This one is ‘likely’ to be a lifer, but I may have to return to the site to nail it.
I was walking toward a park (in my new town of 2 weeks) and as I do often do when I encounter fence posts along a sidewalk, I was scanning for any movements on top.
This was a guardrail along a curve in the road so I leaned over to check the spaces hidden from view (good spider lurk spaces) and was very surprised to see a tiny skeleton jammed in one of those spots. I estimate a body length of 3 inches from base of trail to top of spine which seems to be missing a skull.
Shot as much as I could without disturbing things. It looked very fragile, but still had some fur hairs.
The iNat auto ID suggested a bat as the top guess but there are no bats with such long tails around here. It’s a rodent, I guess, and someone in a FB bone group suggested that it was a jumping species. I’m in Ontario, Canada so I think it’s safe to say that this isn’t a kangaroo rat.
The strongest lead so far is a possible flying squirrel. They’re in my area, and you can just make it the fire at the tail tip. I’m thinking of going back soon and attempt at least a partial extraction for more details. Especially for spurs on the foreleg b bones which would confirm things.
My farm in Costa Rica includes an area of low-elevation cloud forest. After most storms, I find broken limbs lying in the gravel road that marks the boundary of my property. I always inspect them for epiphytes. Last week I found an orchid that I did not recognize so I relocated it to a nearby tree. I passed by the area this morning and thought to check on it. In just a few days, it had produced an inflorescence and had bloomed. The flowers are magnificent. I think it is a Polycycnis sp. but I’m not really an orchid guy. Once it has finished blooming and gone to seed, I will move it further off the road to prevent looting.
Can an organism encountered 25 years ago count as a lifer “from this week”? I think it can if this week was when it was finally identified. During a brief stint as an EFL teacher in Taiwan, I encountered a strange-looking cockroach in my apartment. Its color pattern fascinated me, so I took the time to make a precise illustration of it, both life size and magnified.
Because it was wingless and in Asia, I assumed it was the Oriental Cockroach; but no, those are black, without fancy patterns. I finally got around to uploading my archived photo and illustration last night, and by this morning, it had been both identified to species and seconded: Harlequin Cockroach (Neostylopyga rhombifolia) from 新竹 (Hsinchu).
It was a hard decision this week. I had to choose between three awesome lifers, branched dendronotid, white-spotted greenling, and blackclaw crestleg crab. I finally settled on the nudibranch.
