Today we have photographs from three readers. Again, you’re welcome to send me your best wildlife (or landscape) photos, but please don’t be upset if I don’t publish them. Final judgement rests, as it always does, with Professor Ceiling Cat.
First is a photo of common starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) at the feeder by reader Diana MacPherson, who calls her photo “A murmuration of starlings finds the fat.” Her note:
A group of starlings found the fat this morning. The starling who comes in for a landing keeps his eye on the other starlings sitting on the railing out of the frame.
Reader Dave sent several shots of America’s largest woodpecker, the pileated (Dryocopus pileatus). His commentary:
I get a lot of woodpeckers at my “suet ball vortex” but it’s always a treat when one of these giants drops by. For some reason they usually seem to lurk in the shadows or around the other side of the feeder so I was particularly happy when this fellow sat on the sunny side and gave me these lovely profile shots.
From reader Joe Dickinson, who took these photos on a recent trip to Costa Rica. The identifications are his, and if they need refinement do weigh in below:
White-faced monkeys (actually “white headed capuchins,” Cebus capucinus) with a coconut:
A three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus):
This is labeled “lizard porn”. Can anyone identify the species?
Green iguana (Iguana iguana).
A bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus):
Some kind of teiid I think
Agreed. Looks like an Ameiva of some sort.
Picture matches I get are ‘Costa Rican whiptail lizard, and ‘Central American Whiptail’, often w/o species names. One specific name that it could be is Ameiva festiva but I am not sure.
Somebody could do a search with that name to see if correct.
The male is in breeding color.
Ameiva quadrilineata or A. festiva. I actually kept a pair of A. festiva many years ago, and they had a pretty distinct zig-zag down their back, which I don’t see in this pic (hard to tell from the angle, though), so I lean toward A. quadrilineata. And could be totally wrong!
I also recall A. festiva having a series of dorsal lines, kind of like chevrons.
It is Ameiva quadrilineata. The pair of thin, longitudinal stripes along the flanks and the light-colored dorsum with dark flecks are fairly diagnostic traits. Neat!
I don’t think that’s a bottlenose dolphin…its snout is too long and thin, and its dorsal fin is too sharply pointed. That said, I don’t know much about dolphin ID; I’ll suggest that it’s one of the spotted or spinner dolphins, but surely someone here can do better than that.
I love the pileated woodpeckers. They seem rare here and I’ve only seen them a couple of times. I’ve had hairy woodpeckers (a bigger version of the downy), downys (mostly) and the red bellied woodpeckers but the pileated don’t show up often. Maybe I need a bigger feeder for him and then I’d see one.
I love the lizards. I don’t know what kind they are but the lizards including the iguana are really cute. The iguana must be an old timer by the look of him/her.
I have the same mix, with downy by far the most frequent visitors.
No pileated ever at the feeders, but I saw one once attacking the stump of a dead tree I had to cut down, which was full of some kind of dead larvae.