Congrats on the new mice Aravis Narnia!

@wildrose, I love beetles-all sorts of beetles, I also really like butterflies and moths. And Praying Mantises are cool

My freind and I went down to the lake to day and I brought my telescope and was rewarded with my first sightings of Red-Breasted Mergansers
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red- ... rganser/id

I also saw multiple Ring-billed Gulls, which are very common both here and at my house
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ring-billed_Gull/id

Now if only I could locate my checklist

I have got attacked by too many dogs to count and i don't even annoy them or do anything to them.

My family is getting chickens. I hope to post pictures of the chicks when they get here.

Wild_rose, my favourite insects are praying-mantises (we have many varieties in Australia), ladybirds (especially in flight), stick insects, as well as rhinoceros beetles. There are many interesting insects!

Guess what I saw today...

*insert drumroll here*

I saw my very first...

*more drumroll*

Caspian Tern!!!

(it does kinda look like Caspian, doesn't it?)

I also saw a bunch of gray squirrels, a mammal which was either a muskrat, a very small beaver, or a small otter, multiple American Robins, Canada Geese, European Starlings, Ring-Billed Gulls, a hawk I couldn't identify, a bunch of male and one female Red-winged Blackbirds, and an Eastern Bluebird.

Congratulations wolfloversk! So happy for you
Where did you see all of them????

Thanks De_De. My college is situated literally right on the shores of Lake Ontario, and there's a little man-made pond-type thing called Glimmerglass Lagoon, that's where I saw those

Edit! 4/14

Today was a good day.

I went to go birdwatching on the lakeshore and before I even got down there I was greeted by my first sighting of a Brown Creeper, and the first for-sure sighting of a Hairy Woodpecker. I also saw an American Robin, behind the dorms. So I went down to the lake, and I saw a new Gull-type which I've ruled down to one of two species... I saw more ringed-billeds, red-breasted mergansers, and one of my favorite birds, the Common Loon. There were literally dozens of loons, and this is only my second sighting, and my first one at Lake Ontario (the other was in Raquette Lake ) I had thought I heard one while climbing down the stairs, and I thought I was wrong... but I wasn't They have one of the most beautiful calls in my opinion, sort of eerie, but very lovely. My favorite birdcall. I saw one or two birds at the lake which I couldn't identify, and three more eluded me on the way back, but one can only have so much luck in one day and I am extremely grateful

Common Loon
Hairy Woodpecker
Brown Creeper

@Wolf beetles are amazing
@ W4J you likes praying mantises too awesome, in my mind they are one of the most amazing insects. It is lots of fun to play around with them. I also love dragonflies. We have a pond not to far away from our home and there are TONS of dragonflies there, I love catching them, but I always let them go (the only insects that I like to torture are flies.....I am not going to post all the terrible things I have done with them )

I like bats too, we had these really cute bats living under our roof in the village, they were so small and tiny and adorable, unfortunatly they were parasites , but there were only two of them and so we just left them alone.......but they were still so so cute.

I like animals a lot. Some of my favorites are: cats, horses, deer, rabbits, sheep, ducks- well, I like pretty much all animals.

I don't know if these count as animals, since they haven't been proven real, but I also like cryptid animals, like Sasquatch, Loch Ness Monster, and the like.

I'm not really that afraid of insects, spiders, and most snakes, like most girls often are, but I will stay clear of anything I don't recognize. I don't know which kinds are poisonous or not, but where I live, we don't see too many of these. There's even an article in our paper that is recent that says snakebites on people are actually quite rare.

I live near the countryside, so I go for walks on our gravel road, and have seen many species of birds and insects. But a majority I see are dead, like a deer, a bird, a mouse, and a squashed toad.

Little animal lover.

All horses (especially mine! )
Seahorses
Dogs wild and not
Foxes
Cats wild and not
Dolphins
Mantarays
Deers
Squirrels
Rabbits
Mice
I'll end it here 'cause the list could go on and on.

^^ Whoa! That picture of a mantaray is cool. I didn't know they got that big.

Those are some nice horses. What kind are they?

~Riella

Mantarays are sometimes called gentle giants of the sea.

They are registered Paint Quarter horses.

They are registered Paint Quarter horses.

Very nice. Are those your favorite kind of horses, or are there breeds you like better?

~Riella

One thing I've learned... deer and linguistics do NOT get along Hence why they created scientific names. But I will elaborate on that in a more appropriate thread [/ramble]

Which would be here...

So yes deer, and many other animals, often end up with more than one common name per species. Or their common names inncorrectly call them the wrong animal. (For example Killer Whales are actually dolphins, and the thylacine which is known as Tasmanian Wolf or Tasmanian Tiger is neither canid nor feline, but a marsupial... or at least it was... )

That's why scientists came up with those enormously complicated scientific names... each species has it's own unique name based on its taxonomy. The binomial species name consists of both the Genus and the species name. Closely related species may share a genus but have a different species, for example Canis lupus and Canis latrans the gray wolf and coyote respectively. There's also subspecies which are members of the same species... these have a trinomial name Genus species subsiecies. For example Canis lupus familiaris (domestic dog), Canis lupus dingo (Austrailian Dingo), Canis lupus arctos (Arctic Wolf) are all considered gray wolves, but different subspieces of wolf. (I probably should have chosen a better example as the dog family is so closely related that they're constantly changing classifications, but I'm afraid it's one I know best- There are rules for such changes, if two species are merged the first named one is the name that is used...) This ensures each species (and subspecies) has one single name that scientists can refer too. This can come in handy, and is especially noticible in the deer family.

For example Alces alces is called "Moose" in North America and "Elk" in Europe, but Cervus canadensis is called "Elk" and "Wapiti" in North America. Reindeer and Caribou both refer to the same animal, Rangifer tarandus. So biologists and such need some name for each animal so people from different countries know what the other person is talking about.

Gotta love deer
More deer facts:
-the Moose (Alces alces) is the largest living deer in the world It's antlers can reach a span of 6 ft!
-Caribou are the only known species of deer in which both genders have antlers
-antlers are not horns and are shed annually
-female and male caribou shed there antlers in different times of the year
- Northern Pudú are the smallest deer in the world
- Some male deer, like the Muntjac have "tusks" or enlarged teeth. Some even have tusks and no antlers.
-Bambi was actually a roe deer in the book, but was depicted as a White-tail deer in the classic Disney film (at least VDT didn't change Aslan to a tiger )

Very nice. Are those your favorite kind of horses, or are there breeds you like better?

As much as I love Quarter horse, my favorite breeds of horses would go in this order, Mustang, Quarter horse and Arabian, and any mix of those breeds, would fallow that.