Wild animals in your yard and around your home.
I have this thread on my other 'home' forum, and figure it could work well here too.
Living on the edge of a large section of native forest reserve means I get some pretty cool bugs & birds visiting the yard. So I'd like to present a "Look what I found in my yard today" thread where hopefully you might learn a little about New Zealand fauna as you check out what I have photographed.
Everyone else is encouraged to contribute with photos of wild animals from their own yards, of course, but I do ask that you provide actual photos you have taken (don't have to be good quality), not just links to other's photos of the same animal found on the internet. But you can provide links to wikipedia or whatever so people can find out more about the animals you're presenting (and see better photos!).
Try and size your photos down to 'forum-width friendly' too, if you can.
Without further ado, here's my first creature;
Cave Weta
Wetas are a primitive cricket. There are several distinct species (yes, that's what Peter Jackson named his FX company after - an in-joke can be seen in the King Kong trailer when a swarm of giant Weta attack Jack Black's character). The Cave Weta has huge spindly legs and long antenna and can jump a couple of metres at a time. This one would be about 20-25cm long if its legs were fully stretched out including antennae). They are harmless, though because of their size and ability to jump so high, they do frighten people.
One of the cats brought this guy in, but I rescued it before any damage was done. And even though they're more common in caves, they live in all sorts of dark secluded areas.
And as this is the opening post, here's a couple more...
Here is a lovely Tree Weta in our courtyard which, while similar looking to the Cave Weta above is actually from a different order altogether. The kids found it in their playhouse last week. They're a primitive cricket, and in the shot on the planter box he's trying to scare us away by raising his hind legs and splaying his jaws & waving his antenna around wildly. Mighty impressive. The head-to-body length which you can see better in the picture in he tree is about 7cm. A pretty good specimen all round.
This hedgehog had fallen down a drain in our path. So I put on a glove & pulled him out. He was a decent size too. Goodness knows how long he was stuck down there, but considering the rain we'd had, I'd say probably less than 2 days.
Hedgehogs were introduced to NZ by european settlers. They're a bit of a pest, raiding the nests of our numerous ground-dwelling birds etc, but you don't see them too often. And they are kinda cute.
OK, now show me yours!
Living on the edge of a large section of native forest reserve means I get some pretty cool bugs & birds visiting the yard. So I'd like to present a "Look what I found in my yard today" thread where hopefully you might learn a little about New Zealand fauna as you check out what I have photographed.
Everyone else is encouraged to contribute with photos of wild animals from their own yards, of course, but I do ask that you provide actual photos you have taken (don't have to be good quality), not just links to other's photos of the same animal found on the internet. But you can provide links to wikipedia or whatever so people can find out more about the animals you're presenting (and see better photos!).
Try and size your photos down to 'forum-width friendly' too, if you can.
Without further ado, here's my first creature;
Cave Weta
Wetas are a primitive cricket. There are several distinct species (yes, that's what Peter Jackson named his FX company after - an in-joke can be seen in the King Kong trailer when a swarm of giant Weta attack Jack Black's character). The Cave Weta has huge spindly legs and long antenna and can jump a couple of metres at a time. This one would be about 20-25cm long if its legs were fully stretched out including antennae). They are harmless, though because of their size and ability to jump so high, they do frighten people.
One of the cats brought this guy in, but I rescued it before any damage was done. And even though they're more common in caves, they live in all sorts of dark secluded areas.
And as this is the opening post, here's a couple more...
Here is a lovely Tree Weta in our courtyard which, while similar looking to the Cave Weta above is actually from a different order altogether. The kids found it in their playhouse last week. They're a primitive cricket, and in the shot on the planter box he's trying to scare us away by raising his hind legs and splaying his jaws & waving his antenna around wildly. Mighty impressive. The head-to-body length which you can see better in the picture in he tree is about 7cm. A pretty good specimen all round.
This hedgehog had fallen down a drain in our path. So I put on a glove & pulled him out. He was a decent size too. Goodness knows how long he was stuck down there, but considering the rain we'd had, I'd say probably less than 2 days.
Hedgehogs were introduced to NZ by european settlers. They're a bit of a pest, raiding the nests of our numerous ground-dwelling birds etc, but you don't see them too often. And they are kinda cute.
OK, now show me yours!
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I haven't checked for small animals at all (by the way, your second cricket-thingie, in the first picture, looks like it's pulling its tongue or something lol. What is it, actually?).
There was a stray cats who followed us home and adopted us, his name is Lumpy because he was, well, Lumpy (he had two hernias). He might have gone to us for help or something. He was definitely a stray and not a lost or abandoned pet. That was in October.
Here are recent pictures:
Lumpy being normal:
We live by a river. In late October, or maybe early November, we saw on the other side of the river what seemed to be a dark brown cat. Then we saw a second one a bit further, but I noticed it was carrying a branch in its mouth. Something didn't compute, and that's when we realised they were beavers.
Although the river was partially frozen, they were building a dam on it. We looked at them for a bit then left. I don't have any pictures though.
I can understand some people being scared of spiders, but can't really get my head around being afraid of pictures of spiders. Oh well.
I'm not too sure about the finer points of Weta mouth parts, but yes, that flap does look like a tongue in the first Tree Weta picture.
Well, I used to have a panic attack when I read/heard the word in any language (as long as I knew what it meant) so I'm doing much better already!
I don't think you can post pictures in spoilers though. They appear anyways, I think. Maybe linking to them would work?
It's not like the fear is rational (actually, I think it can only be called a phobia if it's irrational), I'm not scared of them biting me or anything, just of their appearance I guess, so it really doesn't change much if they're in front of me or in a picture. The only difference is how to deal with it (hide the picture vs call my husband xD)
Hmm, not sure what I'll do yet, it'll ruin the flow of the thread to only give links. And if we have to avoid posting spiders for arachnophobes, then we'll have to avoid posting snakes, birds, rodents, frogs... and anything else people might be afraid of.
I'll give good warning & spoiler space though when I do post spider photos, I promise.
I used to love phasms. Someone I knew had lots of them as pets, they're awesome. I didn't really stop loving them as much as I stopped seeing any. I still think they're pretty awesome.
* We do have a lot of introduced animals that have become pests like possums, hedgehogs, rats, mice, rabbits, weasels, ferrets, stoats, deer, goats, pigs etc.
...
Oh, and yeah, we only get the common squirrel around here, and those things are about as camera shy as they are boring.
I'm not sure if that's just a typo or if you got the phrase wrong, and I'm not sure if I'm being a jerk by pointing this out, but that should be "didn't compute". A "computer" is a thing that "computes"(reckons/calculates/deduces by means of calculation/etc), rather than the act of deducing/adding something up/realizing something by means of deduction/etc.
Also, Dashing, do typos really need all that explanation?
This native owl (also found in Australia and the South Pacific islands) called a Morepork in NZ due to its distinctive 2-note call was sitting on the power lines outside our house last week.
I love squirrels! The way they move is so fluid and graceful, they're lovely to watch. I don't find them boring at all, maybe because I'd never seen one until a few years ago. I'll take some pics of the grey squirrels in the park/graveyard behind my building to post later.
For now, here are some fat little robins. They're so bright and round, I always enjoy seeing them. Both of these photos were taken in winter last year.
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Males and females have the same colouring. These are European robins, which are different to American robins.
Luckily they were able to follow their mom away from the nest and out of the yard without falling in the pool. (Last year, that wasn't the case...)
There are also tons of wild turkeys in our neighborhood.
This is just a few of them. There are dozens of these guys living in the open space behind my house.
We also have tons of brown lizards in the yard, and deer, and the occasional heron. Oh, and the elusive Italian Greyhuahua.
Please do.
I personally find squirrels hilarious, especially the ones on campus, which are so fat that they can barely walk anymore. I will now be taking my camera everywhere to see if I can get some of these fat squirrels in action. Or inaction.
It was a typo. I do that thing sometimes when my fingers remember typing a word often and just type it instead of the word I wanted to type. I can usually catch it when it's different enough, but didn't notice there. Thanks for pointing it out, and thanks for explaining in case it wasn't a typo
When our flaxes start flowering, we get lots of visits from the native Tui (pr. too-eee) eating the nectar from the flowers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tui_(bird)
Beautiful birds - the iridescent sheen isn't so noticeable in the photos, unfortunately. They're about 30-35cm long and have a distinctive whirring wing sound in flight.
They have a strange and lovely song too, though some of it is above human hearing range. You can see them singing away with their distinctive white throat feather bobbing around, but half the time can't hear a note.
I live in the countryside, so sometimes we have a few animal visitors. Mostly birds; probably the most colourful one we see here is the chaffinch. We've been getting a lot of magpies here lately too. And there's a gigantic pigeon, who seems to have decided that our garden is it's home.
Last year I managed to record some footage of a squirrel that ran around our garden. It was quite tame for a wild animal.
Over the past few weeks we've seen rats too; they've been stealing food from our guinea-pigs when they've been let out the hutch!
And a couple of months ago a fox kept coming into our garden. It looked very healthy, and wasn't scrawny like most of the foxes we see in our neighbourhood. But, as a guinea-pig owner, every time it came into the garden I had to chase it back out immediately!
Two years ago, I found a newt in our shed. That was pretty random. I do have a photo of this somewhere.
A year and a half or so back, my Mum turns up at my placeafter a long flight (up in my city for her latest grandchild birth (via my brother and his wife) and for a funeral of an uncle).
I hear the car pull up, so open the front door... and this rather large and beautiful frog leaps in from the front porch and hops around the lounge. Thought for a second a witch must have put a hex on Mum, but no, Mum was still getting out of the car.
Anyway we caught it and put it in an aquarium so the kids could see it the next day. We let it go in a nearby pond, but here's my daughter holding the lovely creature.
I used to go catching frogs when I was a kid, had pet frogs for years, but never did I have one leap through my front door on its own accord.
In the winter, we get mice living in a hole under the barbeque, and wolf spiders regularly sneak into the house. In the summer, there is an infestation of cane toads, which everybody takes great pleasure in crushing with their cars or spraying to death with Dettol.
Thanks to the dog, the birds tend to avoid our house. Before we got him back from customs, two peewees would hang around, and my sister named them Yoda and Leia.
I need to replace the batteries in my camera. Then I can get some pictures to show off.
These are grey squirrels, which are not native to Britain - they were introduced from North America and compete with the native red squirrel for food and habitat. They are also carriers of a disease that affects red squirrels (but not greys), and can digest unripe nuts etc whereas red squirrels can't. Basically, they are bad news for the red squirrel, which is now quite rare (I've never seen one).
These guys are super-fast, it's hard to catch them in motion.
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This greedy feral pigeon was chugging down whole peanuts right from the hand. You can see his tongue in this pic. NOM NOM NOM.
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A lot of people seem to hate pigeons ("rats with wings" etc), and I guess they are an invasive species, but they can be beautiful birds in their own way... look at the iridescent sheen on this guy.
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Our garden held them off, thankfully.
We have the usual around here, neighbour cats and dogs like to come in and out of our garden. We also have birds. Crows, Pigeons, Swallows.
Sometimes we do have the odd exotic animal, at least exotic around here. The biggest is a fox that occasionally wanders around. One time it was in our garden for a while. They actually look surprisingly cute for wild animals.
The most bizarre thing wasn't found in our garden, but in my gran's. It was some kind of insect, it looked like a wasp or a hornet, but it wasn't either. The most distinguishing feature was that looked like a massive stinger at least as long as the insect itself, which was already pretty big. I can't remember what it was called now, but it looked pretty cool.
It was a Wood Wasp.
They do, don't they? They're a feral pest in Australia, but here in the UK I feel my adoration is legitimate.
One of the windows in my old apartment had a view over next door's garden (I use the term "garden" loosely, as you can see it's not exactly in immaculate condition). One day I happened to be looking out the window and saw this fox padding around... eventually he found a place to curl up and took a nap in the leaves. He's pretty well camouflaged!
It was exciting for me because you rarely see animals this size in the city.
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My wife & kids went for a walk along a short trail that's been put through the reserve behind our property. At the end they found a beautiful forest gecko sitting on a gatepost at the entrance to a right-of-way where the trail ends.
I told my brother who was living with us at the time and who's an ecologist. We decided because a bunch of the street's young bogan boys hang around there, that the lizard would be safer if moved off the conspicuous post.
We brought it back to out place and let it go on a huge Kanuka tree (their favoured dwelling) that borders our yard and the reserve, but not before my kids had a good close look!
What made it weird is that my college is in the middle of a city.
Wow, it's amazing how its eyes have the same colour/pattern as its skin. Looks like it's covered in lichen or something (I guess that's the point!).
Haha, that must have been a bit of a "what the ...?" moment.
Sometimes it's good not to have a camera at times like that, because you get to experience the moment completely, rather than worrying about taking a picture.
It most definitely was. Then I realized that the stag had really huge antlers and decided that I would much rather be somewhere else, preferably out of range.
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I went out looking for one of these spiders as the live under planks and bits of wood on the ground, and obviously found one. I don't know what it is exactly, but I think it may be a type of Huntsman Spider. One variation, the Avondale Spider, was used in the movie Arachnophobia a few years back. The one I have in my hand isn't as big as those ones, but still pretty impressive.
A web appeared on a shrub by our front door last month. The eggs inside hatched, and Mum was out guarding her brood.
It's a Nursery Web Spider.
A stunning looking spider!
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OK SAFE TO LOOK AGAIN NOW!
Having said this, when I was somehing like 6, I looked out my window and saw a deer and her fawn looking through the back gate. Unfortunatly, I don't think they exist in the woods near me any more. Probably got driven out. It's a miracle no one's tried to cut the woods itself down yet to make way for new property really.
By the way, you lot are fine photographers... for one thing the pictures are in focus!
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...Yeah, I'm not a very good photographer. I'm just happy I got the deer in the shot without cropping off any of its body parts.
This little skink was found running through the dining room, probably brought inside at some stage by a cat. Looks like it's not the first time it's had a tangle with a predator given the tail stump.
I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think its a Virginia deer, because apparently they aren't very abundant west of the Rocky mountains and I live in California, so most likely a Mule Deer.
We have no dangerous animals at all, except a rarely seen mildly poisonous spider. No bears, no snakes, no scorpions. Not even allowed to have snakes in our zoos.
Because giant spiders roam the streets, crushing houses beneath their huge disgusting feet.
Mind you, if I see a spider in my house I'm most likely going to kill it.
Once a Spider started to make a web over my parents bed. My dad decided, in a way, to keep the spider (there) because those spiders are the ones who eat the really dangerous and poison ones. (I think those are a bit bigger than the others, I'm not really sure about it).
Next day, the Cleaning Lady come in, watched the spider, and kill it. Then my dad was complaining for about a week.
Please make your father watch Day Off (fifth time I've seen it, still burst out laughing at the end).
I'm looking forward to my next trip back to Oz in July - I'll almost certainly be able to get some huntsman spider pics to freak people out share. I've really enjoyed everyone's contributions so far!