Birds, beasties and birthdays

Bird assassin discovered! Remembering how she roots around in the bushes, I woke with a sinking feeling that Chacha might be  responsible. Finding a dead fledgling (Tangara seledon, another of my favourites) on the doormat this morning confirmed it. The jungly surroundings must have awoken Chacha’s terrier instincts, and she’s a digger, too. She disappeared for ages later on and returned with her muzzle caked with mud. Hopefully her potential victim dug dig deeper and escaped her evil intentions.
 
The Trogon circled in the distance all day, returning to the nest early evening. Either he’s still searching for a mate (maybe it wasn’t a female that we saw two weeks ago), or diverting attention from his nest site. At lunchtime, this weird little spider (less than a centimetre) jumped onto my camera. Googling produced a photo of a metallic green jumping spider, here, which shows his green bottom beautifully, but not the red (chelicerae?) below the eyes that make him look quite fierce. I took dozens of photos (he's on a newspaper, not my shoulder), but without a macro lens, couldn’t do him justice. 
 
We got back to Rio in time to get a cake to celebrate Ronaldo’s birthday (extra photo 1). He’s 51 today, but looks about ten years younger, must be all the hard work and clean living. For us, it was a back-to-front supper - rich strawberry cake and beer first, followed by chicken sandwiches.
 
Guess what? Our ancient cat, who can barely stand, let alone jump, and hasn’t hunted in years, caught, killed and ate a turtle dove today – all Ronaldo found was feathers and gizzards. The poor creature must have flown in and ignored the danger. I bet it’s the same one that flew into the bedroom before, and wouldn’t let go of my finger and fly away once I got it outside (extra photo 2). And a photo of a Tangara seledon has just come up on my digital photo frame, to make me even sadder.