Category: readers’ wildlife videos

Reader’s wildlife photo (and video)

May 31, 2026 • 8:15 am

We have a short RWP today as there are more posts to come.  First we hear from Robert Lang, who sees a surprising amount of wildlife near his home in the eastern LA “suburb” of Altadena. Robert’s intro is indented, and you can enlarge the photo by clicking on it.

Although every day sees another few housing starts in post-fire Altadena, it’s still mostly empty of people, but after a year that included plenty of rain, the vacant lots are lush with plants—a mix of native coastal sage scrub, invasive weeds, and landscaping gone wild. This temporary rewilding provides plenty of cover for the local wildlife to come down out of the hills and hang out. Yesterday the workers at our site reported that a bear had stopped by and done a walk-through of the framed house (fortunately, just lookie-looing, no damage). Today I did a short hike on the Gabrielino Trail above my old stomping ground of JPL and saw a different (younger) California black bear (Ursus americanus californiensis) just off the trail, and I shot the photo below. . .

. . .  also this video.

This isn’t the bear species on the California state flag, which is the California grizzly bear (Ursus arctos californicus); that was native to this area but was hunted to extinction in the early 20th century. In the 1930s, 28 “problem bears”, California black bears, were taken from Yosemite and released in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. The black bear species is highly variable in coloration, ranging from black through brown, blond, and even white (the so-called “spirit bears” of British Columbia). Most of the bears we see in Altadena are brown, like this youngster, all descended from the original Problematic Twenty-Eight.

JAC: Here’s the California state flag sporting a grizzly:

Original: Donald Graeme Kelley. Vectorization: Devin Cook, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Readers’ wildlife photographs

May 29, 2026 • 8:15 am

I’m starting to get some new batches of wildlife photos, and I encourage readers to submit their good photos for consideration.

Today’s installment features the photos of UC Davis ecologist Susan Harrison, who recently went birding not too far from Chicago:

Birding in the Upper Midwest

Minnesota and Wisconsin may not be at the top of everyone’s list of nature travel destinations, but do they have darned nice birding?  You betcha!   On a late May work trip to Minneapolis, it was my good fortune to visit some of the Upper Midwest’s riparian forests, wetlands, and restored prairies during spring migration. Friendly people and well-tended parks and nature reserves helped make it delightful.

Large birds….

Sandhill Crane (Antigone canadensis):

Trumpeter Swan (Cygnus buccinator) on a nest:

Great Horned Owlet (Bubo virginianus) in a nest:

Common Loon (Gavia immer):

Common, medium to small birds….

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus):

Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula) bathing:

Eastern Kingbirds (Tyrannus tyrannus):

Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater):

Eastern Towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus):

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius):

Rarer small birds that were new (a.k.a. “lifers”) for me….

Kirtland’s Warbler (Setophaga kirtlandii), a specialized inhabitant of young Jack Pine (Pinus banksiana) forests, only recently removed from the endangered species list:

Louisiana Waterthrush (Parkesia motacilla), a warbler that lives on the banks of crystal-clear headwater streams in forests:

LeConte’s Sparrow (Ammospiza leconteii), a secretive marsh dweller that sings in the dark and scurries around on the ground:

Henslow’s Sparrow (Centronyx henslowii), a stealthy bird of the region’s much-diminished grasslands  (historical note: it was named by John James Audubon in honor of Darwin’s mentor John Stevens Henslow):

Other exciting Midwestern firsts for me included seeing Greater Prairie-chickens (Tympanuchus cupido) dancing at their lek, and hearing the weird nocturnal songs of Yellow Rails (Coturnicops noveboracensis), Eastern Whippoorwills (Antrostomus vociferus), and American Woodcocks (Scolopax minor).

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 27, 2026 • 8:15 am

Today we have some intertidal photos taken in California by UC Davis math professor Abby Thompson. Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

May is a great month on the California coast, with extreme high and low tides.   Here are some photos from the most recent, excellent, set:

Pollicipes polymerus (Gooseneck barnacles). I’ve shown these, and some relatives, several times before, but they’re amazing animals. In case you think it’s too many barnacles, Darwin spent eight years looking at barnacles.   “Originally planning a brief month-long study to establish his credentials in invertebrate zoology, he became deeply immersed and cataloged every known living and fossil species.”  (Google AI).  I’m not sure what the green is doing here, presumably just growing on top of the animals.   Some relatives of the nudibranchs stay green from what they eat, and retain bits with the ability to photosynthesize, most famously the adorable leaf sheep:.

Dendronotus venustus (nudibranch):

Paciocinebrina lurida (a snail):

Tonicella lokii (flame-lined chiton):

Genus Tegula (maybe) (another snail). There was a hermit crab living in the shell- I didn’t get a good photo of him.    I’m not sure the genus is correct, but the shell was so pretty I wanted to post it:

Nucella ostrina (Northern striped dogwinkle). About the common name—well, it has stripes.   And it’s a “winkle” (a word you have to love), or “little whelk”.  The dog part, I dunno.   They’re very common, and voracious. Some species of Nucella (not sure about this one) can be used to make a deep purple dye, which used to be hard to come by.  There’s a fun account of making the dye here, although I’m afraid many snails must have been sacrificed in the process:

Paradialychone ecaudata (worm):

Limpet, probably Lottia pelta (shield limpet). The little lacy edge is tentacles: “Pallial tentacles are tiny, sensory structures lining the mantle margin (pallium) of limpets. . . The tips and shafts of these tentacles are covered in dense tufts of non-motile cilia, which act as sensory receptors.” (Google AI):

Seagulls at sunset:

As always, thanks to experts on inaturalist for help with some IDs.   Camera is an Olympus TG-7.

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 17, 2026 • 8:15 am

Send in your wildlife photos! I am almost out. Thank you in advance.

Today we have miscellaneous photos from the Catskills taken by reader Jan Malik. Jan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge them by clicking on them.

Here is another batch of pictures from my hikes in the Central Catskills this April and May. They are not too artistic, given the fast pace that a weekend backpacking hike demands, but they give a sample of what common animals a casual hiker can see in these “mountains” (the Catskills are an eroded plateau and, despite being steep in places, they are too low to have an alpine zone).

White‑tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), right in the parking lot at a cloudy sunrise. It was slurping water from a muddy puddle despite a clear stream flowing nearby, so it must have been leftover salt that attracted this ungulate. Woodstock residents like their roads well salted. One has to drive carefully at dusk around Woodstock, as there are many deer browsing on lawns and gardens.

In the woodland, I found the first of many red efts of the Eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens). This is an intermediate land stage of development between the aquatic larva and adult forms. Red efts have lungs, but air exchange through the skin is also important, supplying 30–40% of their oxygen demand. They travel through the forest litter when it is humid enough—after rain or in the early morning:

This is probably a blue‑headed vireo (Vireo solitarius), collecting nesting materials. If my identification is correct, then it is not possible to tell a male from a female, as they are sexually monomorphic and share rearing duties almost equally. Interestingly, however, a female may desert the nest just before fledging to mate with another available male:

Possibly an Eastern comma (Polygonia comma), found at higher elevation:

Black‑and‑white warbler (Mniotilta varia). I think this is a male. If so, he may be led by a female into the territory of another male to provoke a fight and allow her to judge his fitness. These birds occupy a similar niche to nuthatches and brown creepers; they climb and circle tree trunks to find arthropods:

Eastern towhee (Pipilo erythrophthalmus), male. These colorful sparrows hang around the edges of forest clearings:

Eastern American toad (Anaxyrus americanus americanus), hiding in a ramps patch. I wonder whether they would prey on red efts or if the efts’ foul taste would be a deterrent:

While passing through oak woods rich with acorns, I heard many alarm chirps from Eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus). Most made themselves scarce as I approached, but one remained on guard duty:

Not a good picture, but here is a dark‑eyed junco (Junco hyemalis). These are hardy birds, staying year‑round in the forest. In winter they form close‑knit flocks with a few dominant individuals and a strict pecking order:

Chipping sparrow (Spizella passerina) on the side of a quiet road. These migrate to more southern states in winter and in summer nest closer to human settlements:

Mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa). There were a couple of them in the area, continuously jousting in the air for control of the territory. I see them every spring in that exact spot, but this year they were too engaged in battling each other to stay still, so this is a picture taken a few years back:

Brown creeper (Certhia americana), shown here just a moment after eating a couple of mayflies. They are common enough, but I rarely see them due to their near‑perfect camouflage. Without directly comparing the bill length it is difficult to tell a female from a male:

Readers’ wildlife photos

May 11, 2026 • 8:15 am

Mark Sturtevant is back with some arthropod photos for us. His captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Today we have another set of pictures of arthropods from my area in eastern Michigan. Some of these were taken in the field and others were in a staged setting on the faithful dining room table.

During recent summers, I have been using cheap black lights on the front and back porch to attract more insects, and many new species have arrived as a result. One was this floofy moth that is clearly in the tiger moth (Arctiidae) family, but it was new to me. I believe this to be Spilosoma latipennis. If so, it should have hot pink legs, as shown in the link, but I did not know at the time to check for that:

Another arrival was this species of chafer beetle. This is an Oriental Beetle (Anomala orientalis). It is an invasive species from Asia that is becoming a minor pest here on turf grasses and other plants:

Moving on to spiders, here is a new species of spider called the Western Lynx Spider (Oxyopes scalaris). Lynx spiders can be easily recognized by their form, and especially by those prominent leg spines. They are sit-and-wait predators on plants. This male was missing one of its pedipalps, so I used editing tricks to replace it:

Next up is a lovely Orchard Orbweaver (Leucauge venusta), which had built its web across a seldom-used path in the woods. I had to stand on tippy-toes to get several partial focus stacks, and this final picture was grafted together by hand, piece by piece from those pictures. I really like their iridescent abdomens that look like antique porcelain, and those beautiful green legs. She was eating an unidentified Syrphid fly:

The next two pictures show a flashy jumping spider that I have only seen a few times. This is the Thin-spined Jumping Spider (Tutelina elegans), but to me it will always be called ‘the purple jumper’. The pictures were both taken in a staged setting, where the first is a focus stack, again needing much assembly, and the second was a “lucky shot” single frame. Lucky because she never once stood still, and she was always waving her front legs. I wonder if these spiders are trying to be ant mimics:

Back to insects. Folks here will have seen this one many times now, but it is still special. This is the Wasp Mantidfly (Climaciella brunnea). I won’t repeat again the improbable life cycle it has as a parasitoid on spider egg sacs. You can clearly see that it shows convergent evolution on praying mantids, and at the same time it is a wasp mimic. More specifically, it mimics various species and regional color variations of paper wasps (Polistes sp.). A detail about that which I think is really neat are its two-toned pigmented wings, which is an ersatz way to get its wings to resemble the wings of its models.

I show our local model wasp (P. fuscatus) in the next picture for comparison. Paper wasps have an extra crease that folds their wings length-wise, so the wings are dark and narrow. The mantidfly does not have the crease, so it fakes it with pigment:

Speaking of mantids, I finish with an amusing story about the next picture. This is a Chinese Praying Mantis (Tenodera sinensis), in hand, and the picture was taken with the Opteka 15mm wide angle macro lens. This fully manual lens is the most difficult lens that I own since to get the depth of focus that is much of the point for this kind of photography, one has to stop down the aperture to about f/32. As a result you are taking pictures with a pinhole camera, and focusing is done by guesstimation. Meanwhile, the working distances are extremely short so an insect subject is practically touching the lens. Anyway, she wasn’t having any of it, and quite honestly I was having a hard time keeping this big girl under control. So I made a short movie about the struggle, and attached an appropriate sound track to it. For those who have handled one of these insects, you know they will do what they want to do, and what they want to do is climb:

Sound up for the movie!

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 3, 2026 • 8:15 am

Edmund Ault has sent us some photos of mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) ducklings, and you can never see too many of these.  (We should have some in Botany Pond by April 19.)  Edmund’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

These ducklings are on the River Witham, in the centre of Grantham, Lincolnshire, and are the first I have seen this year. I regularly feed the ducks on this stretch of river, but I wasn’t aware that there was a nest until I saw the brood this morning; I think they must have hatched first thing this morning (31st March). And what a brood it is: 16 ducklings!

Most of the brood are sheltering under their mother:

More:


The mother duck led her brood for a walk away from the river; when she got back to the river she happily jumped off a small concrete wall (about 3 feet high) and expected her brood to follow suit – which all of them did, although reluctantly:

The brood moved upstream and tried to scale a weir; although the weir is only about a foot high the rush of water was far too great for them and eventually they turned around and went back:

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 29, 2026 • 8:15 am

Abby Thompson of UC Davis has sent in some pictures of California tidepool organisms, as well as a video. Abby’s captions are indented and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

Late January-early March tidepools, plus an octopus.

Bryozoans:

Lepas anatifera (pelagic gooseneck barnacle).   Usually found clinging to something drifting around in the open ocean (the “pelagic” part of their name), these were on a large log washed up on shore:

Intertidal zones, illustrated.    A well-placed vertical rock face, like this one, exhibits the idea of the different intertidal “zones”, each of which has its own specific collection of inhabitants.  You can see mussels and barnacles clustered at the top (in the “high intertidal”), exposed to the air as soon as the tide goes out even a little. There are smaller colonial anemones next, beneath them the orange and purple ochre stars, and below those, arriving at the low intertidal level, some giant green anemones.   If you peer into the water under the open giant green anemone, you’ll see a crab, probably a rock crab.   There’s some back and forth- there are a few giant green anemones pretty high up in this photo- but the general idea holds.

This reflects each animal’s differing tolerance for specific conditions- time out of the water as the tide goes out, harshness of wave actions, etc.      The nudibranchs (next few pictures) are usually in the very low intertidal:

Orienthella piunca (nudibranch):

Hermissenda opalescens (nudibranch):

Doto amyra (nudibranch).  Visible through the translucent skin on its back are lobules of the “ovotestis” (thanks inaturalist expert! ).   From google AI: “Ovotestes in nudibranchs are specialized, hermaphroditic reproductive glands that produce both male (sperm) and female (oocytes/eggs) gametes simultaneously”:

More eggs, this time from a snail in the genus Amphissa. I like the pointy egg casings, like wizards’ hats:

And here’s an adult of the genus- almost certainly Amphissa versicolor, but it’s an unusual color (they’re usually shades of orange or brown/tan):

In honor of Ghost the octopus, and also because I’ve finally figured out how to include videos, below is a clip from 2021 of an East Pacific red octopus (Octopus rubescens), cruising around the rocks (out of the water!) at low tide.  I’ve only seen one twice, probably because they’re too cleverly camouflaged (possibly just too clever) for me to spot.    This guy was about the size of a human hand, a miniature compared to the 50 pound Ghost.

Point Reyes peninsula at sunset:

Camera: Olympus TG-7.