I found this bird blending in with the fantastic architecture of the Castle of the Nazari Sultans in the Garden of the Lions (Palacios Nazaries Patio de los Leones) in Granada, Spain.

I am sure my neighbor didn't appreciate the flash on my camera flashing like crazy over and over almost at midnight, but I couldn't pass the opportunity to photograph what might be an albino anole. In any case, I went back to my computer to check if such a thing was a rare find and came with this recent forum post from Kingsnake forum where somebody also took pictures. After reading the post I hurried back and tried to catch it, but the thing ran into some bushes and became out of reach. I wouldn't normally run around in pajamas with a bottomless plastic 2 liter coke bottle and a broom but in my mind this might have been worth it. The bad thing is that the lizard might be so scared that it might never return.

It is always interesting to find wild life such as carnivorous mammalian predators in urban areas. This small family Foxes were camping in Breckenridge's Main Street. At the time we got there, there was already a small crowd of people taking people and pointing at the small family of foxes not bothered at all about the tourist chatter and invasion of their privacy.

After reading a bit about these interesting mammals, I came to realize that they are kind of a usual sighting since they share a similar urban habitat with raccoons. A very interesting page dedicated to urban foxes, their ecology, behavior, and diet can be found in this page by foxes.org

It was just interesting to see a bird just on the hand of Christopher Columbus. It looks as if Columbus is pointing at something and the bird is looking that way.

This image was taken by my wife during our honeymoon in the most southern part of the Patagonia, Argentina. It's one of the most beautiful and exotic places in the world, and it has many species of animals that don't really fear human beings.

My wife and I found these bears just roaming around the edge of the road in Highway 93 while driving from Banff to Jasper. Alberta has a great deal of bears that are seen between Spring and Fall just about everywhere.

This seems to be an Eagle spotted ray (Raja narinari) taking off from the water at the Tampa Electric Manatee viewing center in Apollo beach. These creatures were stealing the show from the manatees, and seemed to be doing this as part of a hunting strategy. My girlfriend caught it in this video.

Also, some links:

• Good information from the Florida Museum of Natural History, and
• An interesting local story of a similar creature jumping on a boat and attacking a person in Florida

Here is the video:

This beautiful bird is the first one I photograph in the Paramos of the State of Merida, Venezuela (tropical andes). The area is close to a lake called "Laguna de Mucubaji".  This is a bird about 8" inches from beak to tail with orange beak and feet, and yellow circles surrounding its eyes, and gray body. It was standing on a sign that said "Zona de Pesca" or Fishing Zone. I think this was some kind of muck sign because the bird was on a tourist site of a Venezuelan National Park where fishing is strictly prohibited. There were many tourists in the area so maybe this was a bread crumbs or corn chips fishing zone for these birds. Interestingly I could not find information on the net for this bird being observed on this area although I noticed there were many. It is nevertheless a very common bird in the neighboring countries of Colombia and Ecuador.

These are the very common (but not to me) Gallinae or Moorhen. They inhabit marshlands from Chile to Canada. I found these grazing in a pond in West Palm Beach in a very nice sunny day. Only when I got close enough to these birds did I notice that they were not ducks but in fact some bird I had never observed before that resembled black doves whith red beaks with yellow at the tip. You can read more about these birds at the Cornell University All about birds webpage.

Beside the manatees, the Tampa Electric Viewing Center provides a window into a extremely rich ecosystem thanks to the improved living conditions the warm waters bring. This is a yellow crested night heron; a small bird with a very interesting mask, we were able to videotape it in action while it ate some crabs. As it names implies, this is a bird usually seen only at night, but in this case it was out hunting in the middle of the day.