Feeding Frenzy of Feathered Friends

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Do you know what bird this is?  Hint - It's probably one of the most abundunt of all the birds in the world, so much so that it's become somewhat of a pest.  It was introduced to North America when 50 pairs were brought over from Europe and released in Brooklyn, New York in 1852.  They have spread into the far north of Canada and into Central America.

This is the female House Sparrow feeding it's babies right outside my back door.  There are four babies in total.  Gloria and I have much fun watching them stick their little heads out of their nest begging to be fed.

Click HERE to see a picture I took last year of a male  House Sparrow mating with the female.

Eagle Nest with Babies

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These are captured frames from a streaming video of a pair of bald eagles in the process of raising three babies.  On this date 4-3-2011, two of the three eggs have hatched.  The images below show one of the eagles feeding the oldest baby, born on 4-2-2011 scraps of rabbit meat.  The other baby born today, can't quite take food scraps yet.  Take a look at this marvelous live video feed from the nest in Decorah, Iowa at this link:
Decorah Eagles

Yellowstone Grizzlies

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Two Summers ago, Gloria and I spent two weeks in Yellowstone National Park.  Early the first morning, we were visiting the first of many geysers and hot springs scattered throughout the park.  Click on picture above and look closely at the boardwalk.  Gloria just walked by fresh bear tracks.

 Here is a close up of the bear tracks probably made sometime before we arrived.  We were the only ones in the area.  Needless to say, I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise a bit and thankful to see other people arrive.

 Yellowstone is bear country, mostly grizzly bears.  We saw them practically every day we were there.  The grizzly above was mainly interested in rooting for muchies in the ground and paid no attention to me, although I'm sure she was aware I and many sightseers were there.

 This is a mother bear walking up a hill with her cub not too far behind.  This is the one and only time she actually paid attention to me.  She stopped for a bit and just stared, then kept going on her way.

 This is the grizzly cub, almost half the size of the mother, but probably as large as an adult human.

 

One day the pair was rooting around in Hayden Valley.  Here the mother crossed a small watery depression.

But the cub wasn't too sure he wanted to cross so he just sat for a while. 

 

He finally decided to test it out since his mother didn't seem to be coming back.

 Gotta hurry  and catch up!

 

Here you can see the difference in size between the two.

At one point the mother sat down creating an invitation for some mother's milk.

The time I spent at Yellowstone is one of the fondest memories of my life.  Watching these bears up close made it even more special.  It was amazing to see many families drive into Yellowstone one day and leave the next.  They missed the whole experience of America's first national park.  I spent two weeks and still didn't see everything.

Sleeping Bears

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Earlier this year, Gloria and I traveled through the Great Smokey Mountains.  Their are many scenic stops along U.S. 441, the main road across the mountains.  At one of these stops I saw about four people looking into the forest.  Kidding, I asked if they were looking at a bear?  They nodded yes and pointed to a mother and baby sound asleep high up in a large tree.  I quickly grabbed my camera with my 70-200mm lens.  The baby bear you see above seems to be looking at the camera, but it is sound asleep in the crook of the tree.

 After a few minutes, the mother bear woke up and looked right at me.  She didn't seem too concerned.  We weren't too concerned either, because even though we were fairly close to the bears, we were standing at the edge of a steep hill.  At the bottom of the hill, was the the large tree and the bears where pretty high up, almost at eye level.

 The mother actually went back to sleep, but soon after that the baby woke up and saw us.  It must have made it nervous because it started to quickly climb down the tree.

The mother bear quickly woke up and followed the baby down the tree and dissappered into the brush.  Not knowing where they went, I quickly put my equipment away.  Sometimes serendipity and pure luck work together in amazing close encounters.

Wooly Worm

While cutting out some overgrown bushes at home last month I saw this wooly worm and had to grab my camera. Old folklore says that how black the wooly worm is predicts how harsh the Winter will be, but most studies have shown that this is not true. This little caterpillar is now hibernating under some rock waiting for Spring when it will then spin a cacoon of silk and in about a week will turn into a Tiger Moth.

I received a nice note from a good friend, Dan Johnson, who mentioned a few things about my last post. He says that the turtles full name is the "Ornate Box Turtle" and that it is a female. I wondered how he knew it was a female, so I googled it a found out that male box turtles have bright orange eyes. He also said that what I called a moth is actually a "Skipper". Skippers are actually a third group that is related to both butterflies and moths. Also, moths are nocternal, whereas butterflies and skippers are diurnal, or active during the day. The tiny frog is a "Chorus Frog" according to Dan. Dan, by the way, is president of the Kansas Herpetological Society, so he should know. I just found out that Dan's teenage daughter caught a copperhead snake with her bare hands!