Wildlife of the Day...

Today has been the day for animal sightings around the Cozy Holt! It all began this morning, when Eric left for work but returned home fifteen minutes later with a very unusual surprise in his hands: a Red-eared Slider Turtle!

See amazing pictures of the turtles here!

Now Eric informed me that these colorful little turtles were prolific in his hometown, so spying them along a roadside or riverbed was no surprise. But how was this semi-aquatic, web-toed little swimmer living in a desert? Maybe he thought he was just crossing a multi-hundred-mile beach on his way to some pool-side resort in southern Mexico?! In any event, after we admired the little guy's colors and watched him zip (yes, zip!) around our deck for awhile, Eric drove him down to the park where at least he would get sprayed by the city sprinkler system three times a week. I hope it is wet enough for him!

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Then, this afternoon, Amy and I stumbled across (or, rather, I nearly stepped on) this little guy:

(image from the Texas Parks and Wildlife website)

He looks frightful to me, and is aptly called a Horned Lizard. Horned Lizards are apparently very common throughout the southern U.S., but this is only the second one I've spied since we moved here last summer. They blend into the dust and brush extremely well!

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And finally, I spied a humming bird -- which I believe to be a female Anna's hummingbird -- at our hummingbird feeder. I couldn't catch it on camera, but I found a great picture of a close-resemblence at the wikepdia "commons":


And that's all the wildlife... for now!