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:

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.

Snake!

Couple feet long, not huge, but exciting to us because we haven’t seen a snake in probably two years. Alas, it didn’t feel like performing and I didn’t feel like hassling it.

No bets just yet, please

High-speed ant hill…

…and a gratuitous (but funny) comment about local drivers.

Ant parades

Two sizes of ants share a pathway across a paver block in our local park. It looks like the bigger ones are simply steamrolling over the smaller ones. Wild stuff.

Hail!

Not a common occurrence in coastal Uruguay! This was a few days ago. I abruptly stopped shooting in order to turn the glass table on its side, because….

Hercules overhead

I was aware of four passes overhead today of the Uruguayan Air forces complete inventory of KC-130 Hercules aircraft. Mocha the dog did not approve of these unauthorized airspace intruders.

Why? Training, I suppose. Note that the first test flight of a KC-130 was in January 1960. I love that the aircraft of the Uruguayan Air Force are all models introduced over 50 years ago, one exception being the Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia, introduced “only” 40 years ago.

Two helicopters

Strange sighting today: a black and a white helicopter flying along the coast. Then they do a huge circle and pass overhead before continuing on their way.

Tiny snake

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.