What has a huge mouth and the face of a lizard? The new bird in our yard! It's called a Chuck-Will- Widow. And boy is it LOUD! It sounds almost like a whip-or-will but with a slight inflection and the volume turned way up! We had all our windows open the other night and was serenaded all night but this amplified megagmouth. After hours of his loud singing I was ready to tell him " We're glad you're happy, now shut up already! "
His "singing" was helped by the acoustics in the dome which amplify every sound. It is near impossible to be quiet. Just making breakfast can sound noisier than a 10 piece brass band. We have even gotten used to watching TV with the closed captioning on all the time. Otherwise the audio bouncing off the high diamond shaped ceiling makes everyone sound like they are speaking a foreign language. Just another unique facet of living in the dome.
Missy alerted us to our next yard "guest". At first we thought the black snake exiting our yard display was another Black Racer. We know we have two of those living on the property and are glad to have them. I'm sure to many the only good snake is a dead snake, but after years of handling them as a zoo docent I developed a new respect for them and let them go about their business. Black Racers are nonpoisonous, keep down the rodent population and will kill and eat poisonous snakes! Every Black Racer we have ever had is called Samantha after a children's book I wrote several years ago about the first Samantha.
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| Black Racer between screen dome and pool |
But this new snake had a different shaped head, was brown half way to the end and was LONG! I mean well over 4 feet! We looked him up and found out he is a "Coach whip snake". Another nonpoisonous snake that will also kill and eat poisonous ones. They are called Coach whip as the end of the tail resembles a whip with it's coloration and tapering. This snake can grow to over 8 feet long so we suspect ours is a fairly young one and we welcome him to the yard.
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