Finally got a photo of the Black Capped Night Heron that roosts in a carob tree nearby. We’d seen him flying out in the evening and back in the morning but here he was parked on the fence. Didn’t seem at all bothered by us on the patio either. The pics are noising because it was getting dark, and I missed a shot of him extending hie white crest (like a skinny cockatoo crest). These aren’t small birds, stocky with bodies the size of footballs!

Hey Seuss the tortoise emerged from hibernation on Easter Sunday, no kidding.
He snacked on a few Hibiscus flowers and planted himself under a Bougainvillea. Imagine sleeping for months. No wonder they live so long…

Just an interesting cloud pattern over the back yard last summer.
More interesting was this beautiful Green Heron.

Recent visitors to the yard include the springtime duckie babes

and something I’ve never encountered before, a red-eared pond slider. This creature was walking arcross our patio and at first I thought our desert tortoise had escaped. Battle scarred and big, this guy eventually plopped itself into the lake and swam off. Then we noticed bloody claw prints on the flagstone all along the gate to our tortoise. You can see where the blood is from in the pic of his underneaths, check those toes). Wonder if turtle and tortoise were telepathically hooking up for a prison break…

And finally got some pics of my sisters cat Hooligan, he’s hyper to the point of impossible to photograph but I managed some noisy low light snaps. Nancy will be happy.

A different kind of backyard bird. We live on a small urban lake in Glendale Arizona. I call it “Lake Effluent” because it’s part of the golf course water system.
Every night at dusk small bats begin to swoop up skybugs just over our heads. The bats are smallish, maybe 5 inches in body length or less, flying lazy arcing zig zags low in the sky. Sometimes they skim the water.
Last night I was out trying to snap flash pics of them to post here. Nothing good to show yet but I’ll keep trying.
So we’ve wondered where the little scamps roost during the daylight hours. No caves nearby that we’re aware of. Do they live in attics like back home in Detroit? Not too many attics around our neighborhood. Turns out that many bats live in palm trees, and are disrupted or even killed during trimming.
They also live in other trees, we’ve got quite large neighboring mexican fan palms, Sissoo, and Ficus. I suspect the Ficus and the Sissoos as the homes of these bats because the palms are trimmed regularly (and they seem to almost fly out of the semi deciduous trees).
Southern Yellow Bats? Not sure but I’m thinking most likely.
Whatever, these little bundles of flying fur are amazing.

“going to the river gonna get me a frog yeah”
What the heck kind of frog is this? I’ve scoured the internet to ID this fellow, can’t do it.
It’s a big frog, at least 8 inches from nose to butt. Haven’t heard its voice yet. It’s in the pond out back seen in my other photos (north Phoenix AZ).
If you can ID it please post a comment, I’m curious whether this is a local or a release pet or an alien from another planet.