I think most birds are posers at heart but this young gull was keeping a beady eye on what I was planning to do with the camera. Either that, or he was annoyed it wasn't an icecream.

Wow, look at the colour of the sky. Vibrant plus!
All the pics are really cool.

Probably the last of my gardenias. It's getting way too hot for them. The smell is heavenly!!

Gardenias -- another flower I can't get to grow here -- so lovely!

And I love the bird pics

This was sunset a few hours ago...

Not a great pic, but I finally managed to catch a Jackrabbit! Can you spot him? Jackrabbits are actually hares -- they're pretty big -- at least twice the size of the cottontail rabbits we have here. I see them pretty often, but they're very skittish. They usually take off before I can get a picture.

My little reflecting pond is full of pollywogs.

Great catch PDaz. Not only do they move fast, but erratic. Very hard to photo!

Oh...those are adorable bhs. Brings back memories of when we were kids and would capture a few in a bucket and try to raise. (That mostly met with disaster.)

We've had a lot of daily thunderstorms this summer and that has lent to our mountain "greenery" being as lush as I've ever seen it.

Lovely 'green' images!

Yesterday I came across this pretty house hidden in the woods. No near neighbours - just the birds and masses of bees on the spirea on the left.

PDaz: if you want to get "up close and personal" with a jack, come wayyy up north and visit me (and please take them away with you when you leave lol) as I have a whole fam-damily living in my rock garden year round. They munch on all my perennials (esp in the winter under snow cover). The "up-side" is that everything they excrete is 99% organic and makes a good additive to the soil LOL. This "little" one (bigger than my cat) was last year's baby...

Beautiful sunset, Pdaz

Im' a bit late with the bird theme but here is one from this corner of hte world.

I forgot to add my fields yesterday but it's saved for tomorrow. This is another little road with the 1970s houses with interesting roofs. It's about the fourth one I've found around the edges of London and this is in Shepperton. The little cat by the car was my next subject and was very friendly.

Lovely offering, folks.

We are in our rainy season now, and this was taken after a torrential rainpour yesterday afternoon. They had sprung up on a tree trunk. By early this morning they'd turned from pristine white to a somber grey. The largest is the size of a small garden pea.



Scale shown here

My English language contribution for the day... on this side of the pond, pollywogs are called tadpoles.

And those jackrabbits aren't rabbits!

When I was living in England as a child, I remember being given an assignment on polliwogs - I believe either word is correct on both sides of the pond.

We call them tadpoles in Canada as well.

And yes, they are hares, because they are born in open areas - with fur and with their eyes open. Rabbits are born naked and blind and usually in a burrow/nest. Nevertheless, their common name is still "Jackrabbit".

PDaz's pic is probably of a black-tail jack (Lepus californicus). Mine is a white-tail jack( Lepus townsendii). They turn white in winter.

The only true rabbit we have in Alberta is the cottontail.

Where I grew up both names were used. My kids say they are "tadpoles."

I just had to post this after all the wonderful pics of birds, rabbits, and jackrabbits. This pic combines all! *smile* You can't believe your eyes? Neither could I. This residence is in Florida.

I've never heard them called polliwogs .. only tadpoles down here.

Copago: is that a Grey Butcherbird?

Mags: Love the picture ... sometimes the smallest of things make the coolest subjects.

Bhs: I sincerely hope (for the neighbour's sake) that your picture was taken at Easter and that the yard doesn't look like that ALL the time LOL

bhs, that is awesome!

A little more serene garden scene. (-8

A pretty rose arch - think it is Crown Princess Margareta?

Yes, Jakeroo, it was a butcherbird .. not sure of the specific breed though.

Connolly, the pet goat. Pretty sure I've shown him before. He lives in a special goat paddock and we only see him a few times a year./ We've always got a treat on hand for when we do see him.

Does Connolly have horizontal pupils?

I think all goats do VM!

Here's the field in Radlett I promised yesterday. The kid in front had been flinging stones into the field while the mother was talking on the phone and I kept a wide berth in case any missed and came my way (or the dog's).

Aw, he's so cute! And yes, ours are black-tails.

This bird often appears in my garden, and today I finally got an ok shot of him. I can't identify him in my birdguide, anyone out there know? (He has a greenish-yellow beak)

I'm loving all of the bird photos! Sorry, can't identify yours MadMags - but I love your pictures. Connolly is a doll Loving all the photos, as ever.

My red roses have been out for several days now.

The bird looks like a type of Trogon with that long tail. Must be a female as males' bodies are more brightly colored. Same family as the quetzal.

Looking further in my guide to Birds of Panama (close enough to Costa Rica) there is a bird "Grey-capped Cuckoo" so now you have two possibilities.

To me the way it is perched on the branch, I'd go with the Trogon.

It didn't have a grey cap, (here's a side view ) so I'm leaning to the Trogon too. I just spent an hour looking through 20 pages of Google web images of Trogons, but as most of the birds shown are male, I couldn't spot it for sure. I'm wondering if it's the mate of the motmot (also from the Trogon family) that is often in my garden. The male has a racquet tail though, and this one doesn't.


I have only one guidebook, "A Photographic Guide to Birds of Costa Rica". Unfortunately there are only 252 species shown, less than one third that occur in this country. Books are incredibly expensive here, but in retrospect, I should have bypassed the vastly expensive one, and bought the horrendously expensive one!

Thanks bhs, I appreciate your time and effort!

Edited to add: Heavens, I think I just found her - I checked the grey capped cuckoos, and on the image page was a Squirrel Cuckoo. I think that's the same bird?