hawk puzzle -- how DO I get that tasty morsel?

Moments ago, a hawk landed on something outside the garden,

but then danced around the fence for SO LONG,

I thought it might be stuck.

I want to EAT you!

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

wow: amazing video of mt. lion & sheep & deer: what does lion target?

 


Mt. lion is RIGHT by the sheep which stare at it and trot out of the way, but the lion seems more interested in the deer and trots after it, passing the sheep by.

Sebastian Kennerkenecht, blogger who posted this YouTube vid on his blog interprets this as an example of prey selection, posits this mt. lion's mom did NOT eat & feed her kittens sheep (therefore they are not "food") but DID eat and feed her kittens deer.

Kinda cool!

Thanks, Sebastian, and like him, was a little unnerved re: videographer Glenn Street's comment re: maybe he should have shot the lion, but I am nevertheless grateful for this video. Very nice work and an exciting opportunity to see a mountain lion hunting in the bright daylight!

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

super sneaky tentacled snake...

 
This video on Scientific American shows how this animal takes advantage of the prey's normally helpful reflexes and SNAP! Lunch. And reveals what those tentacles are for.

Dastardly! =)

bb