We have a grab-bag of miscellaneous photos today, starting with a “spot the animal” quiz. This one is easy, and an enlargement is at the bottom of this post. Reader Florian wrote in yesterday:
Hiking in the desert this morning in the Indian Canyons south of Palm Springs, Calif. I stopped to take picture of the barrel cactus and then noticed the antelope ground squirrel [Ammospermophilius sp.] next to the cactus at [CLUE REDACTED] He seemed almost tame and let me get close for a nice cellphone picture as he was nomming a cactus fruit. This is a fairly remote trail and i was surprised he seemed accustomed to humans.
Can you spot the squirrel? You can enlarge the photo by clicking on it, then, after a short interval, clicking again to see it on its own:
Diana MacPherson was suffering from a migraine yesterday, and was consoled by finding a nest of baby bunnies:
A bunny has a nest under a mulberry tree in my yard. My dog disturbed them this morning so they needed to be put back in their nest. Here are a couple of iPhone pictures. They are so cute that I wish I could keep them! I love their little feet!
JAC: I suspect these are eastern cottontails (Sylvilagus floridanus), but I don’t know from rabbits and so may be wrong. I didn’t know that wild rabbits could have white streaks on their heads.
Apparently Stephen Barnard, looking at his Idaho digs on Google Earth, spotted his border collie Deets in the photo. Here’s the screenshot with the email:
He’s the black and white dot behind the Subaru, right in the center. Sorry, but this strikes me as funny.
Not everyone gets their pet on Google Earth!
Stephen also sent this classy photos of squirrels, but I’ve lost the species name.
Reader Jonathan Wallace sent a photo clearly showing birds’ concept of personal space.
This picture is of Black-Legged Kittiwakes, Rissa tridactyla, nesting on a former flour warehouse (now a modern art gallery) in Gateshead, England. Kittiwakes normally nest on sea-cliffs and there are substantial populations around the British coast but they have proved to be quite amenable to using buildings in coastal town as artificial cliffs. The colony in Newcastle-Gateshead is interesting in being over 8 miles up-river from the sea and is claimed to be the furthest inland in the world. There is a webcam on the art gallery birds at this site.
Finally, did you spot the antelope ground squirrel in the first picture? Here’s a closeup:
Cool!
Great photos, as always. Diana, thanks for the bunny photos, pin articular. They reminded me of a nest of cottontails that I found in a burned-over wheat stubble field in Kansas when I was in grade school. Two survived, so I named them “Nip” and “Tuck,” and kept them long enough to raise and release them.
Each summer my dog finds a nest. Luckily, she hasn’t hurt any though she does pick them up (she has a soft mouth being from what I suspect is a line of field trial dogs).
These are indeed cottontails. They have the cute little spot on their head. I’m not sure if this goes away as they age but I’m sure it helps hide them as you don’t notice them until you almost step on them.
Have you tried Zomig (ZOLMITRIPTAN)? It worked for my migraines.
I take Relpax which is in the triptan family. It works well but I can’t take it for more than 3 days because triptans can give you backlash headaches.
Bunnies are the cutest, and unfortunately, my dogs (though from a field trial line) do not have soft mouths. Every year they find a nest, and it isn’t pretty. I wish the adults would realize there are predators on the loose and would nest beyond the fence.
I had a Labrador retriever who’d been abandoned near my friends’ ranch, and I think she’d had to fend for herself for awhile. She caught rats, mice, white-winged doves, and several baby cottontails in my backyard (and usually didn’t kill them outright – I had the unpleasant task of finishing them off). She once picked up a toad, dropped it and foamed at the mouth for awhile, and was very sorry indeed (and never bothered the toads again). As Jerry says for humans, d*gs don’t have a choice about this behavior.
Happier times when the mother rabbit would leave her babies in the neighbor’s d*gless yard, where three young children were happy to watch them and show them off to any interested persons. I commented on the cuteness of the white spots on the baby cottontails’ heads, and the oldest girl said “I know, that’s the BEST part.”
Such adorable bunnies, Diana! How wonderful that Kala doesn’t harm them.
She has to go outside on her leash for a while because I don’t want her picking them up even though she doesn’t bite them. I’ve seen her sometimes throw animals in the air too so that can’t be fun for the animal. She doesn’t try to kill them but her idea of playing with them isn’t fun for both parties!
Oooh, bunny ball!
Glad to know you intervene. 😉
In the shade to the left of the nearest cactus.
I can see my horses on Google Earth, too.
BTW, I took those photos of an Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) in Boise. Urban wildlife.
Don’t tell Deets about this, it’ll go to his head.
Sub
It’s in the shadow.
Clever girl!
The Kittiwakes on the building brings to mind the old pigeon lab we did in Common Core Biology. Using the pigeon exhibit at the Field Museum (is that exhibit still there, has it been modernized?), it showed how the Rock Pigeon came to adapt to the urban landscape.
I find it interesting that all the Kittiwakes are facing the wall. I would think they would face the other way as to keep on the look-out. Perhaps they land in that orientation, and simply don’t turn around.
That is a really beautiful desert shot Florian. I spotted the squirrel but had to enlarge the photo.
Stephen, where’s the Cobra…probably in the garage. 🙂
That imagery is from 2013, before I had the Cobra. And yes, I keep it in the garage.
Reblogged this on UNICLICKS UNIPICS.
Every time PCC posts one of these, I realize that if I were a predator, I’d better be photosynthetic because so many of them escape me.
This squirrel is one of the few critters I’ve ever spotted.
Not sure if here, or anywhere, is the appropriate place to post this scintillating bit of info from Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction :
“Wood storks cool off by defecating on their own legs. (In very hot weather, wood storks may excrete on their legs as often as once a minute.)”
Turkey vultures do (doo?) too:
“Like storks, the turkey vulture often defecates on its own legs, using the evaporation of the water in the feces and/or urine to cool itself, a process known as urohidrosis.”
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_Vulture
trigger warning: specieism ahead…I’m not surprised that those ugly turkey vultures poop themselves, but nice white baby-bringing atorks?? 🙂
In flight wood storks can appear surprisingly graceful. But have you ever had a clear look at their heads? They are a contender for the ugliest known bird. At least as ugly as any vulture I can think of!
Wood Stork
The neck looks like a snake that’s been run over by a truck. God’s glory.
Vultures are very cool looking! 😀
And especially Black Vultures.
The squirrel is a fox squirrel (Sciurus niger), from a northern population (i.e. not one of the more colorful southern subspecies), or a gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis). At first I was pretty sure it was a fox; greys have a distinct “halo” around their tails from the white tips of their tail hairs. This squirrel does not have a distinct halo, but it could be due to poor lighting. Plus, northern fox squirrels are always reddish below like the one in the picture, while grey squirrels are usually white, but, rarely, are reddish. It would be nice to know where it’s from (city, state/province– it has to be US or Canada).
As Stephen notes above, it was taken in Boise, Idaho.
I think you’re right. I misidentified it as a gray squirrel. The photos were taken in Boise, Idaho.
Sorry– missed the comment above saying it was from Boise. That increases my suspicion it’s a fox squirrel. Neither species is native to Boise, but fox squirrels have been introduced there.
We were throwing stale pretzel sticks down onto the sidewalk for her from my girlfiend’s balcony, which she seemed to appreciate, to the extent that she chased one of her youngsters away.
And, to complete the picture ID, the squirrel appears to be on a silver maple (Acer saccharinum)– as my botanist friend always reminds me, plants are much more than just things to eat and stand on!
How do I post a picture with a question? It is an insect, I think a spider, but maybe a grandaddy long-legs…with stripes on a white body? Sorry I am so ignorant. It acted so much like my cats do!
She has two exceptionally long “legs” which she clearly uses as sensing instrument, say, as antennae. She has six legs. I am just so taken with watching her/it negotiate my window sill and my wall. And it settled in under the sill for a rest. I refuse to injure it, though I would have smashed it in the past.
If you can upload you shot to a picture hosting website (such as Flickr), you can then post a link to the picture here.
Are you counting the two exceptionally long, sensing legs when you say it has six legs?
Does your arthropod resemble any of the pictures here?:
http://bugguide.net/index.php?q=search&keys=opiliones&search=Search
If not, perhaps you can use the BugGuide site to find something more similar.
“you shot” should be “your shot”
Can you spot the squirrel?
Ya, sure, you betcha.
I’ve conducted a scientific experiment and determined that the Pygmy Rabbits living under my deck like carrots, but not spinach or broccoli. Oddly, their diet is supposed to be mainly sagebrush, but I have little sagebrush, and none close by. They seem to subsist mostly on my grass.
I wonder if they’d like kale. When I had guinea pigs, they liked it so much that I started growing it for them.
Florian, that looks like some pretty amazing habitat, there! Cool plants in both shots!
Jonathan, love the kittiwake picture!
Coincidentally I just discovered that web-cam the other night…(night here, light there…). Very nice to hear more about this colony!
Stephen Barnard, would your Deets be named after the Lonesome Dove character? By the way, I love your photos! Please keep them coming.
Yes, the Danny Glover character.