Wildlife & Related

[Irving]

So like a raccoon and a rooster mixed together, but with protected status?

[Irving]

My wife asked Google what a "Northern Fucker" was and it showed her a picture of Great_Kazoo.

I told this bird was just hoping around the yard and didn't even try to sell me anything.

[hatidua]

Seven cows. Sinclair, WY.

[hatidua]

View from my driveway, five minutes ago:

[Irving]

Some finches built this nest inside this thing we have hanging on our front porch.


Mom bird started laying eggs. She stopped at five.


All five hatched.



My wife and daughter have been watching the nest like hawks. At some point this weekend they informed me that they hadn't seen mom bird around for two days and they were going to take over. I told them to just leave it alone, but when it comes to animals, they won't have anything but 100% chance of living. So they got onto the internet and learned about hand feeding baby finches. They've been feeding the babies. I've seen the mom finch around, but not nearly as often. Apparently those babies have three mothers now. They actually seem to be doing well.


There is a small bird house about 3 feet away that has another pair of finches nesting inside. That one just has a very small hole, so we can't see inside, but if you put your ear up to it, you can hear another nest full of babies. So we have potentially 10 baby finches on our front porch alone. My neighbor (who built the birdhouse) has at least 12 more bird houses around his property. You can't go anywhere on our property without scaring a finch out of some hidey hole. Oh yeah, both nests were built with a significant portion of duck and chicken feathers.

I've been seeing bats out front every night for several weeks as well. I think I'd like to get a few bat boxes up. Between the bats and dragon flies, the mosquito population has really come down.

[Irving]

Have you moved?

[hatidua]

Have you moved?

Sadly, no.

Ideally, I'd be posting photos from at least as far away as Wyoming, maybe further. Alas, I'm still in the same place.

(modern optics aren't half bad though)

[hatidua]

Another mirror from 9am this morning -

[Hummer]

Awesome fish! What a beast! Do you eat those suckers? If so, how do you prepare them? What is that, like 20 lbs.? Are there Mirror Carp in Pathfinder, and are the other photos at Pathfinder? All impressive, btw. I've canoed and fished the North Platte and Pathfinder a number of times.

Another mirror from 9am this morning -

[hatidua]

Awesome fish! What a beast! Do you eat those suckers? If so, how do you prepare them?

I actually don't but I've found that fish preferences are entirely regional: the Japanese love raw bluefin tuna but you couldn't pay an NC commercial fisherman to eat raw fish even though the giant bluefin are being caught in NC (and then FedEx'd overnight to Tokyo). In Seychelles, I watched a waterfront fish market sell off all of their jacks and barracuda rapidly, and the dolphin (mahi mahi/dorado) languished in the sun all day, nobody wanted that species! Amberjack is popular in New Orleans but considered trash fish in the mid-atlantic, etc.

There was an online link I saw in the past few weeks on the preparation of carp. So, yes, people do eat them and I've seen them in the refridgerated case at Pacific Ocean Market in Broomfield. Granted, there's stuff available at Pacific Ocean Market that is challenging even to look at, much less eat...

As far as distribution, I think there are mirror carp in just about every pond and lake in CO and WY. I've only caught a handful of the "common" carp, everything we seem to catch are the mirror carp. And I have no idea where the babies hang out, I've yet to catch one that is really small, they all tend to be fairly respectable in size. I've not caught any that are in the really upper rungs of what's possible (they get past 60#s), but there are plenty of fish that are big enough to get well into the backing.