Fauna

**Disclaimer - unlike the flower pictures which were all taken by me, with my own camera, most of these animals were not. The animals are less stationary than the flowers and I don't have the skillz.**
The first dozen times visiting my parents it seemed a barren, boring place. Dry, sandy, brown, hot and that's it. But as we learned in the last post it's all about looking around - that and a lot of rain - and noticing what is there even if it's not so visable.
This is the animal life - that we've actually seen - from The Desert.
We see this Egret (Ardea Alba) twice a year. He stops by on his migration we think. This picture was one of ours:We aren't sure what the Coyote (Canis Latrans) was eating in the back yard but he was not to be moved from it so we snapped a couple of good shots:These Desert Quail (Callipepla Gambelii) are everywhere. Small and quick but majorly indecisive. Will they cross the road or not? Or stop in the middle of the lane, look at the car and imagine themselves invisible: There have been several Black-Tailed Jackrabbits (Lepus Californicus) hopping through the yard this spring:There are actual Roadrunners (Geococcyx californianus) which are much smaller than the cartoons would have you think but just as fast. I don't see the Coyote, wily or not, catching one of these things: The Ground Squirrels (Spermophilus tereticaudus) are TINY and can be mistaken for leaves or dirt blowing across the road very easily:Technically this is not an animal - the Desert Spider Beetle (Cysteodemus armatus):But we've seen an increased number of the blister beetle family and figure it can only be the rain.

This is me and this concludes our nature lecture. You all get an A.