What wildlife do you see on your rides?

[Owlie]

Well I saw a yellow jacket INSIDE my jersey after he stung me under my arm. OUCH!!! He got inside my jersey during a ride Sat morning and decided to sting me after I was finished.

Maybe it wanted a longer ride?

Lots of herons and a flock of geese on my last ride. The geese wanted to hang out in the middle of the trail...

[Blossom]

Hi, y'all! This is my first visit to this wonderful forum, and I have already learned a lot. About a month ago, I took my new Specialized Ariel Comp out for its first romp on our local Greenway. It was starting to get late when I realized I had been going around in circles for a while and was good and lost. I resolved to keep the sun on my left, no matter what, and eventually found my way back onto the main trail. Just as I was picking up the pace again, a huge gator came charging out of the weeds, stopped in the middle of the trail, hissed at me, and then crashed into the creek on the other side. He was at least 8 feet long, though he looked even bigger. The scary part is, I think I scared him more than he did me!

[PamNY]

The widowed mother hawk that I watch has started "dating." We are having a wonderful time watching her interactions with a very young male hawk (you can tell he's young by eye color).

The courtship started with brief visits to the nest last week; now they are both actively bringing sticks to the nest. Last night they were flying lazy circles together.

I don't know if this will turn out to be Mr. Right -- too early to say. But we are thrilled that she's staying in the territory so far.

[Aggie_Ama]

I saw a fox mountain biking Saturday, no photos I just admired the little guy. Actually it was full grown, a little startled. It was really cool, though. Also saw some sheep and black angus but those are expected because it is a ranch. Saw a roadrunner on the trail Sunday, my favorite bird.

[withm]

We rode at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on Sunday. It's sort of cheating to reply here with the critter count, but this is what we saw:

3 bald eagles
10 turtles
1 nutria
1 fox
2 deer
lots of great blue herons
lots of egrets
lots of ducks
a gajillion geese - Canada & snow geese
1 cat
1 grasshopper

And we heard osprey but couldn't find them.

[HillSlugger]

I saw a nice garter snake on Sunday.

[Desert Tortoise]

Yesterday morning (Monday) I saw a huge owl perched on a powerline. He even hung around for awhile after I stopped to watch him. He screeched at something in the distance, looked at me, looked back to the same place, screeched some more, hung out for a bit longer and then flew across the street to some trees where.....another owl came flying down towards the first.

This was incredible!! This all happened close to 6 am, which seems late by owl standards. Around here they seem to come out late at night or in the very early hours of the morning. I've only gotten glimpses of them at night and hear them more often. Sometimes on my house's roof. This is the first year I have heard two of them up there hooting away. I wonder if the two I saw in the morning are the same that like to hang out in my neighborhood? I was only 2 miles from my house.

This was a treat!!