What's the saying...
"I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall!"
What's the saying...
"I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall!"
Last edited by Shutree; 29-07-2020 at 01:56 PM. Reason: Edited coz now I cannot see the pic in this post, which makes it a bit pointless.
Okay. So after editing, the mouse pic that was there before, then disappeared, has now reappeared.
How about another try? A while back I posted a turtle shell, thinking it might have been a tortoise. How about this one, a tortoise?
Not in my garden, it was crossing the road not too far away. I stopped and moved it into the shrubs by the road, this being Isan I didn't want someone to see it as a packed lunch.
Attachment 55354
Last edited by Shutree; 29-07-2020 at 02:06 PM. Reason: Now both pics disappeared. FFS
Death by durian.
Was pretty tasty.
Just having a coffee on our back terrace, and one of our dogs started barking at something. There are gated steps that lead down to a klong behind our place, and there on the bottom step was this fellow. Well over a metre long, and it seems to have some string/rope around its neck. Was only there for a minute or two then slid into the klong. Not the first one that I've seen in the same place, though certainly not common.
I went to the bathroom and this not so little chap popped out from behind the toilet.
Having grown up in England where no native spiders bite, they never held any fear for me. Here in Thailand, where most things seem to bite, I have a zero-tolerance policy to them inside the house. Frankly it is difficult to relax with one of these guys close to my exposed flesh. So it got zapped. Which meant I could take a better pic of its corpse. Just too many eyes and fangs going on there.
Some great shots Shutree, i think insect are fascinating, the sheer variety and way they adapt. I fear the that with agricultural practices and development that variety is shrinking rapidly.
In the place i used to have i let an area go to grass and weeds. The elephant grass used to be frequented by some sort of sparrow which bit through and wrenched off strips of grass blades for nesting, that aside the sheer variety of insects living there was always throwing up new surprises and it was great when you saw Praying Mantis.
They are fascinating and there are plenty about here. I wrapped my hand around one when I picked up the garden hose yesterday. No harm done, I read that they are harmless to people although the gf disagrees, she says they can latch on and be extremely difficult to remove. I don't want to find out.
Meanwhile, everyone will be thrilled to know that my beetly friend looks like a member of the Longhorn Beetle family, Vientiana moculosa. It seems that Longhorn beetle larvae generally are excellent at boring into live wood. This is no surprise, any insect around here that doesn't eat me eats my garden. Some do both.
Could be a frog or toad that stays underground during the dry season, then burrows out when things get wet again.
Shutree, we had a similar hole appear in our garden last year.
It caused a lot of interest from the dogs.
And Yogi tried to dig whatever it was out, but with no success.
I also tried to dig it out with a spade which was probably a bit overkill, but never did find out what it was down there. The ground was hard which made me think it probably wasn't a snake and I remember thinking it was probably a small crab.
It's always tempting to stick your finger down an unexplained hole and give it a waggle, but I don't advise it.
A few years ago we stayed at a hotel in Hua Hin that had a small aviary outside reception with a couple of parrots inside. As the wife was nattering on in reception when we checked in I took the daughter outside to look at the birds, and because they were at the other side of the cage I stuck my finger through the wire netting and gave it a waggle. One of these damn parrots hopped over and grabbed hold of my poor finger with it's bladdy great beak and chomped down. The pain was so severe I thought I was going to pass out and I screamed like a girl so everyone of course came out of reception to see what was going on. My hand was hard up against the cage with the parrot attached to the other side, my daughter had seen my pain and had started crying in sympathy and I also let loose a few choice words that she was way too young to hear and upset her furthest. The girl from reception went into the aviary and lifted the bladdy parrot off, and I pulled back my hand to see I still had a finger but it was very red and hurt like hell. The skin was in fact barely broken but I had the king of bruises by the next day and the finger wasn't much use for a couple of weeks.
The girl at the hotel asked me why I stuck my finger through the cage and I didn't really have a good answer but I certainly won't be doing it again.
It is a fair question whether it was something digging in or digging out. I still don't know.
The gf simply said it was an animal. She's lived here her whole life. I think she really means she has no effin idea and being incurious about the world around her can't be arsed to find out.
To Lom's point, I'm sure it isn't something edible. If it were edible she'd know exactly what it was and be out there with a spade.
^ Probably wise Shutree, you never know where those holes have been.
I wouldn't say that my wife is a poor cleaner, but when I returned after seven months away I could barely see out of my bathroom window for bird nests. There's a succession of nests built on top of each other between the glass and the fly screen. I can't remove them yet because two nests have fledglings.
Man isn't that the truth Shutree. Thai folks seem to lack any curiosity about anything. But, if it is related to food they jump all over it. My wife is exactly the same. I see something and ask a question and am usually responded to with "Why do you care?" or " I have no idea"
^ Wait until you get the little orange ones... they destroy everything.
I put up bird boxes around our garden, but the open front type just get taken over by the pigeons.
The ones with a small round hole in the front are a bit more interesting because the pigeons can't get in.
Last year we had hoopoes nesting and this year there is a family of magpie robins.
Passing some food in to the mum and babies.
A quick look round and off hunting again.
An amazing thread. Thanks so much!
Two days ago Yogi killed a baby mynah bird on it's maiden flight. It left the nest, landed on the ground and snap. The parents were dive bombing Yogi and making a hell of a racket and he got a wack on the nose for his efforts to hopefully stop him doing it again.
Yesterday I found a young magpie robin that had obviously left the nest box to early. Lucky I found it before Yogi... so I got the ladder and popped it back inside.
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