Category: Readers’ wildlife

Fall at Botany Pond: The turtles soak up some sun

October 19, 2026 • 8:15 am

All the ducks have gone, and the sky is gray. (People keep asking me, “Where do you think the ducks are?” My answer is, “My best guess is that they’ve gone south for the winter.”) But the squirrels and turtles are still here, and I’m been remiss in feeding the rodents. (The turtles get their own food from a feeder person.) One squirrel remembered me yesterday, crawled into my lap repeatedly, and was rewarded with two walnuts and four peanuts. I haven’t kissed him yet.

It’s been cool but sunny these last few days, and the turtles have taken advantage of the weather to soak up some rays and jump-start their metabolism. Yesterday afternoon four of them found their way to a sunny rock and, stretching out limbs and necks in what we call “turtle yoga”, basked for a long time. Here are four red-eared sliders absorbing UV.

Note that they’re all facing  the same direction: the sun is behind them, and they’ve exposed as much of their bodies as they can.  If I don’t miss my guess, there are two more turtles in the pond.

Notice how their rear feet are stretched out behind, and their necks are extended.

Finally, here’s a video in which turtle #4 joins the three that were already there. Be sure to watch until the end.

I haven’t seen a single duck even stop briefly at the pond since Miss Duck left along with her brood (Rupert was the last). I do wonder where they are.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 15, 2026 • 8:15 am

Another batch of photos arrived this morning, this time from reader Andrew in Oz.  Andrew’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking on them.

Yarra Bend, Melbourne, Australia

These photos were all taken in an hour or so, in a bit of bushland three miles (5 km) from downtown in a city of 3ish million people.

The Birrarung River (also, more commonly, known as the Yarra river). Melbourne’s main river. Often very brown – locally known as the river that flows upside down:

Pacific black duck (Anas superciliosa):

Dusky moorhen (Gallinula tenebrosa):

European honey bee (Apis mellifera). We sometimes call this the feral bee. In, I think, a River Red Gum, (Eucalyptus camaldulensis):

Black-faced cuckooshrike (Coracina novaehollandiae). A cute common name is the Shufflewing – when they settle after flight, they shuffle their wings alternately:

Spotted pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus) – female. Tiny bright little bird – common but hard to see and identify. Today I was lucky:

Spotted pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus) male:

 Red-rumped parrot (Psephotus haematonotus). More usually seen on the ground in small flocks. Surprisingly well camouflaged in the grass – quite easy to almost step on:

Pied currawong (Strepera graculina). Common, beautiful loud meodious song:

Rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus). One of the most common birds in eastern Australia. Incredibly bright and beautiful – and loud:

Noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala). Another very common bird. A few lines from a review (by noted biologist/author Tim Flannery) of the book “Where Song Began” by Tim Low:

The title of Australia’s most aggressive bird … must go to a rather drab gray member of the honeyeater family known as the noisy miner.

Accused in a scientific paper of “despotic aggressiveness,” the species has been recorded driving off fifty-seven rival types of bird. Indeed the noisy miner’s aggression has led to it becoming “one of the most important mechanisms through which habitat fragmentation and degradation threaten populations of eastern Australian woodland birds.” “They will turn on almost anything,” Low says: “koalas, cows, bats, pigs, snakes, lizards, people,” as well as other birds. And worse, they recruit allies in their bullying, including the aptly named butcher bird—a sharp-beaked, shrike-like predator that the noisy miners leave alone—provided they refrain from taking their eggs and young.

Noisy miners will even recruit humans as allies. Some years ago, a great fracas emanating from a mob of noisy miners outside my house in Sydney induced me to leave my work and investigate. As I stepped outside, the birds fell into silent expectation. Looking down, I saw a python. I got the distinct feeling that the noisy miners expected me to deal with it. But I like pythons, so I left it and returned inside. The howl of disappointed rage emerging simultaneously from dozens of beaks had to be heard to be believed. To get any peace, I was forced to move the snake.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 13, 2026 • 8:15 am

Yep, three people sent photos during the weekend, and today we have the second batch, arthropod photos contributed by regular Mark Sturtevant. Mark’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Here are more pictures that were taken two summers ago. A surprise development here and in the next few posts is that I did a lot of traveling that summer, and of course the cameras came with me.

First, here are a few pictures from where I live: eastern Michigan. We start with a Jagged Ambush Bug (Phymata pennsylvanica). Ambush bugs are a specialized kind of assassin bug that sits on flowers in order to catch pollinating insects. Their prey can include insects that are far larger than they are. I was surprised to recently learn that there is a second species in my area, called P. americana (Tr*mp had nothing to do with that), but this one identifies as the first species:

Next up is a nymph of the ubiquitous Marmorated Stink Bug (Halyomorpha halys). These introduced insects are NOT a favorite of anyone since they tend to gather on and inside peoples’ houses for the winter, but the nymphs change their appearance with every molt and this particular instar is simply adorable. I mean, c’mon, this little guy reminds me of an awkward teenager trying to figure out if they should go for a punk rock look, with spikes and gold studs, or the glam rock look, with pink and white accents:

Bee flies are a family of flies that parasitize other insects. Here are two local species. The first is Anthrax georgicus,which parasitizes tiger beetles, and the second is our largest bee fly, the Tiger Bee Fly (Xenox tigrinus). They parasitize our large Eastern Carpenter Bees:

The next two pictures are of a Giant Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio cresphontes), but they are also the result of early experiments of mine in the more artistic sides of photography. I have been experimenting with multiple exposure, intentional camera movement, and some other techniques. These are early attempts at what is called the Pep Ventosa technique. Pep Ventosa is an artist from Spain who uses what are called “blending modes” to combine pictures to yield a more impressionistic kind of picture. He does landscapes and architecture, and you can see examples of what he does from here. My efforts are laughable by comparison, but it is a start and they were fun to do!:

During that summer the entire family flew to Italy, and this was my first time in Europe! We had a great time where we mainly stayed with in-laws in Lucca, a gorgeous historic walled city, but we also stayed for a time in Venice, and had a day trip out to Florence. The sites and food were amazing, of course, but what about the arthropods?? Well, of course Mark brought a stripped-down camera kit and spent a lot of time exploring local parks and botanical gardens.

First up are bees. Here is a Buff-tailed Bumble Bee, Bombus terrestris, followed by one of the Woolcarder Bees, Anthidium sp. The latter are a solitary species, and they are so-named because females gather hairs from fuzzy plants to line their nests:

Next up is an unidentified mayfly (Ephemeroptera), but I like how the jury-rigged diffuser on the flash gave an iridescent look to the wings:

The last insect here is a weird little planthopper nymph called the Black planthopper, Ricania speculum. The waxy ornaments on its rear are a deterrent that many planthopper nymphs do to ward off exploratory bites from predators. I had learned that this species was introduced from Asia, and that it’s an economic pest. I was sorry to not see an adult, though, since they look really interesting, but you can see that in the link:

Moving on to Italian spiders, here is a Cucumber Spider, Araniella sp. Much like a related species that I often see here, they typically build their small orb web across the concave surface of a slightly curled tree leaf:

As ever, jumping spiders earned a lot of attention, and I found two species. First is a female Half-edged Wall Jumping Spider, Menemerus semilimbatus. Following that is this really cool Hooked Striking Jumping Spider, Icius hamatus. This is clearly a male, and it will use its enlarged front legs and coloration during courtship displays:

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 12, 2026 • 8:15 am

Glory be: three readers submitted photos over the weekend!  And today’s batch is from reader Thomas Webber. His notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

This is McCarty Woods, at 1.4 ha the last substantial remnant of native forest on the built-up part of the University of Florida’s 850 ha campus in Gainesville. For decades it has been designated a Conservation Area in the campus land-use plan. Five years ago we learned with a shock that the university’s board of trustees had voted to revoke the plan and cut down the woods to build – I am not making this up – a forestry teaching lab. (According to hearsay, the forestry department itself has not been lobbying to put the lab there.) But leadership in McCarty’s defense arose at the right time. Botany professors Douglas Soltis and Pamela Soltis took up the challenge of helping the UF authorities understand the importance of the forest, and galvanized public opinion in its favor. They have recruited a large, enthusiastic volunteer force that meets each month to remove invasive exotics and restore native species that have dropped out over the years as the grove was surrounded by development. For the time being the UF administration has agreed that the woods should stay.

Here are just a few of the flowering species in our reprieved McCarty Woods.

Cherry laurel, Prunus caroliniana. Native. Individual flowers 3-5 mm. Small trees, which turn snowy-looking with masses of tiny blossoms for a few weeks in the spring.

Pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. Native. 7 cm long. Famous for being poisonous, though the leaves can be eaten for a short time in spring if cooked. I haven’t tried it:

Paintedleaf, Euphorbia cyathophora. Native. The complicated central part is 2-3 cm across. One of the few abundant inhabitants of the shady interior. At close range it’s one of the stranger-looking plants in the woods, with features that don’t correspond obviously to the familiar parts of typical flower-like flowers, such as petunias. The oval cups are nectaries. Holiday Poinsettia is a close relative:

Trumpet creeper, Campsis radicans. 7 cm long. A native that had disappeared from McCarty, which we are trying to restore:

Potato vine, Ipomoea pandurata. Native. 7 cm. The most visible of the native vines when it’s in bloom. We haven’t had to do anything for this one. As of early September it’s near its peak of bloom in the interior and on the edges.

Coral honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens. Native. 6 cm long. Another vine formerly lost from the woods. We’re now planting some in hopes of re-introducing it:

Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana. Native. Individual flowers 3-5 mm. Most people know this plant from its large clumps of close-packed purple berries. Here is a less familiar close-up view of the flowers:

Nightshade, Solanum nigrum. Native. Individual flowers 1 cm.:

The colorful bases that remain after the nightshade flowers fall away, and the 6-8 mm berries:

Ironweed, Vernonia gigantea. Native. Whole flower head 7 cm across. A superior butterfly plant:

Carolina petunia, Ruellia caroliniensis. 3-4 cm. A native that is especially abundant this year:

Elephant’s foot, Elaphantopus tomentosus. Native. Whole flower head 3 cm across:

Sandmat, Euphorbia cf. hyssopifolia. Individual flowers 2-3 mm.:

Silkgrass, Pityopsis graminifolia. Native. Mature flower head 2-3 cm:

Frogfruit, Phyla nodiflora. Native. 1 cm. For some reason this has been more common around town this year than ever, and no more so than right at the edge of our woods. It is part of a spectacular example of convergent biological and cultural evolution:

Skunkvine, Paederia foetida. Native to southeast Asia. Flowers 1 cm long. This technically should not be welcome, since it is not native and is alleged to smell skunk-like when its parts are crushed. But there is only one here, it is small and behaving itself, and it doesn’t seem very foetid to me, so I have included it just because I like the way the picture look:

One of our teams of joyous forest restorers. This is a big crowd for July, when the heat and humidity and especially the sun hammering the east edge of the forest are brutal. On the summer days I assign myself a job in the shade of the interior, taking out the imperialistic, introduced vine called catclaw:

So we have kept the bulldozers away for five years. The right leadership was essential; as the expression goes, “It’s not what you say, it’s who says it.” When National Academy members  Doug and Pam Soltis speak, the administration pays attention; if lab-assistant Webber said the same thing, the sound would be like the proverbial tree falling in the forest. Regardless of the success so far, there are infinite opportunities to lose it all, for there will always be someone who will look at our woods as a blank space that’s just the place to put their construction project. Here we say, “What’s the difference in protection between a UF Conservation Area and a non-conservation area? The Conservation Area has a sign on it until it’s leveled.” Conservationists have to win every time, without end, but developers need to win only once, and the concrete is forever.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 11, 2026 • 8:15 am

Hey, you reprobates!  Send in your good wildlife photos if you have them. I know who you are!

Despite having just lost her beloved cat Natasha, ecologist Susan Harrison from UC Davis has some bird photos to share with us. Susan’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

Lewis’s Woodpeckers and others

This is an irruption year in the Western US, in which large numbers of seed-eating birds have been on the move in fall.  One of these species, the Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis), has just arrived en masse at our local Lake Solano County Park, where riparian forest lines a small gem of reservoir. These dramatic pink, ruby, and green birds are loosely social and nomadic, moving in flocks between sources of insects in summer and acorns in winter.  Unusually for woodpeckers, they catch insects on the wing, and use their drilling talents only to break acorns and cache them in bark crevices.

Excited by their arrival, I grabbed my camera and headed for Lake Solano. Only once did I catch a close-up woodpecker on the public side of the lake:

For the rest of the photos, I had to return with an inflatable boat and paddle across to the privately owned shore.  There, around 40 birds were foraging for acorns on Valley Oaks (Quercus lobata), caching them in Fremont Cottonwoods (Populus fremontii) and California Walnuts (Juglans californica), and sallying high overhead for insects:

From across the lake, I spied a large group bathing and drinking:

Because the bathing photos were too distant to be crisp, I asked ChatGPT to render one as an Impressionist painting in the style of Mary Cassatt (“The Bathing Party”):

Other lovely birds were seen en route to the Lewis’s Woodpeckers.

Green Heron (Butorides virescens) imitating a successful Wile E. Coyote:

Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) joining the woodpecker drinking party:

Phainopepla (Phainopepla nitens) looking handsome:

Common Mergansers (Mergus merganser) snorkeling together:

Common Merganser and Mallard sharing a sunny perch: (Anas platyrhynchos)L

Wood Ducks (Aix sponsa) being attentive to their mates:

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 9, 2026 • 8:15 am

One generous contributor has come forward with some wildlife photos: mathematician Abby Thompson from UC Davis. Abby’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

This is a grab-bag of photos from Northern California from the summer (with one exception).

Cervus canadensis nannodes. A particularly contented Tule elk from the Point Reyes preserve:

Cornu aspersum (garden snail)- As a gardener I abhor them but looked at closely they are beautiful. They were introduced to California in the 1850s to be made into escargot, and now plague gardeners up and down the state:

Brodiaea terrestris from Point Reyes:

Once the extreme tides of the summer pass and there are no “good” low tides, I start looking through a microscope at bits of riffraff collected from the beach. It’s astonishing how many different creatures can live in a cubic inch of washed-up kelp holdfast.

Thetis vagina (twin-sailed salp). One of the seemingly endless types of blobby transparent things drifting around the ocean. Lying on the sand it looks like a scrap of Saran Wrap. Once revived in some sea water and under magnification the ghostly internal structure appears.    From google AI:  “Despite their jelly-like look, salps belong to the subphylum Tunicata (sea squirts), making them chordates that are evolutionarily more closely related to humans and vertebrates than to actual jellyfish.”  Cousins!

Phragmatopoma californica (California sandcastle worm). The worm is the curly orange thing on the left, which connects to the pink tentacles on the right underneath the structure with purple flecks, which is all that’s left of the tube the worm calls home (it’s ok, they can rebuild):

Close up showing the worm’s operculum – the “lid” of the tube, which the worm pulls down to close off the top of the tube when it retreats inside. I’ve posted a picture of this species before; my excuse is that this one’s tube, usually just made of sand,  has an interesting feature:

A close-up of the tube remnants, showing some Foraminifera, amazing 1-celled organisms.   The white ones in the center that look kind-of like a snail shell are Haynesina depressula (thanks inaturalist expert!) and there are several other types in there, harder to pick out.    I think the purple bits are pieces of sea urchin spines.     An artistic sandcastle worm!:

Genus Elphidium– another foram. This one was tangled in a shred of bryozoan.  It’s hard for me to believe this is a single cell, but I guess life is complicated:

Class Ostracoda – the things with little white dots. These are tiny crustaceans, mere specks.  There’s a foram in this photo, too:

Another ostracod- from 2025, not a great photo, included because it’s the first ostracod I ever saw. At first I thought I was looking at an infant mussel.    Then it sprouted legs and started running around like a crazy cartoon mussel. Quite a shock:

Genus Corambe (nudibranch, a baby), surrounded by its bryozoan prey. I think this ID is correct- its coloration is not typical of the genus. The nudibranch is so small that it looks slightly like it’s going to be attacked by the bryozoa, rather than vice-versa:

Sunset over the water:

Most photos taken with an iPhone precariously clamped to the eyepiece of an antique microscope.

Readers’ wildlife photos

October 4, 2026 • 8:15 am

Bruce Lyon, who’s now retired and is an emeritus professor of Ecology and Evolution at UC Santa Cruz, sent a batch of bird photos.  His captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

I have already shared some recent photos of seabirds (here) and foxes (here) on St Paul Island, Alaska. In addition to these treats, the island is a mecca for bird watchers who keep regional bird lists. Various islands in Alaska are magnets for vagrants from Asia and birders who are serious about keeping lists visit the Island to beef up their official American Birding Association species lists for North America. Specifically, vagrants are birds that show up beyond their typical breeding, migration or wintering areas.

I am not normally a lister, but friends on St Paul bird are local guides who fid amazing vagrants, which they then very generously share with biologists such as me. I have also learned that the list of vagrants is not completely random—some species are pretty regularly visitors from Asia. Some species are more likely in spring, while others are in fall. If you are interested in the biology of vagrants I can recommend Steve Howell’s Rare Birds of North America. Howell has a nice section that goes through various patterns and the different reasons for why birds become vagrants.

This post will focus mostly on shorebirds, because they are pretty common vagrants, and I will also include some species that breed on the island. All of the vagrants I feature are birds that breed in northern Asia.

The Terek sandpaper (Xenus cinereus) was the show stopper for me this year. We initially got really crappy views but then it showed up on the mudflats in front of our lodging and actually flew towards me and landed 20 feet away. What a cool shorebird!:

Eurasian whimbrel (Numenius phaeopus) (the result of a recent split into two species, the North American species is now Hudsonian whimbrel). The Eurasian has white rump and white stripe up the back. Sadly the photos do not show the white on rump because bird was always tilted the wrong way:

Far Eastern Curlew (Numenius madagascariensis). This is a rare bird everywhere and was a really good bird to get. It was using its long beak to access giant isopods hiding under the rocks that none of the resident shorebirds could get:

Red-necked stint (Calidris ruficollis). This species was particularly common this year and up to 5 at a time hung out on the mudflats in front of our lodging:

Siberian sand-plover (Anarhynchus mongolus):

Falcated duck (Mareca falcata)—pretty stunning bird:

It was very windy, and the duck flipped over and showed the cool plumage pattern on its back:

The remaining birds are birds that breed on St Paul or nearby mainland Alaska.

A gorgeous and very tame female red phalarope (Phalaropus fulicarius) that hung out in front of our lodging. This species doesn’t breed on the island. This is a ‘role reversed’ species, where females are more colorful than males, compete for males, and the males then do all of the work of incubating the eggs and raising the chicks:

A red-necked phalarope (Phalaropus lobatus), also in front of our lodging. These breed locally:

Rock sandpiper (Calidris ptilocnemis) chick and parent. Unlike most shorebirds, which are neurotic when they have chicks, these particular parents were very relaxed and the chicks were running around and feeding right in front of us on the road without the typical alarm calls that cause the chicks to hide. I lay on the road to get a nice out of focus bokeh background:

Sandpiper chicks have a beautiful plumage that makes them very camouflaged when they are hiding on the ground (tundra, grasses). They are also all leg!:

Rock sandpiper with a ‘wingup’ display used in courtship. Who knew that armpits are sexy!:

Semipalmated plovers (Charadrius semipalmatus) trying to lure me away from their nest with a broken-wing display. Many shorebirds use a display that fakes having an injured wing to lure predators away from the nest. To a predator, a bird with an injured wing should be an easy dinner and worth following. The faker leads the predator far from the nest, keeping its distance all the while, and then eventually returns to its nest. This first bird is the male—his eyering is orange:

Here is the female with a more yellow eyering and slightly more subdued plumage: