Thereby Hangs A...

Life isn't all lounging-on-the-warm-rocks for these guys. Clearly, they have their misadventures.

Silent Disapproval

Unlike the loudmouth avian tribe mentioned yesterday, these guys don't vocalize at all, at least as far as I can tell. But I'm pretty sure they're unhappy that I cut down two big old worn-out junipers in the side garden, as it gives them a little less cover. Don't feel too sorry for them, they still have ninety percent of the front yard, and a fair-sized bit of the backyard too. When I walk to the mailbox it disturbs their sunbathing and sends them skittering in all directions, like I'm Godzilla and they're a herd of tiny dinosaurs. So funny.

Spruce Basking: Now With Video!

Yes, more lizards, you thought you'd heard the last about them for a while, but no, they are still up and around every sunny day between 10:30 and noon, even now it's December.  Here's one guy who let me follow him for a minute (until I lost my balance.) They climb up the dwarf Alberta spruce and take in the southern exposure for a couple of hours. I don't know how they can stand scurrying around on those needles, which are quite prickly, at least to my unwebbed fingers.

Babies Everywhere

Aside from the birds, about whom I can't shut up, late spring is alive with lots of other little forms of life. Above, you see the cutest little pest ever. Look at that shell, it's transparent! And so exquisitely small, for a sense of scale, consider those huge grooves he's crawling over: those are my fingerprints. Go on, look at your own fingerprints; that's how tiny he is. Ah, but he wants to destroy my vegetation, and so he, along with his many older relatives, was handpicked off the creeping phlox and daylily leaves and sidearmed into the street, where the birds are waiting to make breakfast out of him.

Below, hoping the birds don't make breakfast out of him, is a very young lizard, poking his head out from under the house shingles, where I believe he enjoys the warmth of the sun heating up the shingle. Also, it's very easy to skedaddle up and under and out of harm's way.

Flight Time

As it turns out, that last post on May 30th wasn't the end of the story; the juvenile robins are being raised in the surrounding trees. Every day since the last one left, I've seen one and sometimes two together. Usually I'm tipped off to the location by now-familiar calls-and-responses. For the first couple of days, the young'uns were not very high up in the old bent pine tree, where I took the photo above. See the black-and-white speckling on the red breast? That, and the overall "fluffy" quality, let you know it's a juvenile. (Oh, also the insane cheeping when it's time to eat.) Most interesting is the way the mom encourages them to fly: I saw her tugging worms out of the tomato patch, loading up her beak, then she flew to a branch next to the kids, sat there a few seconds while they raised a racket about the lunch she was holding, then she flew away, higher up into the next tree, and they followed! I guess they'll be trained to find their own worms once they're stronger, swifter flyers, and it's safer for them to be on the ground. Songbirds are much different from baby goslings and ducks, who walk right out of the shell and commence swimming and feeding themselves more or less immediately.

Other Denizens Of The 'Burbs

Welcome to Jurassic Park! What with the birds and lizards, we're rockin' a prehistoric vibe here in the backyard habitat. The Italian wall lizards are more numerous and somewhat less skittish than last year. (By "less skittish" I mean it takes them two nanoseconds to disappear, instead of one. See how much closer I got to this one? Thank you, zoom lens.)
And here below, a tiny dancer, who's probably trouble in search of a tender green shoot, but today, I'll live and let live.

(New baby bird photo from today is on my Facebook page.)

Baby Lizard Population Explosion!

There's a whole litter of littlies running around today in the hot sun; here's two of them above. To see just how teenytiny we're talkin', use the housefly on the left in the first picture for scale.

Coming soon: the intrepid spider movie!

Again With The Little Critters!

It feels like the lightning bugs showed up early this year. Not that I'm complaining! They're one of the few bugs I don't mind approaching. They're very patient subjects when seated, as above, but a little harder to capture when aloft and aglow, as below.
Although our backyard wildlife is humble in its variety and lacks exoticism, I am, apparently, easy to fascinate.

Our little lizard colony continues to thrive; can you see that one below, looks like he's laughing at me? I had to hide behind the foliage to take this. Look how cute he is with his mouth open! Actually, he was in the process of swallowing a bug.

And look at this guy, below, why haven't I ever seen one before? Have I just been unobservant all these years?
Leucauge venusta

This beautiful glittery-gold-and-iridescent-green-bodied spider is keeping an immaculate horizontal orb web behind my garage, completely immobilizing my agriculture-recycling bin for the last four days now, but he's so interesting I'm letting him be. How do I know the fancy Latin name for this arachnid? Once again, I found my answer on BugGuide, an active and informed "online community of naturalists." This time, instead of posting a photo of my mystery caterpillar as I did before and waiting for a reply, I used the search box on the main page to bring up photos with the keywords 'green spider', and found a dead match in the thumbnails on the first page of results.

Italian Wall Lizards

I have at least three Italian immigrants living in my backyard. At least, that's as many as I've seen at once. They're quick as lightning, so they're hard to count. But as the sun grows stronger, they come out to bask, and although technically they're an invasive species, so far they cause no harm, carry no parasites, and oh, BTW, they eat my aphids so they're ok by me.

As I say, they're quick, and awfully shy, so you'll have to zoom in on these to get a good look.