Just to prove that this isn't the All Quail All the Time blog, I am going to talk about snakes today. But first a quail update! The days are getting shorter really fast. I'd estimate that night falls about five minutes earlier every evening now. The quail no long take their time pecking around the front yard before retiring to the dormitory tree; instead, they appear all at once in the dusk, and usually together, so it's pretty hard to count them or be sure who's who. But I'm keeping my eye on them.

Now, snakes...

A couple of evenings ago two of the cats didn't want to come in after the quails went to roost. I saw they were intently watching something
on the flagstones in front of the porch. Well, it took me a minute to see it in the near dark, but it was a little, teeny, tiny snakelet, striped (I couldn't tell what color) and wiggling frantically as it tried to get over the lip of the metal thingy that separates the front plant bed from the flagstone. It was about the size of a soda straw. It was adorable. I'm assuming it was a king snake, but don't know for sure.

Then, this morning as I was heading out to get the paper I nearly stepped on a quite large king snake on the flagstone. I guess it was warming itself to get ready to start the day. It moved off into the pyracantha, but really slowly, so I guess it wasn't very warm yet. I think it was probably the snake I saw in the back yard the other day. It was about three feet long and black, with broken pale-yellow stripes.

When I went out a bit later to see if the snake was still there, I saw a very small lizard trying to eat a pretty large caterpillar. I'm pretty sure the caterpillar was winning, but I didn't stick around to find out.

Last night there was some rain to the west, resulting in a beautiful sunset that I photographed from my garden. Pix are above.