A small pacific chorus frog (Pseudacris regilla) peeks out of a dark crevice between two ornamental ginger stems and the side of their plastic pot. This, apparently, is the frog’s Secret Lair🐸

Frog also has a moist shady hole down which they can shimmy, now that the afternoon sun gets super hot and the greenhouse temp spikes up past 33C. Aren’t they clever in spite of being so small?
#frog #herps

Clever, hey? It works out for everyone except the eagles haha, who have to go raid elsewhere.

I’m joining in belatedly to say thanks for cleaning that chalk up! People probably think it’s “better than glitter” or whatever but the poor lichen and all the critters and plants it would wash into in McNeill bay! Thank you for your spritzing☺️

A large black plastic pot has two ginger stems growing out of it, and at the base of the righthand stem is a small dark olive green pacific chorus frog (Pseudacris regilla) with black markings on their back, the marking at the top looks like a V, the ones below it look like this: >< and then there are some speckles. It’s very different from the usual random looking mottling the frogs often have.

A large black plastic pot has two ginger stems growing out of it, and at the base of the righthand stem is a small dark olive green pacific chorus frog (Pseudacris regilla) with black markings on their back, the marking at the top looks like a V, the ones below it look like this: >< and then there are some speckles. It’s very different from the usual random looking mottling the frogs often have. This is a side view, she is on the stem vertically but is still managing to sit in the at-rest (thumbs tucked in) bun shape made famous by cats.

New teeny Pacific Chorus frog in my greenhouse at work, with really distinctive markings! Smaller than a thumbnail, perched here on the base of white variegated Hedychium.
#frog #herps

Osprey platforms installed by the city protect our local great blue heron rookeries! The Osprey ignore the herons, but chase away the eagles that used to raid the rookeries and cause the herons to abandon their nests. Plus the Osprey get lots of nesting platforms to raise their own families🙂

A dense tuft of olive-coloured moss sits on top of a waist-height stone pillar on a grassy patch. It is covered in sporophytes: some are small like sesame seeds and ridged like caraway, the rest are slim and sharply pointed like wheat seeds. The moss itself is covered with white tip-hairs that gather dew in the morning and reduce transpiration in the afternoon. Small mustard-yellow crustose lichen flakes adorn the moss like confetti.

Xeric moss, on what I believe is one of the numerous historic hitching posts for carriages and milkmen’s carts, scattered around my neighbourhood, made of granite I think. Somewhere online there’s an old self-guided walking tour list of them; a botanist could add their moss/lichen.
#moss #bryophyte

Mornings in the #bog. It's like its own little utopia. It's hard to imagine a more cool place to be. The pitcher plant bogs of North Florida are otherworldly. From a recent foggy morning. #photography #landscape #ECK #bogs #pitcherplants #Sarracenia #fog #bogplants

Magnetite!?! Chitons really ARE the niftiest weirdos…plus I always wondered if the coralline algae was foraging-proof, now I know haha. Thank you for answering my question!

You got to see them *fishing* as well!!! Wee intrepid birds…That’s got to grant you good fortune for the year, blessed by the ancient forest and ocean gods☺️ Hopefully they got a good catch to take home to their chick.

“In 2021, the researchers noticed that he regularly picked up a pebble, holding it between his tongue and lower beak and then pushing it through his plumage. After watching this puzzling routine a number of times, the researchers realized that Bruce had invented a new way to clean his feathers.”

Photo featuring a spiral of green fern leaves floating on dark water

Liz McGowan, Fern Ammonite,1992, land art, Hebden Bridge, UK #womensart

Hey! That spot needed one, glad it’s there🙂

A beautiful snail sits in my hand after being plucked off the deep green Hinoki Cypress in the background. It is a lovely yellow with a white and black whorl and some bronze highlights. The Pacific Sideband (Monadenia fidelis), native to Vancouver Island, has a hole - the umbilicus - in the centre of its whorl on the bottom side, whereas the lookalike introduced Grove snail (Cepaea nemoralis; equally beautiful) does not have the hole. So now I know whether to rescue them to their native forest, or plunk them in the compost pile where they can be productive breaking down all the succulent, exotic non-native plants I grow all year haha.

A beautiful snail sits in my hand after being plucked off the deep green Hinoki Cypress in the background. Its underside is a lovely luminous yellow with some bronze highlights. Its foot is peeking out of the bottom, no doubt annoyed about being detached from its leathery snack. This Pacific Sideband (Monadenia fidelis), native to Vancouver Island, has a hole - the umbilicus - in the centre of its whorl on the bottom side, whereas the lookalike introduced Grove snail (Cepaea nemoralis; equally beautiful) does not have the hole. So now I know whether to rescue them to their native forest, or plunk them in the compost pile where they can be productive breaking down all the succulent, exotic non-native plants I grow all year haha.

Plucked a pretty snail off a Hinoki Cypress today; I struggle to distinguish between our native Pacific Sideband snail and the introduced Grove snail. My excellent snail book says Pacific Sidebands have an umbilicus (a hole like a belly button on the bottom) - yay! Native💛🤎 #MolluscMonday

How do they forage when they are so curiously embedded? Do they just rasp along the coralline algae?

WOW!!! Good eye!🖤🤍🩶

Landscape fabric covered with a tangle of irrigation drip lines and brown Doug fir needles is brightened by a vividly green thumbnail sized Pacific Chorus Frog (Pseudacris regilla), cruising the detritus for invertebrates to munch. Frog is very cute!

Vertical view of same teeny frog to show scale:

#frog #herps

Landscape fabric covered with a tangle of irrigation drip lines and brown Doug fir needles is brightened by a vividly green thumbnail sized Pacific Chorus Frog (Pseudacris regilla), cruising the detritus for invertebrates to munch. Frog is very cute!

Monday morning teeny frog:

#frog

As one of those people, I applaud your selections and anticipate them eagerly☺️🪼

Monday owl (please add coffee):

Toad settles into bed, ready to take life easy. From "Tomorrow" In *Days with Frog and Toad*

“Tomorrow,” said Toad, “I can just take life easy.” Toad went back to bed.

I know how much fur the single orange cat I look after sometimes can generate, you must be the most efficient person to do all this without an airlock between the kittens/cats and the soap! The soap always looks so beautiful and pristine, well done for creating while also being a kitten pincushion.

I love all the kitten posts, but also you’ve shared that your housing/kitten rescue situation is complicated by rebuilding your house, so I just wonder, as a soap maker, how the heck do you keep all the fur out of the soap? All your soap posts are pristine and free of hair. Are you *magic*?!?🤍🧚‍♂️

Holy moly, you show us the niftiest creatures!!! I really enjoy how varied and interesting they are🫍

Stephanomia amphytridis
@schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 904 #DesigningtheFuture3 #MarineLife

Gold speckled flatworm: #AGoodPlace

Source: www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFu...

A Brown Argonaut (Argonauta hians) riding a translucent jellyfish. The argonaut has a spiral "shell" (actually an egg case) that is it wearing, and its mantle is in the egg case, and its arms are reaching back into the "shell." The shell has a wavy series of edges. The parts of the arms that are exposed have their suckers sticking out. Its mantle is sticking out on the left side. The argonaut has round silvery eyes, its body is white with purple chromatophores, and a beige shell. The jellyfish is clear and has frilly edges. The background is dark.

"Onward, my noble steed!"

🐙📷Melissa Foo (www.inaturalist.ca/observations...)

Oooo shiny like a polished stone! Very beautiful🤎🖤

Transformers! More than meets the eye!

This VERY ANGRY ROCK is actually a brown box crab (Echidnocerus foraminatus), a king crab found off the Pacific coast of North America.

The impressively compact shape is a defense posture, but there's an even neater feature not shown here.

(📷:zedasd)

A green bluff faces the Salish Sea under a blue sky. Drying algae filled flat spots show where the vernal pools host a brief burst of life in the spring. Garry Oak groves huddle in the distance, the ones closest to the ocean carved into angled 30cm shrubs, with some taller oaks in the background. Cattle Point, a rocky peninsula in Songhees traditional territory, has a special and endangered ecosystem in the meagre soil and plants that have accumulated on top of the rocks. It has vernal pools that appear in spring then dry out, and rare plants bloom before the summer dessication sets in. The city protects them from trampling by hordes of tourists and dogwalkers with wooden fences. Cattle point is also a migratory bird sanctuary, renowned as a dark sky astronomy location, and has great tidepools.

The vernal pools at Cattle Point have dried! It happens so fast. Lots more railings have been installed for the season to protect the endangered plant species that will bloom there now (and nesting birds like killdeer) which is good to see.

My photo is not sufficiently detailed; I can see why you’d suggest crassulaceae because of how it appears in the picture! But it’s not a succulent plant, it is a soft-textured bryophyte, like a very miniature sphagnum moss but in habitat that would be wet (but saline) in winter, then xeric in summer