Day by day, we are seeing here more spring signs.
Today I saw the first couple of Black-crowned  Monjita (Xolmis coronata), who spend our winters in the north of my country.

Mirta

 
Mirta

Thanks for sharing, Donna.
Red knots have had a great last season here and in Delaware. We have had the first confirmation that a couple of red knots we saw here were found only 10 days after in Florida's beaches, so they have flew almost directly, without other feeding stops (8000 to 10000km depending on the route they used)
But we don´t know yet if the breeding season in the Artic was a succesfull one. The weather reports were not good, and the data from Mingan, the first stop area in the southern migration aren´t conclusive yet . We need more research to see how many juveniles we can see from now to fall. Hope we can see a step in their numbers recovery!
Mirta 

I did it too. HArd to choose, but my election was in favour of wolves...
Great idea...

Mirta

(today we are starting our Spring!!)

If you think bats are cool, see  pictures in the link.
And if you think bats are ugly, watch them too!!

<http://www.dailymai l.co.uk/sciencet ech/article- 1213851/Stunning -shots-thirsty- bats-swooping- lick-water- garden-pond. html>

How cute!

Mirta (finally here after 3 days with problems to open this site)
 /\o/\   ^.^   ^ö^    ^o^   ^*^ ^._.^     ^._.^

Thanks for sharing Judi! All your gorillas are cute!
Mirta

I hear they sell pills on the Internet for your condition, Lou.

You are right. And I´ve always received messages about that in my account.
Lou, let me know if you want I resend some of them to you.
 

Mirta

Thanks, Dot!!
Mirta

Love your bird, Dot.
Could you try to post here some of the cute bats from my website? I couldn´t...
Donna, Titanic one is great!
And love the first one, fighting against PC!
 
Mirta

That will be great  to see.
Let m know when it opens, so I´ll add your city in my list of places to visit....
Mirta  

Thanks, Mirta!  I haven't brushed up on my arachnid info in a long time, but need to as we're building a new reptile/amphibian/invertebrate center at the zoo (the name of it is the HISS Center) which will have a whole section devoted entirely to spiders, or so I've been told.  Our Spider City exhibit, although temporary, was a HUGE hit and they want a permanent exhibit.  

Judi  

Rich is a gentleman.

 

Mirta

  He never showed me his belly, so Mirta couldn't give me a specific ID.   

Well, as that is a sp. that doesn´t live here, what i really nedd to see if I can IDher, is a dorsal picture. Janet´s are showing her ventral side and Lou´s ones don´t show the whole dorsal design  I´m very curious to see which of the northamerican Argiopes she was.

 

Mirta

It's too bad the Wikipedia pages don't include any info on who or what predators they have.  I'm sure there are a lot of them, including many birds, reptiles and mammals (opossums come to mind).

Any info on that aspect, Mirta?   

Spiders have a lot of predators: several mammals (from monkeys, bats, carnivores, insectivores to opossums), birds, frogs and toads, reptiles, other spiders, scorpions, other arachnids, insects (mantis, a lot of wasps, asassin bugs, etc), several parasites can kill them (fungus, bacterias, wasps, protozoans). And you must remember that most of the spides have short lifes, less than 1 year is common.

 

Mirta

Hi
My dogs are always vaccinated against kennel flu, even they´ve never been in a kennel. That flu is very common here, so my vet gave me the advice to vaccinate them every fall. It is easy bcs the vaccine is administrate as drops in the nose.

 

Mirta

Dot, in my bat website, we ´ve got several bat animations. Some are cute!

http://www.barbastella.org/imagenes_animadas/murcielagos_animados1.htm

http://www.barbastella.org/imagenes_animadas/murcielagos_animados2.htm

Mirta