buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis). it has all sorts of colors on its body, along with almost neon green veins in its mostly clear wings.

a slightly iridescent bronzy olive spider with a long-legged fly (Sciapodinae) prize. the spider was originally on the underside of this fuzzybean (Strophostyles helvola) leaf, but i coaxed it to the top to get some photos. the spider seems to be missing a couple of front legs on its right side. in photos 4 and 5, another long-legged fly comes to take a drink from a droplet of water on the leaf, but reconsiders as the spider focuses its attention on it. after the spider goes back to the underside of the leaf, the long-legged fly returns to get its drink (last photo).

a medium to large dragonfly hanging out low on the ground and on fallen leaves. when the dragonfly landed, it would drop its wings in a 3-stepped movement. i didn't see many dragonflies today, but i did see a second one of these: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18667915.

a medium-sized white bird. it seemed to be wading around this shallow section of the pond while kicking or vibrating its legs in the water, probably to stir up the bottom of the pond a bit in an attempt to reveal hidden snacks. i don't think i've ever noticed a bird using that kind of fishing technique before. the water seemed to be particularly murky today.

there were a couple of deer hanging out together in the forested wetlands. these were the first ones that i encountered that day. i also came across maybe 2 or 3 other individuals that seemed to be wandering about on their own. they were quite jumpy. when fleeing, they would raise their bushy tails, which are white underneath. the last photo is a hoof print from a different location (the shore of the bayou).

i heard a couple of birds loudly calling at each other, and one of them seemed to be flying at and harassing the other. (i'm not sure which one was harassing the other.) this observation is for the bird on the right that is black and white. it flew away to the south (to the right), leaving the other bird (with the red head, observed here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/19646176) to continue to poke around on this tree branch.

i never realized until looking at these photos that birds can have whiskers. this bird was rather bold as birds go. it just sort of looked at me while i took photos from just a few meters away. it was still there when i moved on.

a green snake with yellow stripes basking on a log. i was preparing to take a second photo from a different angle when it decided that it did not like me looking at it and slithered into the water nearby. as it went along, it passed by at least 2 other similar snakes, and probably more, and they all fled from their positions, too.