Waiting for the hatching
Warning the sound is just wind whistling past – until the clock chimes.
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My BF D sent me this
Plate 67 from Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur, (Art Forms of Nature), published in 1904
Watching his videos, and writing the occasional bizarre AF ads and scripts for @ProfOddfellow has given me weird writing muscle memory, so The Muse and I immediately set to work.
I replied to D and also CC’d The Professor, another friend of his who sometimes writes for the series, and a couple other friends of ours.
Kindly read all that follows the first sentence in Attenborough’s voice:
I swear, some of those batties look like venerable botanical illustrations of bizarre and obscure tropical blossoms.
"Here we have Paeoniophenax pteropusopsis - the Bat Peony, only found in the foothills of the Blood Mountains. It lives in the shaded patches under a certain species of Discombobulus tree which can be over 20 meters tall. This Discombobulus species is known to randomly drop their sesquipedelian protective spikes, some of which have grown for twenty years. These spikes travel at great speed, and when they fall, woe betide any creature finding themselves beneath its broad, high canopy.
“The stubborn refusal of the Bat Peony to be cultivated away from its native home has confounded both the Edwardian-era collectors who discovered the plant, and modern naturalists and scientists. Its curious relationship with Discombobulus is as yet not understood, despite over one hundred years’ study.”
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Just had my first springtime encounter with the resident rat snake!!! 
I enjoyed it more than it did.
Approx 4.5 ft long (1.37 m) maybe closer to 5. Bigger than last year. Have video too of it pretending to be a rattlesnake lol, will try to figure out how to post that later.
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What kind of woodpecker is that? It looks like a big one; we get a huge variety here called the Pileated Woodpecker which is about the size of a crow.
Human for scale;
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Like the wolves in Yellowstone Park; if you bring back the apex predator, things fall into place.
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Good little rat snake: keeps the rodents out of your home!
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Indeed!
Speaking of critters… look at this (probably, I guess) tree frog chilling in our newly built (and still under construction) garden shed…
He stayed there while the husband was doing hammering literally right next to the little guy… 
He’s way high up, too (like 6 feet maybe), so that’s why I think he must be a tree froggy… he’s still in the exact same place, too. Just… chillin’… as of half an hour ago.
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What a good little tree frogge! and so cute! Looks like lichen-y bark. Very clever.
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Except he doesn’t blend into our plywood too well… 
I looked about a half hour ago… he’s still chillin!
Thanks, @Wayward! He is!
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Ooh I’ve got one from a recent pet-sit! I think this counts although he lives with Stanley the blonde retriever and fam. Everyone, meet Norman the bearded dragon!
Whaddup errybody
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