Huh. Pepe LePew in reverse!
And I forgot to post my nature sighting earlier:
While I was waiting for my coffee to finish brewing, I looked out the window at the bird feeders and was surprised to see no birds there. It’s cold, so the feeders are usually busy in the morning. Then I saw why - a red shouldered hawk swooped down and landed on the ground. S/he sat there for a minute, flew up into the tree where the feeders are, and then flew away. I suspect s/he missed the planned target.
Yes!! Thank you.
Out on the bike today…
This is Trumpets Hill Road in rural Surrey. Very narrow road, hardly any traffic, ideal for cycling. I was at this point today - just coming up to that blind bend, when I heard a familiar noise - clippety cloppety - horse riders use the road for the same reasons I do, so no surprise there. So I eased round the bend, to find that, rather than facing horse riders, I was, oh, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty meters away from 3 fallow deer - one with an impressive rack of antlers - being chased by two small whippety-type dogs.
There’s something about having two or three hundred kilos of venison thundering towards you at full speed that captures your attention. I’d like to be able to say “clears the mind” - but absolutely not. At some point in what followed I stopped the bike, but I don’t know when. The male forked to the left of me - thinking about it afterwards, he must have missed me by centimeters; that’s a narrow road, and I was on the left hand side of it (UK, remember). Female A went to the right of me, not so close; female B didn’t make the turn - maybe female A took her line - B skidded on the road, went down and slid into the wall, by the car in the picture. One of the dogs went over to sniff her, at which point she jumped up and headed off, back the way she had come.
Having gathered my wits as best I could, I checked for further hazards and resumed. A little further down the road, two women ran out of the woods shouting and blowing a whistle, presumably trying to find/retrieve the dogs. There’s no doubt that standards of dog ownership and control have plummeted since COVID, but I kinda think that this incident falls into the category of “just one of those things” - there are deer everywhere in the south of England these days; and it just isn’t reasonable to expect a dog to be kept on a lead when you’re out walking in the woods. I guess they might have been controlled better from the outset; but that breed of dog… I dunno.
Quite the morning out, though.
j
During a nice hike through the snow at a local forest preserve, I heard and then saw a downy woodpecker. First time seeing that species.
We have special feeders designed for woodpeckers. Not a day goes by that I don’t see downy and hairy woodpeckers.
Yep, if you build it (or at least buy it, and fill it with a suet cake), they will come. All day long.
I’ve been hearing this critter (along with his brethren and cisterns) howling at night. But today this one was quite bold. This was right in my back yard.
At least now I can stop wondering which of my neighbors are letting their dog crap in my back yard without picking it up.
Cool! Now, is that a coyote or a wolf?
I was picking up poop from our dogs this summer when my neighbor asked me to pick up from a spot behind his house.
I went to the spot curious, as it’s not somewhere I’d ever seen our dogs explore, in fact it’s somewhere they aren’t supposed to go.
Sure enough there were 4 piles. Not from our dogs (I can ID poop from our three). Indeed, it was coyote poop. Neighbor was shocked/impressed.
You impress me, sir! 
100% coyote.
My money’s on Coyote. We did have a 15/16 wolf/dog mix visit us once, it had broken its chain and come visiting. Everything about it cried ‘Wolf!’ Not so for this latest one.
I can tell the difference between our dog’s poop and our cat’s poop. Mainly because the cat’s is in the litter box. But I lack your deeper skills and insights. I hope you are passing on your teachings to others. 
We have… something in the woods across the street. It has a barking howl, but it sounds huge. There had been rumors of coywolves in area, but I have my doubts.
It’s also lonely. I haven’t heard any answers to its howls.
Our owls are back - Hurrah! Tawny owls - they were shouting their heads of last night. They sounded really close.
It’s that time of year. Spring’s a-coming!
j
Ah, that reminds me! I got this picture of a great horned owl the other day. Two of them, yep, shouting their heads off in the yard, but I couldn’t find the other one.
that’s so cool! I see hawks and vultures every day, but have never seen an owl in the wild.
Woah! Are they not nocturnal? Or did you just get lucky?
Much as I love my owls, I’m not keen on spending an English February night trying to spot them in the dark!
j
Just lucky, I think. It was pretty early in the morning when I took that.
@kayaker , I’m surprised you haven’t seen them, it seems like you get all the other critters!
A very few owls are primarily diurnal, like the easy to see if you can find them burrowing owl (they like open country) and the very hard to see northern pygmy owl (they don’t). A few are facultatively diurnal - the most widespread owl in the world is the short-eared owl and in my area they are quite often active in the late afternoon. Barn owls are primarily nocturnal/crepuscular, but will very occasionally hunt on overcast days if they’re hungry enough.
Great-horned owls will very occasionally hunt in the late morning as well (less commonly than the barn owl, I believe). But they actually tend towards the crepuscular and are often active at dawn/dusk. So you can catch them calling and moving about in the very early morning hours as they prepare to settle down for the day.