Ringneck snake

A couple of nights ago, when I headed out the front door, I nearly stepped on a snake on the front walkway. I shone the flashlight on it and saw the ring round the neck, so scooped up the snake for a closer look. Sure enough it was a lovely little ringneck snake. These are pretty, gentle snakes, very silky to the touch, and and are quite clean, never stink. I love the bright yellow colouring on the underside. I took several pictures of this one as it slid through my fingers, then turned it loose into the foliage beside the front door so it could continue on doing what it had been doing before getting near-trampled by a tired clumsy human.

Promethea moth

About 3:00 a.m. this morning, when Tanka had to go out, I spied this moth at the windowsill of my cabin. It was cold, and I tickled it onto my finger and brought it inside for a closer look. It had a lot of spiderwebs stuck to it, I pulled those off gently with the use of a pair of tweezers. I set her in a dish where she stayed quietly til morning. I took her outside, set up the camera, tickled her onto the trunk of an old oak tree, and managed to get some pictures before she warmed up and took off into the trees.

Mantisfly

Sometimes I'm amazed what I find in our house. Today I was picking up my laundry basket, and right beside it on the wood box was a mantisfly. I ran and grabbed my bug catcher and put it into the aquarium, then set up a box with a screen to try to photograph it. It was not the most cooperative model, kept moving off the milkweed leaf I had set up for it, but I did manage to get a few shots. It's windy today, I'm hoping if things calm down and cool down after supper, I'll take it outside and see if I can get a few shots before it flies away. I was happy to find this rarely seen insect, it's only the second one I've ever found.

Moving turtle eggs.

The other night I saw a painted turtle laying eggs in our volleyball court. Being only an inch deep and in the right front position, it was guaranteed that these were going to get trampled, so I decided to move them to a corner of the beach where they wouldn't be disturbed. Dad came up with the idea of digging down around the nest, and picking up the whole clump of sand, eggs and all, in one lump. So that's what we did. Dug a moat around the nest, pinned a towel around the lump to hold it together, and then slid the big square shovel under it. We dug a hole down at the beach where we've seen turtles put their nests, and carefully tucked the lump into the hole, filled the sides with sand, and pulled out the towel. For now we have some cinder blocks around it to keep the raccoons from finding it, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so once the smell of human and turtle is gone, we can remove the blocks and just let nature take its course.

Second hummingbird nest

I am not a morning person. It takes a few cups of coffee and some time to pry my eyes open. This morning, I was sipping my coffee, standing in front of the window, and peering sleepily out at the landscape, when what to my wondering eyes should appear? A hummingbird. I watched her land on a birch branch about 15 feet from the window. She wiggled, adjusted, and settled, and it took me a few seconds to realize that she was settling onto a nest. She's been on and off, looks like she may just be completing construction. I showed Dad, took a couple pictures, and now we're staying away from the front windows, we want her to settle in comfortably. All these years of checking trees by the house, and now we've finally got one that we can see from the comfort of our livingroom.

Snowshoe hare

A couple new pics of one of our residence bunnies. They're pretty bold, pretty much ignore us. Got this shot of Dad putting the new tire on the wheelbarrow, you can see Bun sitting right behind him about 6 feet away munching on the clovers, couldn't be bothered. In the second shot you can see that there's still a wee bit of winter white fur on the legs.

Leaf Beetle

Doing a bit of housecleaning on the laptop, organizing some photo files. On April 25th I had been taking pictures of some hepaticas, and spotted this beautiful little beetle with deep dark green markings. I looked it up in my insect book, looks like it is some kind of leaf beetle.