Same melanistic individual as previously posted, better pictures!
Híbrido entre Chiroxiphia caudata e Antilophia galeata
I found this shed next to a small juvenile Italian wall lizard I flipped. The lizard got away, but I got the shed. I’ve seen 3 Italian wall lizards in Lexington including this one since June. Personally, I think it’s pretty cool to see wall lizards this far away from Boston. Maybe a separate population? If it’s not an Italian wall lizard, my next bet would be a brown anole.
(I took the shed inside to take pictures of it)
Any ideas of what this shed could be besides a P. siculus?
Dark Morph/ Sooty Morph, rare.
Tres forte concentration de pigment jaune chez cet individu. Xantho.
When I observed this 3 inch creature moving. The body moved like an armadillo in sections a type of exoskeleton. It seemed to have two heads and I could not tell which was the front or rear. At one end it seemed to have a white eye and mouth. At the other end it seemed to have a black eye, mouth and nose like a snorkel toughing the round. when I picked it up the body was cold and I turned it over to look underneath. It had many leg which seem bidirectional. Then as I held it tightly on my right hand I reached with my left hand, pinched the snorkel which was hard like an apple stalk and attempted to move it and it snapped breaking. the little creature made a loud scream EEEEE! which effected my ears. the creature started to bleed yellow a lot, the liquid was bubbling and the fumes effected my throat making hard to breath so much so that I had to move away. At that point in but it down as it emptied bleeding the yellow liquid and died. I'm so sorry I didn't know my curiosity would cause it to die. So I would like to know what it was. Please for I am so deeply hurt and I hope it was not the only one left of it's kind.
This bird was discussed on the ABA blog (http://blog.aba.org/2014/09/open-mic-the-townsends-bunting-story.html), in Audubon magazine (https://www.audubon.org/news/the-ghost-john-james-audubons-past) and elsewhere.
Third Massachusetts record.
I believe this is the first of its kind ever reported. Both Ebird and inaturalist do not have a taxonomical category for this hybrid. I have lots more photos of this individual and hopefully someone will forward this to the right person to get a category established.
Melanistic Song Sparrow. Singing male, ID'ed as Song Sparrow by song, and similar face pattern (visible in photo though muted due to melanism). The bird was also associating with a standard-issue SOSP, possibly a mate.
Fungi appeared to be painted red with white dots. This was in the middle of a river