Mike Benard

Lots of Raven activity this afternoon, made for some nice flight path trails.

A gray snake with longitudinal dark lines down its back and orange skin between the scales is coiled around a bat. The scene is inside a dark, rocky cave.

Baird's Ratsnake (Pantherophis bairdi) eating a bat! Val Verde County, Texas.

#herps #predation #snakes

A broader view of that storm cloud and rainbow reaching toward the lone tree.

Just a glimpse of an opossum carrying a bunch of leaves in her prehensile tail. She's bringing them back to line her nest hole, which must be close by.
#opossums #possum #backyardwildlife #trailcam #TrailCamera

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA

10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Here he comes
my favorite boot inspector😄

A green watering can with its spout blocked by something beige.

It’s blocked by a frog! A frog’s face is glaring at me from inside the green watering can.

Tried to water the baby asparagus but the spout was blocked so I tried to shove the blockage down into the can but the thing inside shoved back.

Computer…enhance.

#garden #gardening #oopsfrog

They are very interesting, so cool you have them in the backyard! love their calls too, have seen them calling, but haven’t been able to get photos or video. But only rarely in their range.

A side view of a small narrow-mouthed toad. It has smooth, slightly shiny skin in colors of gray, blueish-gray, and black. Its body is oval, without a distinct neck and its head comes to a point. Its small, bulgy eyes are black. It is sitting on the ground, which is a mix of white sand, and brown and tan twigs and bits of leaves.

One of my favorite amphibians, the narrow-mouthed toad (Gastrophryne carolinensis). This one was seen at night in South Carolina, not far from the beach. I've only seen them a handful of times in my life.

Polypedates colletti, a brown treefrog with a very pointy nose

Phrynoidis asper, a toad that is very Toad™

Occidozyga cf. laevis, a delightfully round and absolutely Built puddle frog

Limnonectes sp. Honestly I have no idea which species this is, I just know it's one that doesn't have a bos on the head. If it weren't from Borneo you might think it's a Rana or a Lithobates or something. It's brown and froggy with a dark tympanic field.

Look at the fantastic variety of shape in these wonderful frogs I photographed in Gunung Mulu National Park on Borneo last year. Amazing how much frogs can do with so little. 🐸🧪

A gray, flat large with fronds around the perimeter of the body and a brown pile of poo on its back. It is standing on a thistle leaf.

This is a Thistle Tortoise Beetle larva. They carry a poop shield around and wave it predators. I shot 8 frames here and manually stacked to show the poo in all its glory. lol
(Cassida rubiginosa)

in light of the kimmel news, just a reminder that a few days ago a prominent fox news host literally called for killing homeless people. right afterward, someone shot up a couple homeless encampments.

that fox news host still has his job.

A small yellow clam in shallow water over sand. Its fleshy siphons are out of the shell on the right, and its foot is out of the shell on the left.

Close-up of a person's palm holding 14 little clams that vary in size from about 1 cm to 1.5 cm. They vary in color and pattern including stripes, rings, solid color, with colors including blues, yellows, whites, reddish brown and orange.

Close up of a small clam in shallow water on a sandy beach. The clam has white stripes breaking up a reddish-brown background color.

A small clam in shallow water on sand. It is slightly open with part of the fleshy mantle coming out. The clor range sfrom pink on the outer edges of the shell, to more yellow and orange near the center.

Coquina (Donax variabilis) are a species of little clams common on beaches along the Atlantic Ocean. They can be gathered in large numbers for cooking, but I have not tried that yet.

Showy dragonflies are being driven extinct by warming and wildfire Nature Climate Change - The authors use 1,603 estimates of local extinctions from 1980 to 2021 to show that dragonfly species with wing ornamentation have disproportionately gone extinct and lost...

new paper from my lab @cudenverclas.bsky.social in @natclimate.nature.com, led by @sarahnalley.bsky.social!

Dragonflies with dark mating ornaments on their wings are disappearing from parts of the United States that have had more warming and wildfire over the last 40 years 🧪🌍🐙

rdcu.be/eFm7e

5 common stormwater management principles that apply to daily life:

restore.
stabilize.
let things soak in.
think outside the channel.
meander more.

Hey academic friends, if you are so inclined you can join the class action against Anthropic AI if your works appear in LibGen. That includes scientific papers.

www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/contact

Close-up photo of a small frog on sand. The sand grains are large relative to the frog, with sand grains about 25% to a little larger than the frog's eye. The sand and the frog are similar mix of colors of tan to off-white. The frog has some darker markings on its legs, and white markings under the eye, but otherwise is a good match for the sand.

A favorite frog from this summer: Southern Cricket Frog (Acris gryllus). Lots of these little frogs were out along the sandy shore of a lake in Florida. Their pattern matched the sand and made it hard to see them, and when approached too close they leapt remarkably far for their small size.

A juvenile tree frog belly with feet tucked beneath pressed against a window

Truly one of the best things in life
is finding a smol frog on your window

Close-up of a butterfly standing on a large, round, yellow flower with thing yellow petals. The butterfly is nearly all black, except for some pale yellow, orange and blue spots near the edges of its wings. The green stem and leaves of the plant and more flowers are also present. Blue sky is in the background.

A black morph of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. Males of this species are yellow, but females can be either yellow or black. This one is also feeding on introduced Elecampane nectar.

The top of a tall, green plant with eight bright yellow flowers on it. There is an out of focus group of flowers in the background too. The flowers have thin, stringy yellow petals. A large butterfly with yellow-and-black wings sits on one flower. The edges of the wings have some orange or blue spots surrounded by black. Blue sky is in the background.

An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly drinking nectar from an introduced Elecampane flower in northeast Ohio. August 2025.

A zigzag eaten into an elm leaf, with a spider at the end instead of a little green caterpillar.

That’s not who’s supposed to be at the end of the tunnel!

Close up photo of a frog jumping away from the photographer. The frog's hindparts are in focus, but the rest are blurry. The feet are closest to the viewer, and the head is furthest away. It is on a white backgound. The frog jumped before the photographer was ready to get the photo.

Too slow pushing the shutter when photographing this green frog

spoooooooooky toad in cornfield with lanterns and pumpkins.

"Take heed. It's just around the corner..."
#watercolor #art #toad #frog

Mother bear and her cub getting a quick drink before heading out to parts unknown.

Water = Life 🥤

#mammals

Baby snapper yawning.

Rawr! 🐢

🌱 BHL’s Call for Support soft-closes on Aug 31. 🧪
With @clirnews.bsky.social as our new fiscal sponsor, we now have an administrative & financial home, but we still need partners, hosts, funders & long-term investment to secure BHL's future. about.biodiversitylibrary.org/call-for-sup... #ILoveBHL

This pretty little creature is the spotted lanternfly, an invasive pest that is rapidly expanding its range. They have become very common in parts of northeast Ohio the last couple years. At the nature center where I recorded the video, they have loaner flyswatters to squash the bugs.

Pete Hegseth shares a clip saying women shouldn’t have the right to vote, the 19th Amendment should be “repealed,” and women should “submit” to their husbands: “All of Christ for All of Life”

A mink is airborne as it runs, stretched full-length.

A blurry cottontail rabbit seen through the low-hanging leaves of a tree while running fast.

A story in two pictures.

A mink standing next to a gravel trail, looking to the right. It is a dark brown colored weasel-shaped animal, its fur is still wet from recently swimming.

An American Mink venturing out from the reeds while hunting
#mammals #mustelids