Heads or tails?

Which way do YOU eat a tiny fly

(or, say, chocolate bunny, if that's more your style)?

Heads (i.e. ears, if you're in chocolate bunny-land)?

(Just occurred to me this is one entry point used to embalm mummies...)

 Or tails?

Found this carcass beneath the dahlias which host many crab spiders.

They catch a lot of flower-visiting flies & bees.

On the same day I found a similar bug being eaten

by a crab spider in a dahlia.

Seemed like when spider saw me, it immediately passed the fly over its head.

I wonder if that's a ninja move:

hold victim #1 out of the way w/1 arm,

then prepare to attack again with other 7.

Good move.

Lots of beautiful spiders in this group:

check out bugguide.net's section about them.

Lastly, a free, helpful hint to anyone trying to run a web site

 about crab spiders and hoping people will use/trust it:

Don't say "bees and insects."

Bees are insects.

So, there's that...

I'm willing to bet bugguide.net has never said that.

'Cause they're awesome like that. =)

So, heads or tails?

I was an eat-the-chocolate-bunny-ears-first kinda kid.

You?

xoxobb

BOBCAT! In da SNOW. TODAY!

OMG.

I am SO glad I skipped "Game Night" (w/ pardons to my lovely friends).

Look who visited my kitties and I!!

Max is back!

I timed this guy (or, er, gal?),

and in SIXTEEN MINUTES

it detected (through SNOW, mind you),

caught,

killed,

and ate

THREE rodents.

UNbelievable efficiency.

This next sequence is 27 SECONDS long:

Twenty-seven seconds.

And that's a fatty rodent in his fearsome maw.

Then he came back and hunted more,

but it was too dark for photos,

and I wanted to leave it alone,

so it'd head to my ground squirrels.

No luck there.

Just now, writing this,

talking w/ Bear about the opossum he saw here Wednesday night,

scratching at our back door (how very odd),

a skunk walks past our back door.

RIGHT by the door (snow-free zone).

"Doo-delee-doo-delee-dum."

Word must be out that we have no dogs.

I LOVE LIVING HERE!

And am so glad Max seems to find it rewarding, too.

=)

xobb

friend or foe?

who's that chick w/ the Nikon? 

Trying to accept hawks (red-shouldered, specifically) around our property (chickens, specifically) because we have, this year, TWO ground squirrels (who are FAMOUS for wreaking havoc in gardens) shacked up where once there was ONE. AND they're working on making more squirrels.

Last year we had 1 single squirrel who NEVER went into my garden (P.H.E.W.).

Now she's got a man and he's ALREADY ventured into the garden. NOT good.

Those males and their tendency to wander far and wide. hmph.

SO, I'm trying to allow our local red-shouldered hawk to hang out. Just not sure I can trust a red-tailed hawk around our chickens. Although we have pretty big chickens...

hawk monitoring squirrel shack

Anyhow, that's why I did not shoo this beautiful creature away.

So, bonus of being tolerant is

you can get closer to some very cool things.

=) bb

must forgive but you cannot miss this

 
if you don't tweet (or follow me) & I don't know you personally, there is a CHANCE you've missed this and you cannot.

This is what the internet is for.

bb

chickens have their own, internal steady-cam

  

Super interesting, short video.

This guy made a video and the chicken cam to demonstrate this amazing factoid:

"...chickens have image stabilized heads. If you’ve been wondering about it, it’s actually called the vestibulo-ocular reflex."

Watch the chicken's head as the guy turns rotates a rooster's body, gently, side to side. And how steady the camera view is.

They are SO much more interesting that I ever imagined.

Chickens, that is, not chicken cams.

Tho, chicken cams are cool, too.

My interpretation is that this pretty much means that no matter WHAT the chicken is doing at the time, if any nearby, tasty looking bug moves even the slightest bit, it will be detected and

WHAM!

Lunch.

Precision peepers.

Who knew?

Not me.

=)

bb

Boy, I sure get mouthy quick, when ...

 

a

(photo by Rebecca Richardson)

appears behind the

=)

bb

Was there a canine rave last night?

 
In the last 30 seconds I have seen, moving across my property from east to west, 10-15 yards behind the chicken coop:

1 LARGE brown lab
1 PAIR of coyotes

I have NEVER seen a pair of coyotes here before. Singletons, sure, but two?!?

Wow. Two close passes of major predators in 30 seconds.

Yikes!

Through subsequent discussions with friends, and the fact that they'd all come from the east, a neighborhood filled to the brim with dogs, I am now positing that they were returning home to crash after an all night canine rave.

Glad I was being a bit lazy today in getting the "girls" out into their chicken runs.

An added benefit to this episode, besides delight at seeing beaUtiful wildlife is that I'm all refreshed, now, having taken an impromptu jog after the coyotes to encourage them to move on through. I think they giggled as they VERY casually jogged back into the wildlands behind our house.

"Yeah, yeah, lady, we know. We're going..."

=)

biobabbler