Reclusive mountain lion at San Diego Zoo. Sorry for the fuzziness. I had to use lots of magnification and focus in between the wire grids of his enclosure.

I took a long lunch today and went to see the Tulsa State Fair. I can get through the Fair pretty quick. The only thing I like to see is critters and a few other things. I don’t give a flip about the crappy food. The big thing this year is Krispy Kreme doughnut hamburgers in addition to deep fried cheese cake. Blech. I don’t care about the midway, I don’t care about the home and garden exhibits, blech. Show me the critters and the 4H Exhibits.

The overwhelming school of choice of 4H is Oklahoma State University. Believe it or not, but about half of Oklahomans will be rooting for Texas during todays OU Texas Game. Yep, I’m not kidding. Sooner Fans and Cowboy Fans hate each other.

As a licensed professional Chemical Engineer I liked the 4H take on the periodic chart.

Oops, this is a critter post, on to the critters!

Is their any domesticated critter more dramatic than Longhorn Cattle?

Lots of other types of cattle also

Goats

Sheep

Bunnies

Camels

Dr. Seuss Critters

and Turkeys

Well, I had a meeting with the boss. Off to the office to help America solve her energy problems.

Please check out Camera Critters.

SuperPizzaBoy has a friend who lives on the ouskirts of town. His family has a wide range of critters including many different types of fowl including chickens, ducks, and peacocks. The ones I like the most are the Guineafowl.

According to Wikipedia. Guinea’s eat ticks. I love all of God’s creatures but anything that eats ticks is a friend of mine.

Please check out Camera Critters.

We were in Southern California earlier this month. The last day we went through La Jolla and spent a couple of hours. The big attraction at La Jolla, at least to the Yogi’s, were the harbor seals who hang out right on the rocks.

You can learn about harbor seals from wikipedia here.

It really is quite remarkable, especially to us land locked Okies that, such marine mammals live so closely to humans. We were fascinated.

Some of them are really cute.

Check out Camera Critters

We have some family friends who live on acreage just outside the city limits. Subdivisions are going up all around them but they still have their critters. My favorite are their two peacocks. They don’t let me too close though.

The sheep were staying in the shade.

Check out Camera Critters for more photographs of all kinds of critters.

Hey I thought I had the perfect idea for a family event last weekend. The Great Backyard Bird Count of 2010. Hey all we had to do was count the number of various species of birds that were in our backyard over a minimum 15 minute period last weekend. How hard could that be? I thought it would be our first step to greenness. I am thinking that birdwatching would be a great companion to my hobby of geocaching. I’m out in the woods a lot so might as well multi-task when I’m there.

We started the bird count Sunday afternoon with our two helpers.

I’ll give them this, they were focused.

We didn’t have a whole lot in the 30 minutes or so that we watched. I counted about 12 sparrows. A couple of these:

I think it is a common grackle starling, based on comments by several readers I went and checked my resources again and I think because of the pale spots the bird is a starling. And that was it for the count.

Earlier in the week, and thus not in our “official count” we had a couple of these,

Which I think is a male cardinal, along with a sparrow.

And one of these,

Which I think is a female cardinal, and was my favorite.

So, we and the cats had some fun and I learned a few things. One thing I’ve learned about the internet is that there are all sorts of knowledegable people out there and I’m depending on them to let me know if I misidentified the birds.

Check out Camera Critters for more photographs of critters from all over.

Ginger and Abigail.

Here in south Tulsa we have other critters besides the domesticated kinds.

I went on a run on my usual trail which winds through a long greenbelt through the heart of  south Tulsa. Somebody decided to make the landscape more to their liking. I am guessing that they were beaver. I didn’t see the culprits.

Where there was once a small pond, the critters had made into a bigger pond by building a dam.

It didn’t take them long, I run this route every few days.

A couple days later, on another run, the fallen trees had been cleared from the path but the dam was still there. However there were other signs of critters. On my outbound leg I thought this was a muddy stick on the trail. Coming back I saw that it was the leg of a deer.

Coyotes?

For photographs of animals from all over check out Camera Critters.