Tag: Wildlife

Heard two Cooper’s Hawks doing a call-and-response exchange a few mornings ago, with the nearest bird in a tall pine in the back yard. I’m surprised that a one-pound bird can perch on the very tippy-top branch of a pine without bending it over, but they seem to do this quite often.

The picture is a crop from the full frame, taken with a Sony DSC-H5 at full optical zoom with a VCL-HGD1758 1.7x Tele Conversion Lens. There’s plenty of violet fringing in evidence, which is one reason I try not to take high-contrast backlit shots like this.

Here’s a dot-for-dot crop of just the bird to show how bad the fringing really is.

It’s better than no picture at all, the way I see it…

This gadget appeared on an umbrella we’d left outdoors to dry.

We wonder if the green surface seemed like a leaf…

Saw several of these critters on our tent while we were packing up in the morning; I’m in favor of anything that eats small insects, so Harvestmen get a pass. I don’t know if those frogs eat ’em, but that’s something they can work out without my attention.

Then I found another Harvestman on a window when we got home. Not having seen the underside of one in quite a while, I was struck by the “alien face” pattern. I suppose the reddish dot under the alien’s nose is the Harvestman’s mouth, just like it looks.

Eeeek!

They’re actually pleasant to have around and tickle mightily when they crawl up your arm. We gently deport them from the house and generally manage to deposit them undamaged on a plant, where we presume they’ll be much happier.