Neighborhood Nature (Pt. 23)

We’ve noticed a significant decrease in the wildlife around Casa Fire Ant since the construction of the new house adjacent to ours began a couple of months ago. It’s a bit sad, but we enjoyed seven years of observation and interaction with the local faunae (although occasionally the “enjoyment” was through gritted teeth).

That’s not to say that we’ve been completely abandoned. The deer are still plentiful, we regularly spot foxes, and we’ll always have the birds and squirrels.

Speaking of birds, Debbie called my attention to a redtailed hawk perched in a cottonwood tree behind our house, growing on the creek bank. It lingered long enough for me to grab my camera, swap out the macro lens for a zoom, and take a slew of photos, most of which didn’t meet the extremely high standards set by the Gazette’s editorial staff…but that’s why God invented digital photography. This one passed muster, although it would have been better had the hawk not insisted on being in the shade. It’s hard to find good modeling help nowadays.

My presence under the tree finally harshed its mellow enough to make it vacate the premises, but I was able to catch a single shot of its flight, which is shown in the header photo above.

Of course, we still have our share of invertebrate visitors (and residents).

Yesterday, I mounted a camera on a support post for our back yard deck. I wasn’t motivated to do that by any security concerns, even though it’s connected to our alarm system. I’m more interested in using it as a trail camera to see what might be traipsing through during the night. It’s designed to capture a short video whenever it detects motion in its field of view.

This is what the view looks like during the day:

I checked the camera before sunrise this morning to see if it captured anything interesting overnight. Nothing triggered the camera — I later noticed that I had it configured to record movement only if it spots a person — but here’s what the live view looked like shortly before 6:00 a.m.:

I don’t know what species of spider spun that web overnight, and it’s hard to get a sense of size because the camera perspective is a little misleading. I’m sure it’s not a yellow garden spider (Argiope aurantia), due to the absence of a stabilimentum, the thick zigzag threads that characterize the webs of the members of that genus.

Also, while the web is still there today, the spider is in hiding:

I’m not going to sweep away the web but I have modified the camera settings via the SimpliSafe app to eliminate the possibility that the spider’s movements will trigger a recording, thus extending battery life. The cross-hatched portion of the following photo shows the parts of the camera’s view that won’t (theoretically) trigger a recording and an alert:

Sightings like these are perhaps not as exciting as, say, having a bobcat stroll past your yard, but it’s nice to know that nature hasn’t completely abandoned us.

In closing…it’s always something…