That is a beautiful spider. I’ve never seen one like that before . . . looks like he has a yellow and black turtle shell on his back!
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I was sitting on the front porch yesterday and was blessed to see my pond snapping turtle heading down the hill back to the pond from laying her eggs up in the field. I assume she only leaves the pond once a year to lay her eggs, so I was grateful to catch that brief moment this year when she was out of the pond.
When she reached the edge of the pond, it almost looked like she took a small flying leap into the water, just happy and relieved to be back in her safe place. They are not exactly fast on land, although a bit faster than you would think.
Her name is Snappy Sue (I know, not terribly original), and she always comes to eat when I feed the catfish. She is fairly tame and will come right to the edge of the pond where I am sitting to Hoover up the floating fish food.
There is one other snapper in my little pond. He has different markings on his shell, and is a bit smaller. I guess he might be a male, looking for some female companionship from Snappy Sue. Who knows? I have dubbed him “Snappy Sam”. He is a bit more shy and will only occasionally come to eat the fish food, but keeps his distance. I did not manage to get a picture of her on land yesterday, but below is a picture of her coming to get fish food from a previous year. Isn’t she beautiful?
Sandra
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My chipmunks drastically reduced chewing on my plants and seedlings when I started leaving an extra chicken waterer out for them during the day. They will still try to chomp off an occasional seedling and plant their own acorn or sunflower seed in the pot, but they’re way less problematic for me with a constant moisture source.
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Wild bunny munching away this morning. I can get up to about 7 ft away or so before they decide to run.
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We have been having noisy nights by our pond. Sorry I can’t send an audio, but here a few of the cacophonous culprits.
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We found 3 Bullsnakes caught in plastic netting we had used to protect a tree from deer. My son in law and I were able to free all of them after about an hour, and none seemed injured. Our guess is that the three were together for mating. I am getting rid of all the thin diameter plastic netting around our place- I’ve also tried it to protect strawberries and it has caught birds. Here’s a pic of one of the snakes- all were 5-6 feet long. I hope they stay around and eat some voles, but my wife hopes they move along.
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5 to 6 feet - wow. Biggest gopher snake I’ve ever seen was maybe 4 feet long. That’s a prime specimen; could eat plenty of voles.
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bear or lion?
Bear
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I think the person who planted this beer bottle sideways was trying to make more bottles? Like stooling.
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can’t be too many of them in the deserts of A.Z.
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There used to be brown bears in those mountains before the settlers shot/trapped them all, now it’s just black bears. But you’re right the ecosystem can’t maintain large populations compared to further north
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My farm is only about a mile and a half from the mountain. There are always bear on the mountain. I live at the chiricahua mountains. All the sky islands in AZ have populations of bears. There are also cougar here and recently Mexican wolves.
The bears rarely come out on the mountains into the valley, but my neighbors say that they periodically get visitors when peaches are ripening. Bears have great olfactory senses.
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First time seeing this one. I think it’s a red cinnabar moth ? It is much prettier than the picture. When flapping its wings it appears this beautiful pink color while in motion.
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Looking for the Kansas sea shore. lol
Those guys will grab your fish and chips right out of your hands. Happens every 5 min at the seattle waterfront. Best fish and chips in town at the ferry dock at Ivar’s chowder house. But look over your shoulder before every bite. Don’t ask me how I know.
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Hate these noisy sky rats, all the tourists feed them which brings all the intrusive thoughts out haha.
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about 20 yrs ago they started to over winter here. before that they were only here in summer. we got turkey vultures about the same time.
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We get a lot of these moths, apparently brought in to control tansy ragwort that grows in cleared areas.
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