What is your favourite encounter with a common species?

[dinofelis]

What is the encounter with a common species that sticks most in your mind?

For me personally, my mind jumps to a hot summer’s day just after Christmas in 2024. I found myself on a remote beach down in the Cape Point reserve, in pursuit of that goshdarn vagrant bird that kept eluding me. I had been combing the area, walking up and down, probably beating my then personal record for number of steps in a day.

I had been preoccupied with finding this bird when I felt something on my skin. I looked down, and not quite seeing what this black speck was, bent down to have a closer look.

As I straightened, I could see a wispy cloud of these critters in the air about me. Flying ants in their nuptial flight.

Then, like a lightning bolt out of the blue, my vision was filled with hundreds of barn swallows. Up, down, left, right, they swooped and whizzed by, beaks agape. Their acrobatics were a sight to see. Scything wings and magnificent forked tails.

Then just as suddenly, it was over. The swarm of swallows swept upwards and disappeared into the sky, and I was left behind, my mind rising with them into the sky, stunned to total awe.

[danly]

What a beautiful description of swallows! It reminds me of a memorable encounter I also had with swallows, at my favorite kayak-paddling location in Vermont. I often see one or two swallows swooping across the water, scooping up the abundant insect life near the surface. On this particular day there were at least a dozen, (alas! not hundreds) doing their dazzling dance just over my head, while I swooped my phone back and forth, trying to get a photo without dropping it in the lake. I managed to get these screenshots from a video.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/225591765
This location is also a good place for sighting loons. I try to never get too close and disturb them, but sometimes when I am just drifting along quietly, they will suddenly rise up from the water unexpectedly close to my kayak, as this one did.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/92380587

[ken_ohio]

I was sitting in the parking lot of a local park eating lunch in my car when a tufted titmouse landed on my passenger’s side sideview mirror. It was quite warm. I had my car windows open. So, there was nothing between me and the titmouse. I also had a katydid land on my windshield during another lunchtime in that same parking lot.

[Ec0pete]

When I met my future wife (female Homo sapiens) She moved next door to me in 1980

[Clip]

This was a fairly recent fun encounter. This was the 2nd time we had seen a male Northern Cardinal attacking it’s reflection in car mirrors and windows. Both times in the same parking lot and with in just a few days of each other. So I think it was the same bird both times. This photo is our car but it attacked others both times. My theory is since this was late summer this male bird did not have a mate for the season and was attacking anything that might be competition.

[Clip]

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/196754255
This was a fun encounter. My husband and I plus 2 other people were standing by a rail fence looking at a pond on Lake Apopka’s Wildlife Drive in Florida when we suddenly see an otter coming down the road that bordered one end of the pond. It is heading towards us and just keeps heading our way. It then turned some and went down the bank and into the water and started swimming right at us. It occurred to me just in time that the otter was heading right for me and might exit the pond right where I was standing. I mention this to my husband and step sideways a couple feet and sure enough the otter came out right where I had been standing. Once out of the water it turned away from us and ambled out of sight. The four of us watching this were shocked the otter got so close and truly acted like we weren’t there. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t moved just in time.

[ilenisaatio]

For me it was with a red fox in a cold February night, around 10 years ago.

I still smoked back then, and was standing in front of our apartment complex in the small hours of the morning, smoking and enjoying the cold, the stars and the moon on the snow. Suddenly, a fox walked around the corner of the building some 10 m off. Stopped, stared at me, and slowly, head held low, started to approach. I just stood there pulling the occasional drag from my cig. The fox came right next to me, eyes fixed in mine and carefully sniffed the tip of my shoe a few times. Then it gave this small high-pitched short growl-ish sound, and trotted off across the yard into the night.

Back then, the rat problem had just started to emerge in our neighbourhood, and foxes were following soon after. Nowadays their tracks, droppings and they themselves are a common sight. Occasionally there’s less of them, but then when you start seeing rats around during daytime, the foxes soon return.

[swara_aves]

I was checking if there was any water in a birdbath I’ve kept and I left my phone right beside it, as I went back to fill the bottle so that I could pour water in the birdbath, which was pretty much empty. I did get a bit of a shock as the moment I was ~2 meters away, a Large Billed Crow, fairly common around here, landed right next to my phone. The problem was that the birdbath is situated on a ledge-like structure, and if the crow just happened to knock over my phone, it would plummet to a nasty fall. I couldn’t really shoo the crow away, since the poor bird was probably thirsty. My random instinct was to tell the crow to step aside for a second, which I did, and it had no effect, but the crow just stared at me pointedly and thankfully left, probably after thinking that I was the weirdest human being it had ever seen.

The Large Billed Crow in question (i took this picture after rescuing my phone):

[amiacalva]

It’s difficult to say since I’ve had so many delightful encounters, but one of my favorites happened a little over two years ago when I had found a hawk moth (I forgot the species) trapped inside one of the buildings at my university. It was sitting at one of the stairways with no nearby windows or means of getting out. I tried to coax it onto my hand only for it to buzz its wings, pee on me, and fly away. So I washed my hands and tried again. This time it crawled onto my hand with no fuss.

I had managed to bring it out of the building and into the open space where students passed from one building to the other. However, when the sunlight hit us, the moth hissed and buzzed its wings before flying onto the wall. I really didn’t want it to stay there due to all the foot traffic, so I tried to coax it back onto my hand, only for it to fly off onto the floor. This happened again a few times. It was probably kinda strange for the people to see a large and hissing insect flying around the place, with some guy chasing after it. When I had finally got it settled on my hand, I shielded it from the sunlight and it stopped buzzing. I went to the trees and let it crawl onto the trunk, and that was that.

[nikthecowboy]

My favorite encounter might’ve happened yesterday! I was out photographing when I spotted this Eastern Phoebe, she didn’t care whatsoever that I was taking photos and let me get within 2ish feet from her! She kept moving to new perches so I got some great shots of her!

[spookyaranhas]

Usually big “firsts” for me.

First Rattlesnake in AZ, I was hiking on my birthday with family. Found this cool tree with a beehive so I went to get some pictures of the bees. Always gotta look down when you’re hiking, especially off the trail. I look down. Big ol’ rattlesnake right where I was about to step! It didn’t move at all or rattle and blended perfectly into the ground. If you aren’t familiar, Western Diamondback rattlesnakes are not an animal you want to get bitten by, and for the southwest USA they are pretty venomous. Anyway, I’d never seen one before, and this one was very calm, only tasting the air every once in a while. It was a very humbling experience, I got many pictures and walked away with a much greater motivation to watch my step.

[GothHobbit]

As a teenager, sneaking out of my house one winter night, cycling to my favorite park, and getting cozened into a game of No-touch Tag with a Red Fox. Just the two of us, a perfect field of snow, and a crystal-clear night sky.

(No-touch or Zen Tag is essentially a game of chase for two players, where you have to pay attention to what the other one is doing. The objective is to keep a consistent distance between you, so when the other player stops, you stop, and then run another direction—just so long as it’s away from the other player, who then chases you until you stop. Repeat until both are panting and happy. Foxy and I worked the rules out between us on the fly.)

[sebastiandoak]

Dolomedes dondalei is a common and widespread water spider. This is the only time I have found one which has caught a fish

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/146948813

Olive rockfish are a common rockpool fish here. This is the only time I have seen one with caught prey.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/151999177

I do find seeing predators with prey interesting. Since its not something you always get to see.

[Clip]

Keep at this nature thing and I promise you will have more wonderful stories to tell.

[Clip]

That is awesome! I didn’t even know spiders eat fish. Very cool!

[adrien_ferrand]

If you consider Octopus vulgaris as… common, it’s very likely that one. I have seen records years later of how curious and unusually daring they can be, but at that time I knew nothing, so I was in shock.

Many years ago, while scuba diving, I found an octopus lying on a rock, not doing much, and I went towards it. My buddy took a good look at it and continued. I was so intrigued by it that I couldn’t resist going slowly towards the octopus. It moved a few metres away, and I followed it, it moved again a couple of times. I expected that the octopus would eventually lose patience and swim away fast to get rid of me, and that would be the end of it.

Instead, it suddenly came and held its arms on my chest. I was startled and thought it would attack me, but it just “hugged” me and stayed there, without moving. My first reaction was to think that it might try to bite me through the wetsuit with that powerful beak of theirs, but it didn’t. It just stayed there!

The octopus stayed there, gently touching the wetsuit and other pieces of equipment. I continued moving, also wanting to show this to my buddy, who was just looking ahead instead of at us, and during that time the octopus stayed on me. The issue is that my buddy was also swimming ahead, so I couldn’t catch up. While swimming, I noticed the octopus moving its arms more around me, and I got concerned that it could remove my regulator (although we had another one). The initial feeling of amazement turned into stress, and I tried to push it off me. It remained tight, and I didn’t want to push hard, so instead I slowly ascended. When I reached five metres above our initial depth, it suddenly left quickly, back to the depths.

I immediately regretted letting it go, because I never found another octopus like that. It was an amazing encounter, but I feel a pity nowadays that I stressed about it in the moment instead of interacting with it further, but alas, I was an inexperienced diver…

[nilshelstrom]

I’m a construction manager in NY city and was working in one of the more blighted sections (which I won’t name) and found it all rather depressing… neglected, dilapidated buildings… sidewalks that were crumbling to dust… uncollected trash, etc etc. Suddenly a fresh little Cabbage White came bouncing by, visiting all the gnarly weeds in the sidewalk and in an empty lot. One little bright spot of beauty amongst the urban decay. Still my favorite butterfly to this day!