I was hiking on Turkey Mountain and came across this black stick. Only it wasn’t a stick.
It was a friendly rat snake. We looked at each other for a little bit and then keeping his eyes on me he folded back along side his body and headed into the woods. I wish I had a video of it.
I was on a bike ride and while crossing the Arkansas River I spotted this big bird on a tall tree spreading his wings out. I don’t think it was an eagle but maybe a Turkey Vulture. The only birds I have seen do this were Anhinga’s down in New Orleans a few years ago. Sorry for the photo but all I had was my cell phone.
We are getting lots of rabbits in our back yard. Thankfully our dog Kodi ignores them.
And a blast of birds from one of our bird feeders.
That’s all for this week. I am linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Check it out. Lots of talented photographers post there.
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.
This past week the family spent some time at Hochatown, Oklahoma near Beavers Bend State Park for a little R&R. Since I am retired we can take a weekend getaway during the middle of the week and avoid the crowds! We are not big on crowds.
We rented a very nice cabin with all sorts of amenities. The best thing was all the deer that came by to visit early in the morning.
Deer are really graceful but very wary. As well they should be.
So we sat still on the porch as they came by.
We went hiking a few days in the park. We found this little armadillo on our first hike. They really are intriguing creatures.
But then we come across this snake that Heather almost stepped on. She thought it was a copperhead which is of course venomous. I kept telling her to get close enough to see the shape of the eyes to make sure. She refused. INaturalist confirmed it was a copperhead. It was laying right on the edge of the trail and refused to move so we just edged around him best we could. It was one of the biggest copperheads I have ever seen.
Later on during a walk around our cabin neighborhood we come across Bigfoot. Neither Heather or Kodi were afraid of him one bit.
Kodi loved our getaway. We didn’t take him on any hikes but we did lots of walks around the cabin and took him to a dog friendly brewery. He had a great time. As did we.
We went kayaking while down there, here is an action shot of Logan. We didn’t see any critters on the water except for birds.
Speaking of birds, have you tried the Merlin app. A free app and you download a bird song library and then you turn it on and it ID’s the birds by their songs. It’s amazing. The only thing is that it doesn’t locate the little buggers for you. So now I’m just taking screen shots of what it is hearing. It is truly amazing.
I was on a hike here in Tulsa and scared up a group of about three deer. We had a little faceoff for a while. All I had was my phone camera so you have to really look hard to see the deer. I love seeing deer on a hike!!
I captured a squirrel and some birds on my backyard trailcam a few weeks ago.
My sister Ellen, her husband Irv, and my son Logan took a little trip to Woolaroc’s Museum and Wildlife Preserve about an hour or so from Tulsa. We saw lots of critters including some bison.
They had some juveniles, “red dogs” but they wouldn’t group up. Come on guys, how about some cooperation. Move together. Look at the camera.
I have no idea what they are looking at.
And a group of deer at a Preserve Lake.
They had an animal barn and with this sad little donkeys. All donkeys look a bit sad don’t they.
And a sad little pony.
And maybe the saddest story. This guy was a longhorn cow that lived at Woolaroc and got moved to southeast Oklahoma for a time. His proud horns drooped because the grass didn’t have the minerals needed to keep them up. He’s immortalized now.
Taylor Swift dropped her new double album “Tortured Poets Department” the other day. Kodi and I listened to most of it on the back patio. Kodi loves catching rays and grooving to new tunes. I think he may be a Swifty.
As posted recently the family did a New Year’s Day Hike this year. I took along my telephoto lens and didn’t find much to point and shoot out at. Toward the end we came across a pond that had some ducks of some sort so I reached out with my camera and the results were not that good but hey this is the only thing I got that day. Highly cropped.
A few days later we were home and I got wondering what bird was singing so I went out in the backyard and there were three robins high up in a tree just singing their heart out.
I had to use the manual focus because of so many big and small branches in the way and again, these are highly cropped.
And so this is my humble contribution to Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out, Eileen has GOOD photographs posted by bloggers there.
I went hiking on Turkey Mountain earlier this week. I encountered, several times, a family of three or four deer. This was the best photo I got. Lots of trees made focusing difficult. I love seeing deer in the woods.
And I saw this butterfly. Google tells me that it is a Red Admiral.
And I was walking along and I heard a woodpecker up in the trees. I looked and looked and saw this one but he wouldn’t stay still very long. Sorry for the grainy cropped shot.
And here is our Pomeranian Kodi. He’s cute as all get out and likes me 95% of the time but watch out for the other 5%.
I woke Lizzy the cat up from a nap the other day. She was not amused.
And I captured the image of this little bunny in our backyard early Friday morning. We have a lot of hawks in the neighborhood and they feast on little bunnies.
And speaking of feasting we have a bunch of squirrels this season. Watch out little dudes!!
Kodi loves going places so we took him on a hike at Ray Harrall Nature center. He did two miles and never slowed down. His little feet were moving fast.
And that is my critter report this week. I am linking with Saturday’s Critters.
I was in Albuquerque last weekend and came across this roadrunner at a local park. It was a little shy and kept a constant distance from me and wouldn’t turn around or give me a profile view for nothing. I lived in New Mexico for years and I don’t think I ever saw one. When I worked summers in the oilfields of west Texas I saw lots of them. Of course back then we didn’t have smart phones snapping away at anything that moved.
I went on a bike ride the other day on Tulsa’s RiverParks trails. I’m in the habit of taking my Canon SuperZoom along nowadays in case I see anything interesting. It’s a lightweight camera than can really zoom in on things. So this is what I found on my ride.
I found two eagles about a 100 feet apart. I’m guessing that they are fishing for their dinner.
I found this old log with a bunch of turtles and some sort of bird. The setting reminded me of a song that goes “Fools to the left of me, jokers to the right.” Or something like that. Thank you to Eileen who Id’d the bird as a Double Crested Cormorant.
Inaturalist is not sure what kind of bird it is and suggests it is part of the cormorant family. Eileen ID’d it as a Double Crested Cormorant.
I also got fuzzy pictures of some sort of ducks, or ducklike animal. Eileen id’d these as Northern Shovelers.
Most of these photos were at the very limits of my camera. It would help if the critters would come closer to shore but I don’t think they care about me or my needs.
And then way on across the river I found these white pelicans and some sort of white waterfowl.
Pelicans are such unlikely creatures. So comical on the ground and graceful in the air.
So that was the highlight of my bike ride. I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out.
