Category: Nature

General observations, generally during dog walks

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.

Never seen before…

We often see fascinating tracks in the sand – lizards, beetles, birds – but this track was unlike any we’d seen before. And, luckily, we didn’t have to guess what made it (note how it almost gets blown off track by the wind at 0:23).

The early bird?

OK, not my best videography (ya think?). That’s a bird finishing eating a worm, bit by bit, in the middle of an intersection, oblivious to our two dogs nearby. I have never watched a bird eating a worm in the open. I always imagined they just swallowed them whole, rather than pulling them to pieces. And why in the middle of the road? I just stared, until it occurred to me to record it, which is why you don’t see the juicy bits earlier.

Next time 😉

Love birds

We’ve had a couple pigeons hanging around for several years now. The pair I saw the most in the past were gray and white. This year they’re both white. They nested on an air conditioning unit upstairs. I saw one eggshell and once the two of them with another, full grown, black and white. Much more interesting than just gray.

As you’ll no doubt agree. Here’s what two two gray pigeons look like.

Carpenters

In addition to leaf-cutter ants, the woods have carpenter ants. We’ve seen some in weakened trees, but I had never seen how much sawdust they produced. If ants are higher in the tree, sawdust will likely blow away before it reached the ground. So I found this pile impressive, and was reminded why I’m glad not to live in a wooden house.

Ants and acacia

Ants are, of course, amazing. What’s unusual about this trail is that we could actually find the end of it; usually the trails disappear in the undergrowth, often after a far greater distance than this.

Regardless, the question remains: why weren’t they harvesting the closer acacia bush?