Steve and Judy's Travels!

I will, because it’s part of the natural world around us that we spend so much time in and admire so much.

Usually, I just send out the prettiest wildlife pictures I can take.  But in our time out watching what nature does, we’re regularly reminded that survival is a constant battle.  If you’re feeling a little squeamish, you may not want to read any further.  Just crumple this up and toss it.

The good news is, Freddy is okay.

The bad news is, some other little toad had a bad day.

He got swallowed.

I know this is just how life goes.  Every critter survives at the expense of some other plants or animals.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s the balance of nature.  On an individual level, it can be brutal.

My sympathies are with the prey more than with the successful predator.  Can’t tell if the compression on this little guy has already caused him to expire, or if he’s just waiting out the inevitable, thinking “damn”.

From a ribbon snake’s perspective though, it was surely a fine day!

A cool bath on a hot day.

And a green jay that seems to be feeling pretty good about it!

Late summer.  It’s hot.  It’s quiet.  We still have the usual suspects at the feeders.  Grackles, sparrows, doves.  Only the occasional cardinal or thrasher now.  Not as many as in the winter.  There is probably enough natural food for everyone.  The feeders aren’t that big a deal like in the winter.

Then we hear that sound.  A groove billed ani.  Its call is a distinctive chortle, unlike any of the other birds around.  First, we hear it.  Then we see it.  It flies its wobbly floppy flight into the tree behind our fence.  Then another.  Then another.  A whole gang of anis shows up; eight in total.  Mostly, they stay obscured in the foliage of the tree.  One lands on the wire.

I zoom in.

Groove-billed Anis are sometimes described as looking disheveled.

Disheveled.  Yes.  But charming.

The anis are here in our neighborhood for two or three hot months, then they’re gone to Mexico, Central and South America for the rest of the year.

Remember that?  As kids, the burning question was what the missing link was between apes and man, the half man/half beast.  That was the way to question whether evolution was real or not.  If man descended from monkeys, where is the missing link?  How come there isn’t anything in-between?

 In the relentless archaeological search since, I think that link has been illuminated many times.  Of course, humans didn’t descend from apes or monkeys, but humans and apes do have an ancestor in common.  Since humans split from the ancestors of apes, there isn’t a single linear progression, but a chronical of steps and missteps.  Our knowledge of early man is now expanded to at least twenty species!  Our family tree is a bush.  Branches go all directions.  Many terminate without any direct connection to ourselves, homo sapiens, the single remaining species of early man.

This didn’t all happen in linear time either.  I find it fascinating that multiple species coexisted at times; each one likely better suited for specific conditions, and as conditions changed some species won out, some withered, some evolved further.  I wonder what the next 50 years of archaeology will reveal.

I also find it fascinating that we need scientific study to reveal what, at a particular point in time, everybody already knew!  We don’t have a linear accumulation of knowledge either.  We gain it in fits and starts.  Some endures.  Some is lost.  Bits are recovered.

Do him all up in neutral colors.

And you have a clay-colored thrush!