sunday wildlife report

I've been finding a lot of small white broken eggshells on my walks lately. I'm pretty sure they come from the nests of white-wing doves. Today I found part of a beautiful blue robin's egg. There was a time when seeing a robin in Texas seemed a rare sight. When I was little my family lived in Seattle, where robins were common, and I missed them when we moved to Texas. Now I see them in many places in North and Central Texas. I used to be sad when I saw a broken eggshell because I thought it had fallen out of the nest, then I found out it's a sign that a baby bird has hatched. The parent bird cleans the nest by throwing away the eggshell. Here's a time lapse of a baby Robin hatching and the adult bird tossing out the eggshell

Yesterday I found a good-size red-eared slider turtle in my neighbor's front yard. Its shell was about ten inches (25 cm) in diameter, so it was at least an adult. It seemed to be going somewhere, and I hope it gets there safely. I would have liked to bring it home with me, but I don't have a pond in my yard. Maybe someday.......

(c) Matthew High, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

I have a couple of Texas spiny lizards living in my back yard. I'm pretty sure one of them lives under the tool shed, but I've seen them often lately either scrambling up the wooden fence or catching bugs in the tallow tree. They will let me get fairly close, within two feet, probably because they can escape so quickly. One of these days I hope to get a good photo of one of them. They are one of my favorite little dinosaurs.