Nature red in tooth and claw, from reader Peter Nothnagle:
Herewith attached, for your possible inclusion among the readers’ wildlife photos, a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) dining on an unfortunate sparrow (Passer domesticus), observed by its sibling and an incredulous bunny (Sylvilagus floridanus).
Reader Tony Eales has some photos from Oz:
I’ve just came back from a recent work trip to the outback and thought you might like to see a couple of the local residents.
I found a Shingleback or Stumpy Tail Skink (Tiliqua rugosa) walking across the road. They’re interesting for several aspects of their reproductive biology; there is a great deal of evidence that they form very long term monogamous pairs, they are viviparous with a placenta and because of the heavy armour the female organs like their lungs are pushed so far out of the way they can barely move or breath in the last part of pregnancy (their pregnancy lasts around 5 months).
I also saw a lot of emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae). There had been good rain for a few years and they were mostly groups of young adults foraging together. Their reproduction is interesting too with males looking after multiple eggs from multiple females then guarding and raising a group of chicks to young adulthood.
There were also clouds of Budgies (Melopsittacus undulates) as well as many other parrots. I think they’re called pet parakeets in the US.
From Stephen Barnard in Iowa, a bull and calf moose (Alces alces). He notes, “The bull was in rut and I was a little nervous about it.”
Hawk sib to rabbit: “Are you lookin’ at me??”
I think it’s probably the reverse: the hawk could care less what the rabbit does, while the rabbit is signaling “yeah, I’m watching you.”
If the rabbit’s smart, it’ll get out of there before the haws really do start looking at it.
…and can anybody spot the Squirrel in that last photo of Stephen’s? I know it’s gotta be there, somewhere….
b&
Ha ha! I thought the moose had a Bullwinkle look to it.
Interesting stuff about the stumpy tailed skinks. I did not know of any lizards that did this. Lots of snakes do it, of course.
It seems a recurrent theme that various species opt to put energy into incubating their young internally rather than laying eggs. We see this in different arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, and of course mammals.
It’s actually not uncommon among lizards, although the degree of placentation varies quite a bit. There’s a species of skink in northern Brazil that produces an egg about the size of a mammalian egg, which is then dependent all through its development upon a very well-developed placenta.
I love skinks but I bet they could give you a nasty bite – those jaws look strong!
I always imagine how devastating a cloud of budgies could be (and loud).
That bunny – stopped in its tracks and unable to move for the horror. 🙂 I think Coopers prefer birds over rabbits. They are very fast when they catch their bird prey too.
That moose has a wild look in his eye – during rutting too – I’d be worried.
I’ve seen budgie flocks of a few hundred and they were pretty loud (and when they took off from a bare snappy gum the branches rattled), but nothing like this. Typical Aussie accent on the narration 🙂
The jaws are indeed strong, and the bite is pretty bad, I’m told, but stumpies tame down very quickly. We had four in the lab for years, and they were very mild-mannered pets, carefully taking food from our fingers and never trying to bite the hand that fed them. The one time I did get bitten was when one of them was roaming on the bench top and had stuck its head into a bucket, being unable to see around itself. I touched its tail and it whipped around and had my fingers in its mouth before I could react. It let go before it exerted any pressure, but I could imagine what it would have been like if the skink hadn’t realized that this was not a threatening situation.
Awww they sound cute to have. I’m to monitors tame up pretty nicely too.
They’re nice animals – genteel, and they seem to recognize individual human beings. They also seemed to enjoy, or at least put up with, being sat upon one’s knee or held against a shoulder. Especially if food was likely to be offered at some point.
I was once in a Dungeons & Dragons group where the GM’s favorite monster was a home-brewed carnivorous parrot called the piranhakeet.
I used to live in Iowa, Dr. Coyne, and I never saw no moose.
I believe Mr. Barnard lives in Idaho, another state with a vowel-rich name.
Sub
That bunny seems to know it is in a precarious situation because it looks wide-eyed and frozen in its tracks.
I think moose kill more people in Alaska than any other mammal, including Grizzlies and Black bears. Especially bulls in rut and females with calves…so caution is well advised. Nice photos though, moose are neat.
That budgie looks exactly like one my brother had as a pet when he was a kid: “Baby face”. I didn’t know they were indigenous to Australia…my guess would have been Africa. And really cool skink. Thanks for the interesting info on their reproductive challenges.
Do Emus really have fire-bright orange tongues like that or is it a trick of the light?
More a trick of the light, it was at sunset and I did a little manipulation to the photo as well. The inside of their mouth is yellow-orange but I don’t think it’s quite such a startling hue.
Gotcha…thanks. Ratites rule!…wish N.A. had a species or two.
Might I ask where exactly you saw that shingleback?
I see a fair few of them when I go walking around Canberra, but they all look much darker than that – with no light bits. And after seeing your photo I checked with the internet, and almost all photos – including ones explicitly identified as the sub-species of the Eastern shingleback – show creatures not as uniformly dark as the ones I see all the time.
Yet I would have thought Canberra was where most shinglebacks were spotted – a large population centre with plenty of the animals nearby.
(Side note: I rescued a shingleback from my dog once, without being bitten or scratched – a towel was sufficient protection. They may bite hard, but they wriggle less than you’d expect.)
The Shingleback was out near Cunnamulla. We don’t get them near Brisbane where I live, we have a lot of Blue-tongues instead. I think Shinglebacks are quite variable across their range in both colour and the thickness and coverage of their armour.
Yes, I remember blue-tounges from when I lived in Brisbane – and frill-necks as well, occasionally.
You’re right that there seems to be a bit of variety in shingleback markings – I’d assumed, falsely, that the uniformly dark Canberra ones (rather like Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon) were standard.
They’re blackest in the highlands (e.g. also near Mudgee and Armidale, both pretty near their eastern limit), its a thermoregulation thing. They don’t live on the east coast, and if kept outdoors there are susceptible to scale rot due to the humidity.
Great pictures and interesting stories, everyone!