My photos are not very good -- they are taken with an iPhone X. But click on the image to enlarge it. It is blurry, but it shows the field marks for this species OK.
Note the the yellowish-greenish body, the slightly orange bill, and the two wing bars visible on the shoulder.
The Cornell Lab says, "Females are yellowish overall with a gray back and darker wings marked by 2 wingbars.
This female has been in this park since December, and recently she has been coming to this feeder every day in the morning and/or at lunch time.
And I myself have been coming to Carl Schurz Park every day for about a week to try to make an observation of her. I have seen her very briefly three times already, but this is the first time I have been able to get photos.
She was also here about 40 minutes before this, but just for two seconds. She does not stick around! Generally she flies in for a second or two, and then flies away again, sometimes without even visiting the feeder. I was super lucky to be able to get these shots, even though they are not very good.
Essex County, Massachusetts, US
It kept making very soft little "erm" noises with significant quiet gaps in between, like you might hear from a human. I never heard a squirrel make a sound like that before.
A fairly large valve of this species.
A type of shell. I thought some type of tube worm or barnacle, but don’t find an ID.
After the midcoast bioblitz, I went a bit closer to the beach. Stopped at Kelly Hamby Nature Trail -- really nice spot!
On a Japanese Euonymus leaf. With a pupa of the scale predator, the Twice Stabbed Ladybeetle.
It was puddling on some bird droppings, then found my sweaty fingers to be even better.
In a common dandelion flower.
Stem Gall on a mallow species: Kosteletzkya pentacarpos.
Here is the plant observation (exact same plant):
A major discovery for me; with no reports of live specimens since 2007 - I was able to locate a population living at 1680 masl. The species appears to be fossorial, therefore extremely hard to spot. Unfortunately the location is a small relict of privately-owned cloud forest, surrounded by cattle fields.
Fungal leaf spot on Beach Naupaka
Scaevola taccada.
Observed in about 8 feet of water, just offshore from the Marine Room.
Last time I was here (which was my first visit to this locality on November 8th 2020) I found a valve of this species, which is not known to occur on the East Coast at all:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/64517493
So, were both of the valves the remains of someone's lunch or dinner, or did someone introduce live Japanese Littleneck Clams to this bay?
I looked it up, and if I wanted to, I could order delivery of a pound of live Japanese Littleneck Clams for $8. I suppose they are from California, or maybe from Asia?
But I guess anything is possible when you can buy live clams like this.
The black lines visible in this stump of a street tree (species unknown but very recently cut down) are from a fungal infection and are known as "zone lines".
Sinclair and Lyon (page 201) say, "Biscogniauxia species produce distinctive plates (pseudosclerotial plates) composed of black hyphae and stained host cells within decaying wood. These structures, appearing as black lines on cut on broken wood surfaces, are commonly called zone lines."
Here is an attempt, a couple days later, to record the tree species:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/36230726
And this duplicate observation of that more recent observation, shows the fungus on the outside of the tree stump:
A variety of marine mollusk shells (more bivalves than gastropods) from three days of searching the beach drift on Sanibel. This was during my first visit to Sanibel, which was my first collecting trip in the Gulf of Mexico.
Thousands of tiny dark oblong dots, mostly connected to blobs of fungus on a rose leaf. The entire dark colonies of about 100 dark dots are each about 0.4mm across. The individuals not in colonies weren't visible to my naked eye. So these dots are small, maybe 1/20th of a mm (50µm).
cropped close-ups of some shells posted also
The shell is quite yellowish.
Small dolphin had gotten trapped by the falling tide in a shallow bay. We managed to rescue it and send it on its way uninjured.
What are these? Egg capsules?
They are only 3 to 4 mm across and they are all shaped like a completely dished-in sphere.
Surprisingly large, very convex, green-colored soft scale insects on a young stem of a twig of Ficus aurea.
They look like plant buds, not like typical scale insects.
Ant in previous observation
this observation is for the largest shell
Small oyster shell on the University Beach.
Tiny freshwater mollusk located in the "joint" of neck and arm of this baby Snapping Turtle found on road.
Snapper observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/34432524
A snail on a bumblebee (Bombus sp.)
Never seen that before.
Taken at the South Jetty in Port Aransas, Texas.
Found in the sand fairly high up on the beach.
naturalizing
A really amazing fungal leaf spot on what I think is Ficus aurea.