Birds and animals

I spend several hours daily out on the patio.  I am reading most of the time but at the end of every chapter I stop to look out at the ocean, beach and village.  Very seldom to I take in the view without seeing wildlife.  The birds are always there: pelicans, frigates, vultures, doves, herons and egrets.

One day last week as I stood up two tejones were walking on the path down below.  Tejon means badger in Spanish but it is used in the vernacular to describe several varieties of mammals similar to the badger.  I didn't have my camera with me and did not want to fetch it and miss the parade.  I took the picture below off the internet and credit for the great shot goes to Jorge Luis R. Tagle.

The two I saw looked exactly like these

Two weeks ago I saw a large iguana on the side of the beach road right below the house but I couldn't get my camera out of my pocket in time to get a picture.  No matter, after the big thunder storm we had last week iguanas are all over the place.  You have to be sneaky to get close up photos as they run and hide.

You can't tell from the pictures but these guys are between 2 and 3 feet long.  

The bird species vary weekly as migration continues.  In Huntington Beach we only had crows, doves and sparrows; nothing with any color.  Here there are birds of all sizes and colors.  Most of the time they are either too quick or too far away to get photos but I keep trying.

There is also a resident family of grey squirrels that use the trees just off the patio as their own highway.  Yesterday there were at least 8 that ran by all at once.  They look just like the squirrels you find in the mountains of California and the northwest states.