Category: Nature

General observations, generally during dog walks

The magic patch

At one of the more remote points of our dog walk, I started noticing a textured patch that gave no clue what caused it, or could have caused it. And never seemed to have had anything walk through it.

Since it seemed to occur every day, untouched, I put a footprint in the middle of it as an experiment.

And the next day find the pattern again, with no sign of my footprint from 24 hours before.

So what’s going on here?

A little (fast) snake

I think it’s a juvenile falsa crucera de hocico respingado, minus the red bit on the tail. Here’s my visual snake identifier: dbosk.com/snakes.

Fun note about my snake page: it’s simple, but serves a purpose ignored by the 1990s-style Serpentario site it links to – allow you to identify a snake you see. ¡Que concepto! I recently sent the code to them, saying they were welcome to it, and they replied thank you, we’re planning an upgrade to our site soon.

I don’t still have their email from eight years ago, but they said exactly the same thing then.

Reminds me of this t-shirt I probably should have:

Tire dunes

After the rain, wind: the darker wet sand was compressed by a motorcycle tire, leaving a ditch that was then filled with blowing dry sand. Which formed miniature dunes.

Strange to think: I have walked in this area thousands of times, but have never seen (or noticed) this phenomenon before.

Wait … what?

Avocados are long gone. Buds emerging for the next crop.

So what do I find this morning but a freshly-fallen avocado, freshly devoured. Huh?

I didn’t get a picture of the bird, but when I first saw this, it was calmly eating, that far away, glancing up at me from time to time, as if wondering—as usual—who exactly I thought I was hanging around its feeding station.

The honey makers

Years ago I dug up a little nothing-special bush in the back yard and planted it to the right of the driveway, where it grew and grew, exploding with white flowers every spring. Then I found another, and planted it to the left, imagining one day an arch of flowers over the driveway.

This year we’re pretty much there, though the effect isn’t exactly as master-Japanese-gardener as I envisioned. In fact, both could use some serious pruning, but neither is getting it yet, because…

…the bees are loving them!

Swallows!

I’m not sure I have ever experienced this before: the mesmerizing aerial dance of swallows feeding (presumably on mosquitoes—yesss!).

Not in this clip, but an hornero bird returned to its nest atop the power pole with a single screech, entirely atypical because their normal call is long and loud. It was as though it found the air traffic overwhelming, and I would have to agree. A moment later, it moved lower onto the wire, and when a swallow tried to land on the wire near it…well, it was not happy about that.