Hmm! Great view from up here.
Kind of windy though.
Yikes! That gust nearly unseated me.
I wonder if I should find a better place. A bit exposed here….
Help! Eeeeek! Eeeeek! Mom!
My feathers are getting all ruffled up.
Starting to rain too.
Here comes the rain. Tiny drops are gathering on my feathers. And then there’s that wind. I think I should find another place to hang out. Lots of trees out there with branches for a better grip.
As I wrote the title to this post, I thought it might be misleading, with all the local wildfires making ashes of some of our “mountains,” but it is the tree that I am referring to in this post.
Each spring, the mountain ash gets clusters of little white flowers. Later in the summer, those flowers turn into red berries that will supply food for birds that are still here in the late autumn. It’s a time of year when the birds are trying to get the last of the summer’s bounty to build up their strength to meet the coming winter, or to make any lengthy flights they might have planned.
On one of those cool autumn days, the flocks (usually robins) will come and occupy the tree like so many shivering ornaments on a Christmas tree. They gobble down as many of these berries as they can. Sometimes it is already late in the fall and the berries are getting a bit overripe. The birds have been known to get a bit tipsy from eating the wine-like berries. Beware the windows nearby, little birds, when you can’t fly straight.
They also visit the holly trees for their berries, but they eat more carefully. Holly leaves can be prickly.
This carpet python is not the same one as in the previous post, but the story happened nearby. My friend noticed the snake lying near the road and wondered if it had been run over. If not, it soon could be. She dropped a stick on it to see if it would move, and as you can see, it did not. In order to move it away from the roadside, she considered picking it up, but, as these snakes can be heavy and she is not a weightlifter, she called on a friend to come and help. (I chuckle when I imagine that these are her excuses for not feeling comfortable handling a snake. I wouldn’t be either.)
As you may know, snakes don’t hibernate in the sense that mammals do, but they will den up and cuddle for warmth. As the weather cools, the snakes tend to slow down if they can’t find a sunny spot to stay warm.
This particular fellow was stranded in a cool place and his already cool blood was not able to keep him active. He was pretty much stuck. You might say he was close to having “viperthermia.”
In the photo below, notice how the snake is just dangling there, not very active. He needed to be warmed up, and what better way to get his blood flowing again than with a nice cuddle. This is what the friend is doing, trying to warm up the cool guy. He walked with the snake to a sunny patch. With about ten minutes of cuddling and two minutes of sunshine, the snake was feeling better and became more lively.
He was squirming all over the place, and although the friend was in no danger of being swallowed, he didn’t want to get nipped either. See him holding the snake’s head away, just in case.
This carpet python in Australia is very well camouflaged. His head is just to the right of the farthest fern on the left. From there, if you follow his curves along to the end of his long body, you will notice that he gets fatter and fatter. I shudder to think what little animal has been swallowed whole.
Carpet Python, photo by Leslie
Imagine walking down the steps to the back yard to put something into the compost and then, on your return, noticing that you must have walked right over a python of over six feet in length.
Luckily, these pythons are not venomous. They eat small animals like mice and rats, birds, and lizards. They can open their jaws wider than we might think, judging by the size of the head, but after an initial bite, they wrap their body around the animal to constrict its blood flow, and once the animal is unconscious, it is usually swallowed whole.
On a small lake in northwestern Washington State, my friend Sonia was kayaking and had a close look at a pair of common loons. One of them is pictured here. I did some digging for information and found out that except for the difference in their size, it is not easy tell male from female at a glance. So whichever it is, he or she would like to chat you up with a poem. Beware! It may be a bit loony.
Just imagine what a thrill it would be to have one of these king parrots land on your back fence to ask for a snack. I would probably break a leg running for my camera. This photo was taken by my friend Leslie who lives in Australia. She assures me that she hasn’t broken a leg.
Maybe he’s getting ready for Christmas, wearing his best bright red and green finery.
He’s already looking for his presents in the form of a handout of seeds and any other fruit goodies that may come his way.
Looking out from my house a couple of days ago, I saw what turned out to be a 4.5 hectare wildfire near Comox Lake, which is up in that forested area (the water in the lower part of the photo is salt water).
Luckily, the firefighters who respond to wildfires were quick to get up there, and after a while they got the fire at least to stop spreading. If not for them, it could have been very bad.
Man made, they think. These fires so often are. If it isn’t arson, then it’s carelessness and stupidity.
Campfires made where they should not be made at this time of year, and not put out properly.
A carelessly tossed cigarette.
Broken glass left lying around where the sun (scorching hot these days) can magnify and start a grass fire.
I don’t know what the cause was this time, but there’s a 99% chance it was preventable.
I worry about the poor little birds and animals who have to flee for their lives, if they can. So many of the tinier ones have no hope of going far enough away to escape the flames.
The red crossbill (Loxia curvirostra) is one of six species of crossbill, three of which are found in North America. I was surprised to find out they belong to the finch family. Their crossed bills are especially helpful in picking out the seeds in the cones of spruce, pine, and Douglas fir trees. A few summers ago I had a pair of them come down from the firs to visit my birdfeeder and I was able to get some photos.
Their feet are also rather unique. It’s almost as if they are what we would call “pigeon toed,” turning inward slightly so they have a parrot-like walk.
The photo below reminds me of those hidden pictures they have in children’s puzzle books. Find the female crossbill hiding in the rhodo.
*Hint: It’s near the middle.
They didn’t stay long. Maybe they were on their way to somewhere on a holiday and just stopped here for a few days. I wish they would come back. I loved having them here.
Tony lived across the street from us. He had a good long life there. For a while now, he has been reminiscing about his happy life and looking down on us all from doggie heaven. He is missed a lot.
It seems that herons spend a lot of time standing on one leg with their neck pulled in. This guy looks like a grandpa with his hunched over posture and his beard.
Most likely, though, while he soaks up some rays of sunshine, he is thinking about where his next meal will come from. He is quite capable of standing perfectly still, conserving his energy. He will step off his rock patio when he gets hungry and stalk that frog he’s been watching. The frog will most likely think the heron is just another rock or a shrub of some sort because it hasn’t moved in so long.
**Photo by Sonia from her visit to the George C. Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta, B.C.
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