Very cool, Hummer.
Those are some PBS documentary worthy shots.
Gorgeous!
-John
{maybe I can use this as an argument to not mow my lawn}
Thanks Arbol,
The first two, obviously, are screen captures from trail cam videos, the other with my real camera. The Browning Spec Ops cams get great images. I have four but want more. In the past few days they've caught coyote, deer, bear and even a night shot of a Great Horned Owl catching a vole below the dining room window.
Fwiw, as a kid I had a thriving lawn mowing business. I later decided I'd never have a lawn, only wildland grasses and flowers. At the Palisade farm I mow the grasses twice a year. Never at the cabin.
Last Saturday, I heard some panicked screaming right outside the window. Thought it might be a Cooper's Hawk that took down a sapsucker, but no. Walked out to find a Long-tailed Weasel with a death grip on a young cottontail rabbit. I scared off the weasel but bunny was dying. The weasel soon returned and hauled it off. The rabbit probably weighed twice as much as the weasel.
Weasels kill by a bite through the skull or the spinal cord in the neck. It was violent and the screaming was distressing because we like having the bunnies around, but the weasel is probably feeding young too. The weasel was small, so probably a female. Last summer we watched a weasel kill a chipmunk. This year our property is devoid of chipmunks and ground squirrels, and there are fewer tree squirrels.
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The rabbit deserved it.
I have lost count of how many wires I've had to fix because of cotton tails around here. I'm on scorched earth level with them
Banding birds in Sedona recently I caught this hybrid male Rivoli's x Black-chinned Hummingbird. It is smaller than a Rivoli's (Magnificent) and larger than a Black-chinned. Hummingbirds do hybridize occasionally but there is no record of this hybrid combination. He's truly unique, a one of a kind individual.
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I had a helper tonite while canning green beans.
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