Starship Asterisk*

Raven for sure. Made sure before I posted. When I lived in Lakeside, CA we had a lot of crows there. They flew around the eucalyptus trees and made a lot of noise in the morning. My brother and dad used to try to shoot them with a BB gun but they were too smart to stick around when they saw the gun.

We have a few crows in the area. They are a pretty good size bird at about 18 inches long. They don't seem to be a bother though. I've never seen a raven. At 24 inches long+; I don't believe I want to.
Out away from the city there are foxes and deer. My sister even said she had seen a cougar out by the river. I wouldn't want to mess with the big cats.

orin stepanek wrote:I wouldn't want to mess with the big cats.

Sometimes messing with the little cats doesn't work out so well, either.

starship wrote:Yesterday while I was playing on Gameduell my girlfriend's pug went a little crazy. He started to growl and run around and completely got me out of gaming so I wasn't able to reach a new highscore, had to interrupt the game... damn dog! But he had to go out and empty his bladder, guess that was the reason... other from that, the neighborhood is occupied by squirrels and ravens. I see so many squirrels nowadays, it's really strange. And just recently I saw a fox trying to pull food out of a dustbin.

Was it a raven or a crow? I've seen ravens in the woods; around here we just have crows in populated areas.

I too think it must have been crows... ravens don't usually leave the woods, whereas crows "increasingly plague cities" as mentioned here:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinio ... ities.html

Check this out:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildli ... ities.html

This is completely ridiculous. I never thought people would behave like this, treating a fox as if it were a pet...

My neighborhood animal adventure last night was the Raccoon Repel: standing on the porch with a broom sweeping a raccoon off the porch and keeping him from coming back. The feral cat, who fortunately knows better than to go after a raccoon, likes to brush against my legs, and nearly tripped me several times as I defended the porch against the invader. I like raccoons, but with rabies endemic in our raccoon population, like them farther away than they like to be.

owlice wrote:My neighborhood animal adventure last night was the Raccoon Repel: standing on the porch with a broom sweeping a raccoon off the porch and keeping him from coming back. The feral cat, who fortunately knows better than to go after a raccoon, likes to brush against my legs, and nearly tripped me several times as I defended the porch against the invader. I like raccoons, but with rabies endemic in our raccoon population, like them farther away than they like to be.

Did the broom work, or did he just get mad?

That reminds me of a story several years back. I was on my way home from work in the wee hours of the morning (yeah, I work weird hours). I had parked out on the little dead-end street our old apartment complex was situated on. As I walked up the path to our place I found two racoons between me and where I was headed. I stopped for a moment to observe them. Then I figured that if I walked toward them they would just scamper off. Turns out this wasn't the case. As I took a few steps toward them, they reared back and then they both started walking toward me in an aggressive stance! I casually changed course - 180 degrees - and found another way around. I didn't feel like ending my night by being mauled by two racoons!

OMG! I took Sassy out this morning for mother nature time and took the garbage to the curb while doing so. I didn't understand why she didn't follow me to the curb. When I got back to the patio there was a visitor that Sassy was making friends with! Someone's pet ferret! I was amazed that Sassy was so intrigued with it.
I was ready to call the animal shelter when My neighbor came out of his house. I told him about the ferret; and he said he used to have some. He took it and said he would feed it and call the shelter. I don't know anything about caring for ferrets; so I was happy that he did. Happy ending.

Mrs Robin decided to build her nest under my Patio roof! She's a pretty smart bird; safe from the elements and cats! My concern is that when the babies start to fly I can keep Sassy away from them.

Live Falcon cam in Springfield Massachusetts.
No night time lights.

For article and link-->http://www.wfsb.com/story/17744256/falc ... eggs-hatch

Hmm.. living rural or semi-rural has a distinct advantage in the variety of critters one can see if one simply keeps an eye open.

At our current home I've seen:
Several squirrels - almost all grey squirrels.
A once large population of rabbits, that dwindled enormously during the 'reign' of a couple neighborhood dogs, and a couple red-tail hawks that made the area their favorite location for a couple years. That population is popping back up, especially around our yard. One in particular spends almost as much time near our carport door munching on grass as our 'indoor bunnies' do just 30 feet away from him inside the 'pet room'. He's only moderately nervous about our dog, perhaps because he's determined that the dog doesn't run free from the kennel area, and is normally on a leash during 'walkies'
Turtles - several turtles and tortoises have found their way - either to the yard, or to our pond. Very odd to walk up on a tortoise couple in the process of ...'ensuring the continuation of the species''. Even more odd to walk up on mama turtle burying her eggs in the yard. And I've had both these happen three times in the past 7 years...
Snapping turtle was... not quite as friendly...
At least one turtle found on the yard after dogs had killed it and tried to eat it. 6 or 7 weeks left near a fire-ant mound and it was pretty well stripped of meat. Brought the skeleton to a Scouting friend of mine, acting as the Medical Officer for a Scout Winter Camp - and pleaded with him to see if he could ''help Lucky the turtle out.'' Became a long-running gag at the camp - and a bit of a camp 'mascot' in a way. A sad death, but at least some good came of it. (The Amphibian merit badge counselor actually was thrilled to use the skeleton.)

Beavers. Not really sure just when these twerps showed up. Initially thought it was quite cool to have beavers in the pond. After they destroyed several trees and a few other issues... not quite as thrilled. However, they moved on before they became too much of a pest.
Raccoons - a few, once in a while. Neighbor dog population mostly runs them off.
One fox seen 4 or 5 years ago. Just passing through I suppose.
Several deer - - partly because the fellow with the land behind ours has a deer 'farm'.

A few different varieties of snake... from harmless grass snakes to a corn snake up through a couple cottonmouths. The last was the only one I was ready to kill - primarily because there are kids that cross my property (without permission) far too frequently to be comfortable with a cottonmouth hanging around. Fortunately, it disappeared, and casually mentioning the sighting to a couple neighbors seems to have reduced the number of underaged trespassers. Win-win!

Hummingbirds - a couple varieties. Scissor tails and barn swallows. Various hawks, ducks, geese, sparrow, cardinals, bluejays and bluebirds. Crows, of course (which I like). Turkey buzzards - which I don't, particularly. A couple ravens several years ago.

Somewhere near us, we seem to have a coyote or two. I've heard them, but haven't seen them on the yard. (Seen a few here and there within a dozen miles or so.)

Possums and armadillos show up as roadkill usually. They are almost certainly somewhere nearby. Just haven't seen them.
Had an alligator showed up on a highway about 4 or 5 miles from the property. Made the wife quite nervous after I had spent a couple years reassuring her that no alligators came within 20 miles of our area.

Also have the aforementioned fire ants (very nasty... do NOT like!). We've seen several Black Widow spiders here and there - haven't had any problem from them. Brown recluse spiders are apparently in the neighborhood according to various sources, but all I've seen are 'wolf spiders'. A few garden spiders show themselves every summer - gorgeous and surprisingly scary looking. Got to see my first 'in situ' tarantula last summer! She gave no trouble, and I seemed to impress some Scouts when I let her climb up on me to move her to a more suitable location.

Hey there, mike_sharkey2010, looks like you live in -Adventure-ville-

Beyond wrote:Live Falcon cam in Springfield Massachusetts.
No night time lights.

For article and link-->http://www.wfsb.com/story/17744256/falc ... eggs-hatch

All four of the eggs have hatched. They look like a white fluffy mound with the occasional head sticking up.

Hey Beyond
Texarkana, as it happens.
Right at the intersection of 3 or 4 different 'climes'
And was a farm kid growing up in Minnesooota, and a Boy Scout (Eagle Rank), and currently a Scout Leader... so paying attention to the critters around me is sort of..part of the whole package.
(Tying in to the actual forum mainstay, at least a couple times, I've had (outdoor) rabbits come up within 5 feet or so of me while star-gazing out on my yard with my 8inch Dob. Gives one a bit of a pause... do you startle the little guy so you can change position of the scope and keep tracking that comet or changing positions of Jupiter's moons... or do you just sit there and enjoy the moment? The comet waited... The soon-to-transit-Jupiter Io did not.)

Mama Robin had her baby(s?) Yesterday my wife noticed that she was leaving the nest. Upon watching she was gathering food and going back to the nest and feeding her chick(s). Maybe I can get a picture and post it! At any rate when she is teaching it to fly will be a trying time keeping Sassy at bay!

I think it's a small bug that she is holding in her beak. Baby didn't lift his head up high enough to photo; but I could see her bob her head down to feed the baby! She must hold a few pieces of food in her craw as she bobbed her head down 3 to 4 times before she went after more food.

I just saw my first ruby throated humming bird of the year. I could tell that because it came over to the open back porch window(with no screen)and hovered no more than a foot in front of my face for a couple of seconds, then shifted to the left about 6-inches and hovered again before taking off. They sure look nice up close. I think this one was a female. It's back and tail feathers were darker green than the males and the tail feathers were a bit shorter. The males tail feathers always look like they are too long for their body. ::Hummm::

Mrs Robin has three babies. My Grandson spotted three heads popping up at feeding time. I caught one on film! The baby looks like it is all head. It is amazing how high it can lift it when mama comes with the grub.

I'm too busy at school these days , but I've got to tell you about some more-or-less neighbourhood animals anyway.

In this picture you can see the largest library in Malmö. In front of the library is an old-fashioned street car, which runs through the park of Slottsparken in the summer. You can also see a pond in the foreground of this picture.

In the summer there are a lot of frogs in that pond. When it's sunny, they will sit at the water's edge, particularly in a place at the far left in the picture above. I love to sneak up on them and see them jump into the water. Even better, if you stand still, they will slowly come back to where they were before so that you can see them better.

I saw the first frogs of the year about two weeks ago or so. The next time I saw them, perhaps ten days ago, the weather was lovely and warm and there was "a confusion of frogs" at the water's edge. Indeed, there was "an embarrassment of frogs", there were so many of them!
And not only that. The frogs were nowhere near as shy as they usually are. When I walked up on them they jumped into the water, but they crawled back almost instantly. And then I realized why - they were mating! That's why they were so busy and excited, and why they ignored me! Boy, did they pile up on one another! The funniest part of it was seeing how they blew their little cheeks into semi-transparent balloons, producing their mating calls. You know, in English frogs say "ribbit", but in Swedish they say "kvack"! All these little Kermits made up a regular frog choir!
I'd like to tell you about another "animal experience", too. In Malmö we have an amusement park which contains a small "zoo". Here you can see various snakes, lizards, monkeys and large turtles.

But they also have small kangaroos of a kind called Bennett's kangaroo (or possibly Bennett's wallaby). I was passing by the other day and decided to stop and see if the kangaroos were out where you can see them. And indeed they were. There was an albino kangaroo and a female kangaroo with her - what do you call them? Calf? Cub?

As I was looking, the baby kangaroo - which was not in its mother's pouch - got hungry and wanted to eat. It put its mouth somewhere inside its mother's pouch - or that is what it looked like anyway. I looked on, feeling quite interested.

The mother got tired after a while and pushed her baby away. She stood up, looking at us and showing us her "front". I tried to see if I could see her teats. All I could see was that a region near her pouch looked red, but not as if it hurt. It was probably the normal color of her teats.

As I was looking at the female kangaroo, her baby suddenly got scared for some reason. Suddenly, the red region on the female's stomach just yawned wide open! And no sooner had that red hole opened up than the baby kangaroo jumped inside! Except the baby was too big, so that its tail and left hind leg hung outside. The mother hopped inside to where we couldn't see her, with her baby hanging partly out of her pouch!

Well, wow! I love the frogs in the pond near the library, and I love the kangaroos in the amusement park!

What made these two experiences so lovely was that the frogs and the female kangaroo and her baby were so close to me. It felt almost as if I could have put out my hand and lifted up a frog, or patted the kangaroo baby.

Ann

Kangaroo teats are in the pouch. IIRC, joeys are born hairless and with their eyes closed and once born, have to make their way into the pouch (crawling across Mama Roo). As marsupials, their gestation period is very short; essentially, time in the pouch finishes off the growth that, in mammals, is done during gestation.

All that wisdom from an owl with one wing.

Ann, sounds like you had a delightful day. Interesting that it involved two critters that hop. Are there any wabbits around the area

Beyond wrote:

Are there any wabbits around the area

Any wabbits?

Yeah, well... there appear to be only three rabbit holes in the lawn outside my kitchen window right now!! I bet I'll be Ann Down the Rabbit Hole one of these days!

Ann

Wascally wabbits! I have to put up a barrier of chicken wire to keep the rabbits from eating my garden plants!

Twice already this month I have seen mother and father geese walk their little goslings across the street, the first down south and the second near the center of KC. I had to slow down to let the geese in the center of the city cross, but it was a wonderful sight to see.

I just looked out over the lawn from my balcony. What a surprise! There on the lawn were two pigeons, a jackdaw... and two rabbits. I would never have guessed! (Real surprise: There were no seagulls there.)

Speaking of goslings, TNT: there is no shortage of goslings where I live!
This statue of a boy with geese can be found in Kungsparken in Malmö. Believe me, the bronze geese are not the only geese in Kungsparken!















The boy with the geese is Nils Holgersson. A Swedish writer, Selma Lagerlöf, made him up in the early twentieth century. Nils Holgersson is sufficently well-known and Swedish that you can find him on Swedish 20 "kronor" bills.

Nils Holgersson was a bad boy, so the house brownie punished him by shrinking him to the size of a pixie. After that, NIls was allowed to ride on the back of Akka the Goose as it flew from the southernmost part of Sweden (where Nils Holgersson lived) up to the far northern parts. As they flew north, Akka made stops over a large number of Swedish towns and cities, so that Nils could have a look, and it taught Nils a lot of facts about each town and city and every county they passed. The book was used as a geography book in Swedish schools.

Geese were considered a "character bird" for the southernmost parts of Sweden. Here you can see a typical (perhaps somewhat large) homestead from southern Skåne. This building is actually located at "Nils Hogerssons Street". People would most definitely have kept geese here, and young boys or girls would often be given the task of guarding and tending the geese.

Boy with a goose.






However, as people moved into larger towns and cities, fewer and fewer people kept geese.













So a man who worked in the parks of Malmö, Lennart Blomquist, had an idea. Why not put geese in the large parks of Malmö and allow them to live and breed there? It would mean giving back to Malmö the characterstic bird that had disappeared from it!



The attempt to reintroduce geese in Malmö was a success... or not, depending on how you look at it! Occasionally the parks of Malmö have looked like this!!!

So, yes, I have seen goslings this year!

Ann