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.
Egrets and great blue herons sharing the prime fishing spot downstream of the Zink Lake Dam.
More sharing downstream of the dam.
A closeup of a great blue heron.
Here is one fishing with one leg. Or maybe sleeping. I don’t know, its eyes are open.
And a human fishing from the rocks at the dam.
Headed back to the car on the bike path I come upon this gaggle of geese.
These pics are from my bike ride early this week. My knee has been feeling much better. I woke Wednesday and I had some bad back spasms. My wife drove me to the Urgent Care and the on duty Nurse Practioner, prescribed me some muscle relaxers, and she gave me the old man side to side hug telling me that I should take a week off from my bicycling, hiking, weight training, and yoga. My wife was in there and thought it was a hoot that I am officially elderly and harmless in the medical world’s eyes. I’m good with it, I will never say no to hug from somebody nice. So this morning (Saturday) I woke up and I think I might live for a little while longer. Yesterday I wasn’t so sure. Tell you what though, the medication makes me not want to drink alcohol. I’m afraid my stash might be getting out of date.
Found this little guy on Turkey Mountain. I think it is a rough green snake. I see more of these kind of snakes on the mountain than any other. Most of them are just a few inches long, this is the biggest one that I have ever seen. Maybe a foot long at the most. I love the graceful coils. It seemed kind of curious to me with the raised head. I tried to tell him to get off the trail or it was going to get stepped on.
Our purple coneflowers in our front flower bed. Purple coneflowers are the state wildflower of Oklahoma. These have a bumblebee and a moth on them.
A curious deer checking me out while I was geocaching in a pecan orchard near Tulsa. The orchard is huge and has lots of deer. A couple years ago I saw a huge herd of them running through it. This time there were lots of signs in the orchard. They are subdividing it for houses so kiss those big beautiful trees goodbye.
And Kodi the Pomeranian. He loves swimming in his little pool on hot days.
We have lots of geese in Oklahoma, especially golf course geese like these.
And how about Mother Goose with her perky little hat.
And big ole rabbits and Alice in Wonderland. (At a local library)
I went on a bike ride along Tulsa’s RiverParks trails the other day. I took my SuperZoom camera with me hoping that I would see something. It turns out that American White Pelicans were on the river that day. This is a group I spotted near where I started at 71st street. They were on a sandbar near the other side of the river.
Here is a closeup of them. I find them kind of comical on land. They are very graceful in the water and flying.
And here is five miles north at the newly reconstructed Zink Lake Dam. They were paddling around fishing.
Another closeup.
And maybe 50 yards downstream of the dam this group of pelicans and great blue herons were trying their luck in the shallows.
The pelicans and herons seemed to tolerate each other’s presence pretty well.
In the calm waters up stream of the dam a flotilla of geese were cruising.
A momma goose sitting on a nest on a sandbar in a creek flowing the through the grounds of Philbrook Museum of Art. Her mate was busy chasing people away, including us.
A little chubby squirrel snacking on the grounds of Philbrook.
Another squirrel perturbed by us sitting out on our patio.
Kodi the Pomeranian loves laying out in the sun.
A grackle getting a drink.
Kodi loves finding sticks. He exchanges them for a treat. Is that a spoiled brat looking face or what!
Lizzy the Cat gets kind of talkative every now and then. Critters are a hoot.
Another Lego critter from our trip to the Tulsa Botanic Garden. This one is a dodo bird. Which is extinct.
A wedge of Geese at Tulsa’s Woodward Park. (I just love the various collective nouns for the different kinds of birds.)
Also at Woodward Park, an equestrian sculpture, “Appeal to the Great Spirit.” It used to be at high school in Tulsa that got torn down. Fortunately it was saved. The original was by Cyrus Dallin in 1909 and is on display at the Boston Museum of Fine Art.
A bison mural I found while working an Adventure Lab Geocache.
And I was in a creek bottom in south Tulsa replacing a geocache that went missing when this guy showed up to see what was going on. Usually I see snakes in this area, never any venomous snakes just rat snakes but no snakes today. I would rather see turtles.
We have a tennis ball in the back yard. He loves chasing it all over the place.
At night other critters come out. I have seen this bunny during the day.
The way the eyes light up is spooky!!
Lately we have this black and white cat checking things out. We still have people in the neighborhood who turn their cats loose and there are several feral cats outside as well.
Hey, a non-trailcam shot of some geese at a local park.
That’s all I got this week!! I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters
I headed out recently to Oxley Nature Center in north Tulsa to hike the trails and see what kind of animals were out and about.
During the middle of the day I didn’t expect to find any deer but I found a small family of three resting in the woods. They didn’t seem too bothered by me.
This young one was browsing then laid down with its back to me. Go Away!!
I found this cool butterfly resting on a trail. Google Lens tells me that it is a Gorgone Checkerspot. I have never heard of such a thing.
This turtle was catching a few rays.
Two grown and two baby geese (goslings). I’ve done my research and apparently you can’t call a group of geese less than five in number a gaggle of geese. A group of swimming geese is called a plump. So here is plump of geese. I find the names of groups of animals fascinating. My favorite is a Murder of Crows. So I can truthfully say that I have seen a few murders.
A raft of ducks. I think this raft is blue wing teals according to google lens.
And a solitary great blue heron.
Too blurry of a photo for an ID but these birds were swooping all over the place. I got a new word maybe. A group of unidentified blurry birds flying really fast is called a Swoop. You heard it first here. You better check in often to keep up to date.
I found this funky looking dragonfly on a trail. Not good enough of a photo to get google lens to give me results that I am happy with.
And on the home front.
Our six pound Pomeranian puppy Kodi is a bundle of energy. He hates to be separated from my wife. If she is outside he pogos at the door to join her. When she’s inside he wants in. I guess that he has separation anxiety.
That’s it for this week. I’m linking with Eileen’s Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out, lots of great animalcentric posts by some very talented photobloggers.
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.
