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Once in a while I am very lucky and get a close up photo that I wow over. This large red dragonfly was flying around in our front yard and landed on the car antenna.
According to Wikipedia a dragonfly is a type of insect belonging to the order Odonata, the suborder Epeprocta or, in the strict sense, the infraorder Anisoptera. It is characterized by large multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong transparent wings, and an elongated body. Dragonflies are similar to damselflies, but the adults can be differentiated by the fact that the wings of most dragonflies are held away from, and perpendicular to, the body when at rest. Even though dragonflies possess 6 legs like any other insect, they are not capable of walking.
Dragonflies are valuable predators that eat mosquitoes. They are usually found around lakes, ponds, streams and wetland because their larvae, known as “nymphs”, are aquatic.
We often hear coyotes howling at night where we live here in northern California. This afternoon I was looking out the window at the backyard and low and behold there was a coyote in the backyard! It was sniffing around the edge of the deck, probably sniffing out mice or rats. Unfortunately, we have some of these vermin because I feed our backyard birds birdseed and we are located near unpopulated open natural hillsides.
I ran to get my husband to come and see the coyote but it was gone when we got back to the window.
I didn’t take this picture but this is what the coyote looked like.
“Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those peepers!”
“Jeepers, creepers, where’d you get those eyes!”
(Pardon the eyes. The camera flash made the eyes glow!)
I make homemade suet for my backyard birds. Some days the birds don’t eat all of the suet. Tonight at dusk a new backyard friend couldn’t resist the suet and cleaned out the feeder!
The two photos above were taken at night.
Last night about 12 am as I was going to bed I heard a noise outside on our deck. The bird feeders are on the deck. When I turned on the light and looked out, guess what I saw? A little black and white visitor eating bird seed. I decided to carefully open the sliding glass door to get a picture. The skunk looked up and then continued to eat bird seed. He or she didn’t seem to be bothered by the light or me looking at him or her. When I closed the door the noise frightened the skunk and he turned around with his tail facing the door. I guess I wasn’t perceived as a threat because the skunk went back to eating. One of his front paws is injured and he limps.
These two pictures were taken this afternoon. The skunk was photo shy and went under our deck.
This afternoon I looked out and there was the sknuk eating bird seed during the day. I was very surprised because I’ve only seen him after dark. Much to my extreme surprise there was a racoon in the backyard digging in the grass. I’m beginning to feel like we have a nature preserve. We’ve had deer in our front yard eating our shrubery. I’ve tried to photograph the racoon before, but the pictures taken at night did not turn out very clearly and the eyes were shining.
I know this blog is about birdwatching but I also feed the squirrels. They scamper into the yard every morning looking for their share of the sunflower seeds and peanuts. Usually the squirrels eat some of the peanuts and hide some for later. Today I watched a squirrel, peanut in mouth, run over to the flower bed and dig a small hole in the soil. Then he placed the peanut (in shell) in the hole and pushed down with his feet and then his nose. He carefully covered the peanut with soil with his little feet, then smoothed some small twigs over the top. He rubbed his feet together to brush off the dirt and scampered away. All of this activity happened in a few short seconds.
These are pictures of one friendly little squirrel that visits my backyard.
