tser 的最愛

Very pregnant female spotted skunk resting next to a water bowl I leave out for wildlife. It was over 100 degrees today. She seems very tired. She got up and wandered around, hunting bugs, then came back for a nap. I think she's about to give birth. I placed a cardboard box with some towels inside it out there for her, if she chooses to use it. She gets up to hunt, but likes to come back to the water bowl.

Continuing owl. I spent from 11:40am to 5:30pm with this bird on this day. It ate 4 snakes: 1 huge one, and 3 smaller ones. It was 4/7 in hunting tries (4 successes, 3 tries came up empty handed). It was mostly hunting from 11:40 to around 4pm, and then napped from around 4pm to 5:30pm. At 5:30 it stretched and preened and flew off deeper into the woods, at which time I ceased birding.

Throughout the day, many people stopped to observe the bird. This owl is chill as hell and seems to be very used to human presence. I think it uses the bike path traffic as a way to find prey that gets stirred up. Awesome bird.

We were climbing Diamond Peak in the Oregon Cascades, from the Vivian Lake Trailhead, north approach. We began to encounter large numbers of Painted Lady butterflies once we reached about 8,000' elevation on the mountain, above tree line. We did not see any butterflies below this level. As we traversed the mountain, thousands and thousands of the butterflies swept by us, going uphill. At the peak, we were surrounded by 10's of thousands of the butterflies, sweeping up the east and north sides of the mountain, streaming over to the west and south sides. They were not landing, and there was no obvious flowers for feeding (Diamond Peak in July is very dry and rocky, mostly devoid of vegetation). They streamed over us in uncounted numbers for the entire time we were above the treeline. While I have seen these butterflies before on mountains, this was by far the greatest number I've encountered. It is no exaggeration to say there must have been 100's of thousands of them. In spite of their numbers, they never ran into us and seemed in complete control of their flight. The day was sunny, warm with very modest wind.

I have videos which show the number and direction better than the photos, but can't upload them. Contact me if you want them.

Clung to the beak of a Whimbrel that was foraging in the seaweed, the bird could not dislodge it, after a couple of minutes the isopod dropped off. The Whimbrel continued to feed with the isopod on board.

I thought that this Squirrel had died in the oak tree, so I walked up to it and pulled on her tail a bit. Much to my surprise she got up and looked me straight in the eye as if to say "Why did you do that and wake me up from my nap ??"