Nature Is Soooo Cool!

I think my coolest nature story is we were on a boat ride along the Apalachicola River here in Florida. We were checking out all the little canals off of it like we always do. Exploring! We stumbled upon a breading ground for the white Ibis! I was so excited to see this I just started snapping my camera. Not once thinking about my settings! Not once asking my better half to stop the boat and turn it off. I was an amazing site to see!!! Needless to say not one of my pictures cam out! I was so disapointed!! Now every time we go out on the river I go looking for it, prepared and ready!

I love nature, be it plants, insects, or any animal. I am very fortunate to live on Florida's nature coast. Just this evening my wife and I went to the beach to catch a sunset and I captured these interesting little crabs, they were no more than 1" wide and many smaller, but there were thousands of them all moving in unison.

I have several moose stories, but probably the best one was when I was all by myself, (got up early and hiked up a relatively unknown trail) by a small lake just sitting on the ground with my back against a rock and was sketching when from just a couple hundred feet to my left a big bull moose comes out of the woods and wades into the lake, stops, takes a long drink, stands there for a bit looking around but not taking much notice of me and then proceeds to continue to the other side of the lake, (shallow lake!) and disappear into the woods on the other side.

This big fellow was found at the bottom of my woodpile that I was moving. He agreed to come in and pose for me for a little while.

In Maine I used to see a lot of wildlife, Bald Eagles flew over the house nearly every day, seals in the harbor. But actually I see a ton more here in NH. Moose, bear, deer, fisher cats, fox, groundhogs, beaver, snakes - all in the yard (mostly woods and swamp area). Even a bald eagle on my neighbors yard once.

Debra, I feel your pain. My best wildlife shots are the ones I didn't get. That's usually when things happen too fast or I'm in the middle of some crises and can't spare the time. I nearly missed this shot because I was tired, lost and didn't bother to check camera settings. I was on a back road somewhere in the Patagonia Mountains close to the Mexican border and had no idea where I was or where civilization was. I just happened to catch a glimpse of movement in the brush and aimed the camera. It was a covey of wild Montezuma quail. Got one shot off as they disappeared into the scrub. When I looked at the image, it was so overexposed that I could barely see the birds. Thankfully, it was a RAW capture and I was able to crank down the exposure a LOT. It still probably won't print because it's blurry but it's a great memory.


What do you think the crabs were up to Mario? Feeding, mating, or?
One of my best friends lived in a tiny place on a cove along the Mendocino coast. It was old and very rundown (ready to fall down) but it was right next to the ocean and in a gorgeous setting. We were having dinner one evening and heard scratching noises. We looked, and there were masses of tiny crabs scuttling inside under her front door! It was high tide but it's often high tide there and that had never happened before. We never did figure out why they came to visit her.

David, moose are one of my very favorite beasties! It's such a thrill to see them. But it's probably good that he took little notice of you. They can be really aggressive. I found that out the hard way!

Edward, I really envy you for being in such a rich wildlife environment. I was only out that way once and it seemed like everywhere you looked, there was moose or beaver or something cool. I still have no idea what they were, or if they were poisonous but we were hiking around in a swampy place in NH where an old homestead had been. Nothing left but foundations but someone had planted bulbs and other flowering plants and I was wading around in the tall grass trying to get pictures. Wasn't long before we noticed that the place was literally crawling with big black snakes! They were everywhere! Freaked us out big time just trying to get out of there without stepping on one.
Here is one of the ancestor's of the kids living in the flower pot. He used to hang out near the same spot and I got to see him breed too. I know he was a he because his girlfriend was quite a bit larger.

I love nature-Except Squirrels, which right now are on my "arch-enemy" list, as you can probably guess, because they chewed up my new, and formerly favorite bird feeder. I know, I should have known better than to get a plastic lighthouse bird feeder, but it was cute. My second Arch-enemy is the yellow jacket that discovered me yesterday while I was trying to be sneeky taking hummingbird photographs-Even after running around my house twice he still continues to harass me.

Ok enough rambling-my odd nature thing is:

Whenever someone local tells me they have seen a particular animal, bird, etc, or a bird with a certain feature, usually within 48 hours I see a similar animal, bird or insect. one of my friendly rivals told me about a month ago about the disease cardinals get which makes all of their head feathers fall out-the same evening I saw one. Same lady told me about hummingbird moths, next day out shooting, I see one. I hope someone tells me about seeing a dragon or a unicorn soon so I can retire from my day job. lol.

This one is kind of sad. In my old house where I grew up, there were nesting blue jays close to the house. One day one of the pre-flight infants fell into our bushes in the front of the house. We all inspected the baby without disturbing it and it looked no worse for wear after the fall. The mother blue jay regularly came down to feed the baby.

One day my parents were gone and I was sunning on the patio in back of the house when three blue jays landed on the telephone wires in the back of the yard and were screeching non-stop. One of them actually flew to the wire coming out of the house screeching directly at me, just over my head. Just then, my parents drove in the driveway and my dad quickly got out of the car and said "did the cat get the baby?". Apparently one of the neighborhood cats discovered the baby in the bushes and we rushed out there, but the poor thing was nowhere to be found. What absolutely amazed me is these blue jays knew we were not a threat to the baby and they were trying to tell me the child was in danger. I was sorry I couldn't interpret what I was being told, but they were absolutely directing the screeching right at me. Creatures are smarter than what we give them credit for.

Kathleen, I know moose can be dangerous but they won't charge if they don't sense any threat from you. My other two encounters were much closer. Once I was hiking, looking everywhere but directly ahead of me, rounded a corner and looked up and there was this young bull, (horns were still stubs) staring straight at me not 50 ft away just off the trail. Going any further up the trail would only bring me closer to him so I stopped. I tried looking away from him for a while to make him more comfortable with my presence but when I looked back he was still staring at me. Then I tried turning sideways and that still didn't make him happy, so I turned around and slowly started going back down the trail but of course looking back often to make sure he was going to charge. After a minute of that he turned and ducked into the edge of the woods. I turned around and started back up the trail but could still see him so I went slowly but after a minute he went deeper into the woods until I couldn't see him. I was still apprehensive hiking up the trail for a few minutes because I didn't know exactly where he was and the trail took me closer to where he seemed to go but I never saw him again. Again, I was on a little known trail and all by myself, if he had charged and I'd been injured no telling how long before someone would have found me.

That is scary, David. It's one thing if you know exactly where they are and another when you don't know if they are stalking you. I did a contract job a few years back that took me into remote places to geotag structures, most of them abandoned. I had approximate coordinates that would get me fairly close then I had to find exact locations and determine whether the structures still existed and were being occupied. Scary work on several levels. I'd driven a very long way on an old logging road and finally found where a spur road headed off of that, down the side of the mountain. There was deadfall on the spur so I had to hike in. It was clear that no one had been there for a long time and the track was overgrown with dense brush and woods on either side. After about a mile I came to a small meadow where 2 cabins still stood. There were many piles of fresh bear poop all over the clearing, so I quickly tagged the buildings and started the hike back up. All the way back up the mountain something kept pace beside me in the woods. It was a big something and very noisy but I never caught a glimpse of it. I knew better than to run but it took all my willpower to just keep going at a steady pace, expecting a big bear to come crashing out at me any second.

Kathleen, now that is scary! I couldn't image being tracked like that by a large animal, and you can't even see it so you don't know what you're facing. We don't have a lot of bears around here, but enough that that there have been a few attacks and several deaths over the years. I'm pretty sure moose don't stalk, they aren't predators but I was concerned that if I accidently got closer or surprised him it might startle him into charging me.

My other moose encounter was a mother and calf, luckily they were a good one-two hundred feet away when I spotted them, they were just off the trail. I was alone again and wasn't even high up the trail, in fact I was still in the ski resort area where the trail starts but I was there very early so for the first while I didn't see anybody else even though it's a very popular trail. I just had to take a break for a good ten minutes and let the mother and calf take their time foraging. The mother did notice me and kept looking back to make sure I wasn't a threat. The mother was very patient, it's obvious she wanted the calf to move along, she'd walk a bit and sit and look back at the calf waiting for it to follow but it was finding too many interesting things to play with, including a fence pole it used for a good back scratching. lol The mother never nudged it or anything, would just walk a bit ahead and wait, so all I could do was wait until they were out of sight before continuing my hike.

David, I wish everyone was patient around wildlife. If we just stop and observe and allow them to feel that we aren't a threat, we can witness so many amazing behaviors that we would never know about otherwise.

Last summer we were visiting the Assateague Island National Seashore in search of the wild ponies. We got out of the car at a parking lot to walk to the beach and I noticed a Sika Deer Fawn in a neighboring field. I slowly walked to the edge of the field and knelt down and kept still and quiet. The little critter appeared curious and eventually walked within 10 yards of me. It stood there for about a minute - then "Mama," standing on the other side of the small field, made a motion and the baby walked away.






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~ Bill
~ US Pictures .com

Aw, Bill, what a darling little baby!

Alicia,
Have I got a bird feeder pole for you. It is called the Squirrel Stopper...

http://www.squirrelstopper.com/about-us/

I am going to get one. The squirrels have learned to balance and hang by their toes and eat out of my squirrel proof feeder. They learned if they don't put any weight on the ledge they can reach their hands into the feeder. The babies figured it out and taught the adults.

Back when my husband and I were still dating (over 40 years ago!), we spent a really rainy day in one of the local metro parks. It was pouring fairly steadily so we ran under a picnic shelter to enjoy the sound of the rain. Suddenly, a ball of foam rolled down a tree right in front of us! When we looked, we could see more balls of foam forming in branch crotches on other trees. When they got big enough, they'd tip over the edge and roll down the tree. We started running around through the rain, getting soaked, looking for more foam. LOL I have no idea what kind of trees they were, but we've never seen that phenomenon again.

We've seen salamanders migrating across a road. And we discovered that indigo buntings turn emerald green in headlights (I wonder if they still do with the different kinds of car lights now). Just a couple years ago we were driving along the old Ohio & Erie canal at 5:30 in the morning. My husband was driving, and when I looked out his window, there was a bald eagle flying right over the canal alongside our car, pacing us! I could see its talons tucked up under the tail and it was rowing the air at 40 mph. I wish we could take pictures of our memories because that one would be a doozy. It was total luck seeing it - I'm rarely up before 9 AM but we had somewhere to be that day. I guess the eagle did, too.

I used to deliver sailing boats around Europe, particularly between England and France, Spain or Portugal.

Often when I was sailing in the Atlantic, I would see a school of dolphins keeping pace with me, jumping out of the water and swimming under the boat. It was heartening to see them and, if sailing single-handed, it was also comforting.

The funny thing is though, that almost always some hours after seeing them (or the next day) the wind would pick up by several forces and I would have to reef down the sails.

Is that a coincidence or were the dolphins trying to tell me something?