Wildlife August 2011

[Anthony Darby]

Number 1 is Araniella cucurbitina and is common all over the British Isles.

[FrazerHenderson]

Number 1 is Araniella cucurbitina and is common all over the British Isles.

and it spins its web across a single leaf

[angie]

My greenhouse is covered in spider webs. I would hate to think that number 11 could be around me. It looks like a baby tarantula  
Do you think there is a place in the world that there isn't snakes and spiders.

Angie

[PDJ]

You never know what may be lurking around the house or garden.  The Natural History Museum lists 14 species of spider in the UK that Bite.  http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/insects-spiders/identification-guides-and-keys/spider-bites/index.html

[Lesley Cox]

Anthony, the American snake house was a really big, two-storied house so there would have been some logistical problems I guess. We do a lot of house shifting like the Napier one. In fact my late husband and I did one ourselves, (I mean a contractor did) about 1972 I think it was, and a smaller one than in your pic. There's a little group of 4 just arrived recently quite nearby and already 3 are fixed up and lived it, fenced, landscaped etc. They look nice but right beside Dunedin's southern motorway. Then you would have seen the old Auckland pub which was recently moved back into place on rails, having been shunted along 100 metres or so, so that roading could be carried out underneath it I think. When we saw it on TV news, it looked as if it was being moved centimetre at a time, a very slow but ultimately successful process.

[Anthony Darby]

Number 11 is a zebra spider (Salticus scenicus) and only 5 mm long. Number 7 is a lycosid, so related to the tarantula (not the great big bird-eaters that are now commonly misnamed tarantulas).

[Lesley Cox]

Here are the decorative walls. The actually continue down the central grassy strip in the street we live in.

Nice walls for Ramondas, but they do seem a bit pointless given the gaps between the blocks.

[mark smyth]

We all know that young birds have to learn to feed themselves but this heron has gone too far and will probably die
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/river-serves-up-full-irish-to-young-heron-2840574.html?start=1

[Paddy Tobin]

We all know that young birds have to learn to feed themselves but this heron has gone too far and will probably die
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/river-serves-up-full-irish-to-young-heron-2840574.html?start=1

Black pudding in the River Dodder in Dublin, Ha! That's heroin in a condom.

Boy, is that heron going to wake up with some headache.

Paddy

[Paddy Tobin]

An interesting end for a blue tit.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-14416809

Paddy

[Lesley Cox]

Today at the market one of my vendors told me of her cat who went next door and stole half a roast chicken from the dining table, while the owner was talking on the phone in the next room.   He brought it home and struggled to get it onto HER table, but succeeded.

[Anthony Darby]

I came across what I think is a different hedgehog. I saw it trotting along a muddy path at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning, but the pics were taken at 2 p.m. in bright sunshine. It has lost a lot of spines and a triangular patch of spines at the middle back is actually detached from the skin, as you can see in the second last pic. It seems quite active otherwise! The pheasant flew as I approached the hedgehog. The final pic shows the walls in our street. The back of our car is seen on the right at the far end. The pic is looking east. I suppose ramondas would grow on the south side quite well, but I suspect they would be zapped? Beyond the bushes at the end of the street is a T-junction and across from that an expanse of grass leading down to a stream with large storm-water ponds, with more grass before the flats.

[Anthony Darby]

Here's a silvereye (Zosterops lateralis) feeding on nectar from a bottle-brush bush.

[t00lie]

Great Silver eye shot Anthony.

Wild pigs cause a lot of damage in NZ and hunting is encouraged even in private pine forests where a permit is required.

I was invited on a hunt yesterday and 3 of us traveled up to the plantations just behind Lake Waihola 30 minutes south of Dunedin.

It's been over 25 years since i owned pic dogs and methods have certainly changed--gone are the long walk ins and slow covering of ground .

Now dogs have neck collars and vests to protect them and individual GPS transmitters ,so it's a matter of comfortably sitting on the back of a motorbike driving around waiting for the dogs to jump off ,at the sign of fresh ground disturbance or 'crossings' where the animals move across the forestry roads.

My body is a bit sore today from helping carry out a 130lb boar 300 mtrs up a steep slope...

Just a couple of pics showing our 'catch'.

Cheers Dave.
 

[Anthony Darby]

My goodness. Plenty of ham stock there!