Category: Nature

General observations, generally during dog walks

Cayó.

Small house among pine trees, Atlántida, Uruguay

April 2023

November 2024

2:30 Friday afternoon, no particular wind, no cars, no pedestrians, and boom–down goes a leaning pine tree. Obviously, this could have been serious.

And here’s the crazy part. Ten meters up the trunk, the rings indicate this part of the tree is less than thirty years old. Some of the earlier rings are one inch wide.

I’ve gone by this tree almost every day for fifteen years, and only noticed it in the last few because of its tilt. Strange to think that in our early days here, it would have been less than half its present diameter.

A long lizard trail

We’re getting to that time of year when we wonder what things must look like at night, given all the tracks we see in daylight with no evidence of what caused them. Generally, lizard rails cross the sandy trails as directly as possible, from one side to the other. Lately, though, a few seem to have changed their minds. This was an extraordinarily long “exposed” track.

We actually haven’t seen any good-sized lizards in quite a while.