An inquisitive old fart with a camera
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.
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.
We’ve seen plenty of tarantulas on our dog walks, and I’ve taken plenty of photos and video, but I’ve never noticed one walking across sand – and leaving no track! At least none that I would have found convincing.
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 😉
Seriously large claw marks. That’s a size 13 shoe for comparison. We haven’t seen a live lizard longer than two inches long in a very long time. There was that one once, though….
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.
…eating the remains of the last few paltas (avocados) at such close range.
But there is that other thing.
Found on the dog walk among pine trees. Though we have robins (zorzal colorado) at home, we have never seen one out here. What other type of bird lays blue eggs?
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.
At the end of our driveway I found this little guy heading into the road, and encouraged him to keep moving. Lots of traffic with a mini-market next door, and unfortunately a lot of ignorant Uruguayans will kill any snake por las dudas (just in case). making no effort to determine if it’s a threat.
Best I can guess is it’s an immature Culebra de Peñarol.