What was your most recent cool/funny/odd nature moment?

Some time ago I was sitting on my bed minding my business when a mosquito flew by from my left. I killed it and forgot about it, until a few minutes later a nother mosquito with the exact same place flew past me from the exactly same spot. I killed it again and some minutes later yet another mosquito with the exactly same size from the exactly same spot flew by. I couldn’t kill it though. I’d like to think that the mosquito was in a video game and it was trying to beat a level. When I killed it it just respawned back to the beginning. That made it one hell of a determined mosquito and I wonder how many levels it had beaten before.

I was stationed on the Indianapolis during the war. Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, @Coloma. It was comin’ back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, @Coloma? You tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know… was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, @Coloma. The sharks come cruisin’. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s… kinda like ol’ squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he’d start poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got…lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces.
Y’know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin’ @Coloma, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well… he’d been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, @Coloma, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He’s a young pilot, a lot younger than @Coloma, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

I tried to get some video of this, but my dog decided to act like a police officer.

We were having our morning coffee. I was sitting in bed, my husband sitting on the side of the bed. Suddenly, someone was tapping on the ensuite window. We have a big window that looks onto the back garden. We looked over and there was a Kookaburra tapping on the window. There was a bug on the inside of the window and he wanted it for breakfast. I was just about to video his antics, when my girl dog saw it and decided she’d better bark at the bird at the window and off he flew.

We have a lot of Kookaburras in our garden. There’s a whole family of them. It’s not unusual to see one under the washing line digging for grubs or taking a dip in the pool in the afternoon.

@Mimishu1995
Maybe time to invent that video game. Resident Mosquito or Mosquito Warcraft. haha

@Blondesjon I JUST watched that video last night on a Shark watching spree. How funny, except dude, are you telling us that you are actually 90 years old right now. Wow, you sure got a young wife for an old geezer. haha

@Earthbound_Misfit Haha, poor bird, must have been really frustrated. I love Kookaburras though I have only seem them in videos and in the zoo.

Has to be when I was fishing at this Lake off the shore spent all afternoon trying to get a fish or two and when it was time to leave… get the fishing pole and a black gym bag that I brought along… 20 steps down the path and this huge bull snake jumps out of my bag and it had to be 6 to 8 feet long!! I mean I screamed like a little school girl…unfortunately I did not bring a fresh pair of underwear.

I was at the airshow on the lakefront here one year. The shore is with lined with people for three or four miles.

There are always several aerobatic teams flying amazing wingtip-to-wingtip formations.

During a long break between acts, five geese flew down the waterline in a perfect V formation. The crowd went nuts! The birds got a huge cheer!

There’s a knothole in the tree in front of my place, and me and the neighbors walking their dogs toss peanuts in there for the the squirrels.

If I forget peanuts when I step outside in the morning, sometimes a squirrel blocks the sidewalk with arms outstretched like this.

I saw an osprey dive into the reservoir, and come up with a fish in its talons. As he was trying to climb into the air, two crows started to hector him. He ignored them but he was trying to gain altitude with wet wings, and avoid the crows, and carry the fish.

He got about 75 feet off the water, still being bothered by the crows, when he let go of the fish. One crow kept bugging him, the other crow dove and picked up the fish. Then the first crow joined the second one and they had dinner together.

I was fishing in a swamp,in my 14 ft canoe. The area looked like a bad place for gators, but good for fish too. There was heavy foliage about an inch under the water everywhere. I needed some whiskey to give me the courage to paddle through it. After a few hours I had grown relatively comfortable with my surroundings. I saw plenty of movement under and around me, but I figured a 14 ft boat would keep the alligators away,as I’ve only seen 11–12 footers there before.
I was paddling across a nasty patch of water about a mile wide in a huge clearing when the large tree trunk I was close to decided it was a sleeping alligator. When it was about 3 ft from my boat I realized it. The water exploded with immense force. Some of the water tasted like nasty gator, as it got in my mouth during the thrashing. I think it’s tail smacked my bow pretty good as it frantically pushed itself through the foliage to get to deeper water. I paddled (probably the fastest I ever did) in the opposite direction for about 600 yards. Never saw the gator again. My hands were admittedly shaky as I finished the last of my whiskey. The alligators are afraid of us ,I know,but that incident left me with a pucker factor of 10. My ass almost ate my canoe seat.

I still fish there. But I stay away from ‘logs’ now. Which sucks because I fish for Bream, and they are usually found this time of year by trees and stuff.

@Blondesjon, do you tell that story over peach brandy?

Maybe not as dramatic as some of the other stories here, but a few weeks ago I saw my first hummingbird in this area. I have seen hummingbirds feed at my relatives’ banana tree in California, but never before in the Philadelphia area where I live. I work near Trenton, NJ and I went out for a walk during lunch and caught sight of a bird right in front of me. It hovered near a small tree just for an instant before taking off. I lost sight of it right away.

@LostInParadise. Watching a hummingbird do it’s thing is as dramatic as any other thing. They are amazing creatures. I’m fortunate enough to have several places to observe hummingbirds. One of my favorite birds. Their grace and agility is something all of nature should envy. You are a cool person for noticing them.

It’s interesting because they have to consume SO many calories because of their ‘lifestyle. ’ But it takes a lot of calories to use their bodies the way they do. So, they, like so many others, serve at least a dual purpose. They scratch each other’s back. The plant gets distribution in exchange for reward.

One is the role of plant that needs it’s seeds to be spread, so it gives nature a ‘reason’ to get involved, like the sugar rich berries and such, that attract other animals to spread the plant’s genome through various methods.

Others are helpful pollinators,that happen to spread pollen from plants.

Great stories you guys, I like the geese flying in formation at the air show story you shared @Call_Me_Jay But of course, I love anything goose. haha

@zenvelo I saw an Ospery up at Silver Lake here in the Sierras dive from about 100 feet and snag a huge trout out of the lake, amazing!

@MrGrimm888 Wow…I was just watching Alligator videos the other night, they are the fresh water sharks of wetlands. I wouldn’t want to get close to one but I find them and sharks extremely fascinating, primitive killing machines, perfectly adapted to do what they do.

@Cruiser Haha, once I moved a wooden box we kept kindling in by the wood stove to clean under it and a giat Alligator lizard jumped out. Same scenario, just about keeled over, this monster was huge, like 10 inches long and as a fat as a hot dog.

@LostInParadise I love Hummingbirds too, glad you got to sight one in your area.

Right now over here at 9:05 am the birds are zinging in & out at my sunflower seeder. Titmice. Nuthatches and Finches, I need an air traffic control booth for all the crazy action. haha

Well, I don’t know if this is the most awesome, but it’s the most recent.

We were outside on a big patio getting ready to take group pictures at our 40th class reunion. Suddenly it went dark and thousands and thousands of birds flew about10 feet overhead. They filled the sky and and we could barely hear over the thundering of their wings. Almost to a person we all reached toward the sky both hand, almost in a worshiping gesture.
It was cool. And our reaction was interesting. Was it some sort of instinct that caused almost all of us to react the same exact way?

@Dutchess_III That sounds very cool, a swarm of birds blacking out the sky. :-)

It was. And they were so close!

I saw a cardinal looking pretty shabby mid-molt and was lucky enough to have my camera on me.

Fabulous shot @Mariah can I ask what kind of camera and lens you took that pic with?

Yeah totally, I use a Canon Powershot SX50 HS, it is not a DSLR camera but it has 50x optical zoom which makes it an excellent, affordable alternative for bird photography, which is the main thing I use it for. :D Thanks!

The photo is from last year. I haven’t seen my big spider friends this year. Too bad. I want them to eat all the flies and mosquitos.

Here’s a nice wolf (I think) spider photo.

Another

Olympus 50mm f2.0 Four Thirds

^Big spider population is drastically down where I live…

A few days ago I was sitting in a parking lot waiting on traffic to move when, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a Kestral AKA a sparrow hawk came zooming down and boom nabbed a white pigeon that was tottering around the edge of the parking lot. Both birds tumbled around amidst a poof of white feathers until the little Falcon had the pigeon pinned and finished him off. Awesome nature action unfolding just a few feet in front of me. I was hoping nobody jumped out of their car to try and save the pigeon.

That hawk earned his/her dinner!