tropicalbats.com
  • Home
  • Bats
  • Places of note
    • Suriname
    • Costa Rica
    • Norway
    • The UK >
      • London
    • The United States
  • critter essays
  • Birds
    • Suriname birds
  • tropicalbats blog
  • Coins: Errors, Varieties and Photography

House finch male and female on feeder

6/29/2017

0 Comments

 
House finch are pretty little birds, but don't get much attention.  So here is a photo of a male and female on a feeder in Roanoke, Virginia.
Picture
House finch male and female
While not planning this, it seems that I have posted animals feeding for my last several posts.  Kinda cool.
0 Comments

White-tailed deer - Apple thief

6/27/2017

1 Comment

 
The plague that is white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the eastern US continues.  So many of these things and they cause much trouble. 

For people it is mostly the car accidents they cause and the millions of dollars in damages and even lives lost in those accidents.  But environmentally, when populations are as high as they are now, they strip forests of wildflowers and most vegetative growth below about 5 feet.  Forests have no upcoming generations of trees as they never get very large before the deer strip them of leaves and they die.

​But even in the rural but built up areas, where there is enough grass and low vegetation to feed a thundering herd of deer, they manage to find a way to be a bugger.  Here is a deer stretching hard to reach that last apple that is within the deer browse zone, right in the back yard of a house, with another house nearby visible in the photo.

​I like deer, but here in the eastern US we just have way too darn many of the things.

​
Picture
White-tailed deer stretching to reach that last apple low enough on the tree
1 Comment

The Dark Side

6/25/2017

4 Comments

 
Tonight I attended a meeting on The Dark Side in Washington, D.C.  There was surprisingly little talk about bats...
Picture
Attendees at The Dark Side meeting in Washington, D.C.
4 Comments

Falls Church, VA Wildlife - Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)

6/23/2017

0 Comments

 
If you like mulberries, all you need is one tree and you will feast.  These trees can produce a prodigious amount of fruit, which looks quite a bit like a blackberry and is a deep purple when fully ripe.

​And the eastern gray squirrel certainly likes mulberries, and they are getting quite fat about now as there is a superabundance of food.  But they seem to prefer the fruit when it is still not quite fully ripe.  The fruit tends to go from white or green, to red (starts to get tasty) to purple (yummy!).  This squirrel was just stuffing himself in the late afternoon today, eating one berry after another.
Picture
Eastern gray squirrel in a tree full of mulberries
0 Comments

Falls Church, VA Wildlife - Eastern Cottontail

6/22/2017

0 Comments

 
The eastern cottontail (Silvilagus floridanus) is commonly found in gardens, parks and well most places in and around Falls Church, VA.  Best times to see them are late evening as they are mostly crepuscular (word of the day! means active in twilight as in around dusk and dawn) but they will also feed at night and sometimes just right out there in the middle of the day. 

​And no, rabbits are NOT rodents.  This is a common misconception but they are rather quite different and are in the order Lagomorpha.  This order is pretty much restricted to rabbits, hares and pikas, and just for one more tidbit, Lagomorph pretty much directly translates to "hare-like."
Picture
Eastern cottontail showing the famous little white tail and long ears.
And just for fun, here is my favorite photo that I took today of the rabbit.
Picture
Here's lookin' at you, rabbit
An interesting aside, from this last photo you can see that the eyes of a rabbit are so far apart that they are almost on opposite sides of the head.  The down side of this is that the animal has extremely limited binocular vision, but the up side is that it can see predators coming even from pretty much right behind it.  As a general rule, predators have more narrow, forward-facing eyes and prey animals have wider eyes for greater peripheral vision.
0 Comments

Leaf cutter ants (Atta sp.) cutting leaves

6/11/2017

0 Comments

 
Leaf cutter ants are all over the place here at the FCRE.  Here is a shot of them cutting up a banana leaf to haul off to their nest.
Picture
Leaf cutter ants cutting up a banana leaf at the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology in Baru, Costa Rica
0 Comments

Spider work at the FCRE

6/11/2017

0 Comments

 
Today I came down the trail from the Mudd Pond to the Basilisk pond and instead of wildlife I found Sabrina Wu (recording data) and Gabriela Ochoa (measuring a spider) working on their spider project.  They have a really interesting project this year, and looking forward to hearing their results.  And yes, we require snake protection on the lower legs (high rubber boots or snake gaiters) as we have a few too many things here to step on that don't like being stepped on.
Picture
Sabrina Wu and Gabriela Ochoa gathering data on a spider at the Basilisk Pond
0 Comments

Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria boliviensis)

6/10/2017

3 Comments

 
While this spider probably has some other common name, it is kind of a general thing that all Phoneutria spiders are called Brazilian wandering spiders.  Or Brazilian walking spiders in some places.  No matter the name, this genus of spiders is considered to have one of the most toxic bites of any spider in the world (if not the most toxic, but such things are hard to measure).  They have a neurotoxin that certainly can be fatal and there are numerous deaths attributed to these spiders.

​So if you ever wanted to know what the most dangerous spider looks like, here is a photo of one taken 15 feet from the front door of the Program House at the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology in Baru, Costa Rica.
Picture
Brazilian wandering spider (Phoneutria boliviensis) from the Firestone Center in Costa Rica
3 Comments

Praying mantis from the Firestone Center, Costa Rica

6/10/2017

1 Comment

 
There are a multitude of mantids here, and no easy way to figure them all out as we haven't focused on them (yet).  This beautiful animal was on one of the ornamental plants right outside my room this evening.
Picture
Mantid seen outside the faculty dorm at the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology in Baru, Costa Rica
1 Comment

Gray-necked wood rail from near the Frog Pond

6/10/2017

0 Comments

 
The gray-necked wood rail is a beautiful bird.  When this one saw me it headed for some thick cover to hide in.  Usually a good move, but in this case there were scads of army ants in that area and after a very short while it took off flying with a rather alarmed squawking call.
Picture
Gray-necked wood rail from the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    Keith Christenson - Wildlife Biologist

    Categories

    All
    Akershus Fortress
    Angry Baby
    Aurlandsfjord
    Bat Coins
    Bats
    Bird
    Birds
    Blast From The Past
    Borneo
    Butterfly
    Camouflage
    Caterpillar
    Caving
    Comets
    Costa Rica
    Crazy Video Links
    Crazy Video Links
    Cricket
    Cuba
    Denmark
    Dominican Republic
    Festivals
    Finse
    Fish
    Flower
    Flowers
    Folk Museum
    Freia Chocolates
    Frog
    Frogner Park
    Geese
    Goose
    Grønland
    Harvestman
    Hawaii
    Hedgehog
    Holiday Cards
    Huk
    Ice
    Insect
    Ireland
    Isopods
    Jamaica
    Kolsastoppen
    London
    Mammals
    Mexico
    Mourning Cloak
    Mushrooms
    Naeroyfjorden
    National Day
    Norway
    Ohio
    Oslo
    Oslo Opera House
    Oslo Summer Park
    Panama
    Patterns
    Pennsylvania
    People
    Pond
    Puerto Rico
    Roof Animals
    Scotland
    Sognsvann
    Spiders
    Spring
    Suriname
    United States
    United States
    Venezuela
    Virginia
    Washington Dc Area
    Washington Dc Area
    West Virginia
    Woodpecker
    World's End
    Zambia

    Author

    Keith Christenson
    Wildlife Biologist


    RSS Feed

    Archives

    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    December 2011
    January 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    June 2010

Proudly powered by Weebly
Photo used under Creative Commons from Evil_Prince