Here’s a sculptural critter, some sort of heron I think at the Linnaeus Demonstration Gardens.
And another artistic critter. This little girl on the back of a turtle at the Tulsa Botanic Garden.
I hardly ever use my drone for critter photography and this is “Appeal to the Great Spirit” at Woodward Park. I used my drone to get a different perspective on this sculpture.
In the backyard I got this squirrel getting his photo taken.
And a bunny out past 3 am.
And this leaping squirrel.
And some birds buzzing the backyard on a high speed low altitude run.
And these guys going for suet feeder.
And a Canadian Goose at Woodward Park contemplating the pros and cons of staying vs migrating.
This sight greeted me the other morning. A red shouldered hawk squatting on my trailcam in our backyard. I think he was looking for a mouse. We have bird feeders in the backyard which attracts a few birds and a whole bunch of squirrels and a few mice.
The trailcam captured this cat in our backyard a while back. I’m thinking he might be carrying a mouse in his mouth.
I went to Philbrook Museum of Art the other day. I saw this squirrel resting for the intense midday heat.
And this big ole hippo sculpture made out of car bumpers.
I rode my bike on the Arkansas River the other day and found this egret fishing in the Arkansas River.
And this group of geese hanging out.
And this cross species collection of egrets and great blue herons sharing their fishing grounds.
After years of construction Tulsa is opening up the new pedestrian bridge and putting the new Zink Lake Dam into service this weekend. I’m going to wait until the hubbub has died down a little bit before I go check it out.
I got a trail camera that I use just for the backyard. Mostly I train it on our bird feeders or baths and occasionally on the ground to see what kind of critters are lurking there. It is motion activated and during windy times tree and shrub branches can set it off. It’s a numbers game. I’ll literally get 1000 to 2000 shots and I get maybe two to four that are worth anything. I don’t do video any longer because screening and editing video just takes too long.
This time though I captured a couple of bird shadows.
I love the grackle shadow on the fence. The grackle is above and to the left of the shadow. Grackles are just noisy riotous birds. I wish they would go away. They do make cool shadows though. There is another bird to the left of the feeder and at the same angle. We don’t see his shadow though.
I think I finally figured out this photo. The Shadow shows a long bird. Who knows though because at nearly noon, the sun is pretty high. I’m thinking that is from the bird up above and to the left of the shadow. It looks like a hawk or something. Maybe a small sharp shinned hawk. We have lots of prey for them. I’ve seen the hawks land on the ground and walk into shrubs and come out with baby rabbits. We also have squirrels and lots of birds.
Here is a view of shadows on our north fence of our backyard. The shadows come from the left from our west fence. It almost looks like our fence is translucent. It took me a while to figure this one out.
My wife and I were taking our dog for a walk the other day and we came upon this guy/gal. INaturalist says it is a Ruddy Shelduck. It had three friends nearby and they had a very cool vocalization that I did not capture. I come to find out that a neighboring subdivision owns them and they escape quite frequently.
My wife put up bird feeders and the grackles really appreciate it. Talk about loud and noisy though.
Lizzy gave me a big yawn when I was trying to get a portrait.
Here is a sculpture at a nearby park of a dog flushing some bobwhite quail.
We visited Tulsa’s Botanic Gardens today and in addition to the beautiful flowers, shrubs, and other plantings they had an exhibit of animals made out of Legos by an artist. This is a spiny anteater.
That’s a wrap for this week. I am linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Check it out.
A view of our north fence with shadows from the bench and trees. By this time next week we should have a new fence to replace this well worn installation. I love the old patina but it is time to go.
Son and I are still practice driving. He’s actually doing pretty good.
Tulsa’s Lafortune Park now has a small buffalo herd. They seem to be managing the cold weather very well.
I’ve got tons of photos of squirrels from my backyard trailcam. This is the only one I have where the squirrel seems to have spotted the camera. I’ve seen other critters, rabbits and raccoons look at the camera on night photos but never a squirrel. Anyway I like this guy bending his flexible neck to check the camera out.
Here in the USA we have an almost nationwide deep freeze going on. Stay warm and bring your pets inside folks.
Shadowy walk to the beach from our condo on vacation on the Gulf Coast.
Shadows on a bench on an overlook at Gulf State Park in Alabama.
Shadowy Benches installed at the hub of several trails on my beloved Turkey Mountain. A team of volunteers carried by hand about a half mile,the benches, several bags of concrete, several five gallon buckets of water and the tools for job and then installed them after clearing the area. (Note, I did not do any of the heavy lifting, but you know somebody has to take the pictures.)
First up our puppy Kodi and cat Lizzy. They love to play and seem to enjoy each others company. Kodi is getting bigger and stronger versus Lizzy getting better at wrestling. She has developed a takedown that she uses on him sometimes. It is fun watching them.
Kodi is getting bigger and stronger all the time. We start him at puppy school in a couple weeks. We all know that they should rename dog school as owner school right?
Kodi is still very small. The smallest dog we have ever had. We found out that we can just park him in a laundry basket if we need to confine him a short while and his crate is not available.
Still got my trailcam going in the backyard. I think this is a downy woodpecker.
This looks like a squirrel but cannot be a squirrel because it is feeding from a squirrelproof bird feeder.
We are getting lots of robins scratching around for food under the feeders.
And we get rabbits at night.
I captured a red shouldered hawk on our neighbors roof. They like rabbits. I’ve seen them this year land in our front yard and walk into the hedges and come out with baby rabbits and mice. Hawks have to eat to I guess.
I saw a goose in the parking lot earlier this week. It proceeded to wander on the main avenue nearby and somehow did not get run over.
I went on a hike the other day and spotted this pair of geese. I think they must be nesting or something because they didn’t move much and were giving me the stinkeye from clear across the pond.
And a fuzzy photo of a mallard paddling around the same pond.
The same hike, I came across robins. This one blended into the tree it was perched on.
