Hanging Out
A green anole hanging out on the side of my house. They are the only lizards that can change color in North Carolina, but unlike true chameleons they are limited to green or brown.
A green anole hanging out on the side of my house. They are the only lizards that can change color in North Carolina, but unlike true chameleons they are limited to green or brown.
I’m keeping an eye out for signs of spring, like these budding leaves.
The vultures hanging around my house this winter always look so pensive. I wonder what they think about while they are roosting in my roof.
These vultures spend the winter hanging out in our neighborhood every year, and usually depart by the end of March. It’s not uncommon for me to leave my house to find anywhere from two to thirty of these large birds sitting on the rooftops of my and my neighbors’ homes.
Black vultures out searching for food. Unlike turkey vultures, who forage alone, black vultures feed in large groups. Occasionally, they will use their large numbers to overcome a baby calf or injured mammal.
When I traveled to Wilmington, NC late last month, I was greeted with unseasonably warm weather for November. Along with getting to enjoy sunbathing on empty beaches, the warm temps brought out some unexpected wildlife. The AirBnB I stayed at had little tree frogs nestled all over it, and at night they would all crowd around the porch light. I found this to be adorable, but the friend I was staying with was horrified and would run into the front door with her hood on every night. It’s funny how different people can perceive the same thing as either a Disney like quirk or a nightmare inducing horror.
Sunset draped in a forest fire haze that drifted from the west coast forest fires earlier this month. Climate change is a real life horror.
No matter where I travel to, I like to get up early to watch the sun rise. Which is what when I was doing when I decided to take a quick picture of my coffee cup. This quickly devolved into me fiddling around way too long for the perfect shot of a second hand Star Trek mug found in the cabinets of my Airbnb rental. While I continued to shift the cup around, a bat swooped past my face, sweeping it’s wing through my hair. Turns out it was living under the eves of the overhang covering the wide porch of our weekend cabin. My goal on every mountain trip is to spend time watching for animals sightings, mission accomplished.
The view from my rental cabin porch, Jupiter and Saturn.
A small remnant of summer spotted outside my patio, an emerald green june bug. They are considered pests by many, due to their voracious appetites for greenery. They are dubbed june bugs simply because they emerge from the ground in June, hungry for freshly planted gardens. June bugs are also part of the Scarab family, which were considered symbols of rebirth and renewal by Ancient Egyptians. According to John Hopkins Archeaolgy Museum, “The beetle was associated closely with the sun god because scarabs roll large balls of dung in which to lay their eggs, a behavior that the Egyptians thought resembled the progression of the sun through the sky from east to west. Its young were hatched from this ball, and this event was seen as an act of spontaneous self-creation, giving the beetle an even stronger association with the sun god’s creative force.” I guess everything is a matter of perspective.