Favoritos de biocowboy

"Willamette phase" Mountain Garter Snake (Thamnophis elegans elegans) found along the CZ Trail.

https://wildcolumbia.org/hiking-camping-wildlife-columbia-county-oregon/cz-trail-nehalem-divide-to-wilark-trailhead-overview/

Bursting out of the belly of a road-killed Red-shouldered Hawk. Probably yesterday's lunch, as today was quite cloudy. Further impressive as the ditches are full of snow and most of the water is frozen over

Found and photographed by Brian Hess

Counting DORs, this was part of a fairly ridiculous 10 snake species in a day - cal king, desert night, shovelnose, glossy, longnose, coachwhip, patchnose, gopher, rosy, sidewinder. 7 were found in less than 2 hours of road-cruising with the rosy-gopher-patchnose on the crawl the next day.

Large polygynous colony under stone on SW exposed hillside with Artemisia, Arctostaphylos, and Ceanothus shrubs.
Three dealate queens were observed together with brood and workers under the same stone. I'm not sure if this has been observed in the species before.

The timber of the Mulanje Cedar, which is endemic to the mountain, is highly prized, and that is what many of the woodcutters are after.
The cedar is Malawi's national tree, and is protected by law, but there's no enforcement.
Our guide told us that the woodcutter who actually cuts the trees and carries the boards down from the mountain only makes a handful of dollars for each ~12 foot plank. The people who buy the planks and resell them are the ones who make the real money.

I’m at a bit of a loss on this one. At first thought spider eggs which I thought was confirmed when I found a small spider inside of the mass but then found another small spider of an obviously different species, and when we pulled apart the mass we found the shell of a much larger insect that was not a spider.

Going off of iNat suggestion and visual similarity to eggs but eager to hear suggestions.

@aiva

Trapped calico American lobster donated by a lobsterman to a restaurant for live display. Digital photographed by me as a record. The calico trait is based on post embryonic crossing over of a recessive trait in epidermal tissue.

Dude was found mobbin around the brush totally close to the marsh. Little dude got hectic and laid one right on my arms, I was like woooah. It was a mellow day, overcast yet warm. Found alongside the epic HSU herp class.