Maybe if you’re a skinny guy? They have others that fit over the shoulders and across the chest too.
Almost stepped on this little Burrowing Owl this morning. I was walking across a grassy plateau staring at what I thought was the back of a raptor perched on a rock a long, long distance away. Great way to break a leg AND to add insult to potential injury when I got home and looked at a picture it turned out to have just been a ground squirrel perched on a rock facing me 
. Instead as I was not looking where I was going this guy spooked five feet from me, flew ten yards or so and then gave me a stare down while letting out a few alarm calls. Then it skeddadled a ways across the field. Sorry, dude (probably a dude, males are a little paler and a little more active in broad daylight).
Handsome!
So cool.
Today when I got up I pulled the curtain aside on one of the front windows to see what was going on outside. There was a fox on our porch! As soon as it saw me, it took off. Very odd, as it was daylight. Looked a bit flea-bitten, too, so I was left wondering about its health status.
I had yesterday off and went to a nearby lake… the fall colors were beautiful:
And a river otter came to say hi! Video.
S/he swam a few laps near me, diving a few times, seemingly quite curious and playful. And then it dove under the floating platform I was standing on and started making weird “snoring” noises for a while. I couldn’t coax it back out after that. Hope I didn’t intrude on its territory…
Two days ago actually. I am a member of our local Audubon Society chapter but not as active because I can’t walk far. My sister though is president of the chapter and there is an email ring to alert folks to special bird sightings. There has been a ton of excitement locally here in northwest Kansas of a bird seen in our county. It’s called a king eider, a duck, and according to records it has never been seen in this state. It’s mostly from Canada and Alaska and is probably WAY lost. It’s a female in winter plumage. Sis and I made the rather short drive to see it at Lake Perry and there were at least a dozen other birders out there with their scopes. As is said, don;t look for the birds, look for the birders.
It’s like a real-life version of Big Year!
Loved that movie.
Mrs Magill just sent me this from her window.
Looks.like he brought tha wife.
Not today, but a couple of weeks ago: the Grizzly Giant in Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove.
It must be a hungry time of year. Doing some much needed weeding, I was assisted by this guy, who helpfully cleared away any pesky worms that I turned up.
I get a lot of that sort of assistance at chick feeding time of year. Early winter not so much.
As I’ve noted before, if they really need food robins will get very bold. This one was within a meter of me.
j
First snow of the year.
https://i.ibb.co/KzXy1JJR/20251124-084549.jpg
But the images don’t want to show. Disocurse? The image hosters? No idea. It is not imgur, so the UK can see it.
What a cutie!
Last week, I was bringing some things in to work and noticed a dead wee cardinal lying near the glass door. Feathers all askew, feet up in the air.
Some time later, I came back with another load and this time, the birdie was alive! He was sitting upright and kept still while I passed by.
I came back later to look at him through the door and see how he was doing, but when he saw me looking, he flitted into a nearby bush. A happy ending, I hope.
Near here is a road that we drive almost daily. Right next to the road are some power lines which are extremely popular with a large flock of pigeons, and they are almost always to be seen perched on these lines.
The wind in this area is almost always either from the north or the south, and the power lines run east and west. The pigeons perching on the lines will always perch facing directly into the wind, so when we drive past the flock, we can tell the wind direction at a glance.
We call these guys the “pigeon wind sock”.
I want to see this picture. But I’ve had the link open in another tab for about 15 minutes and it isn’t even a quarter loaded. i.ibb just doesn’t work for our purposes. It sucks so much that imgur can’t be seen outside the U.S. any longer. Some of us in the photo contest threads are using https://www.shutterfly.com/ and it works ok. Maybe try that.
@Reply has sent me this link, a space created specially for this board and for fighting ignorance:
I will check whether I can post other pictures there, but the URL is great! Thanks a lot!
ETA: It seems I have no access to fightingignorance (dot) com and cannot upload my own pictures (yet), we shall see how this develops. But the one picture shows great and fast.
(Offtopic)
Oops, sorry I wasn’t clearer about that. @Pardel-Lux is talking about fightingignorance.org, where I hosted a copy of their snowy pic because their previous site (ibb.co) was too slow. I DMed them with a URL without explaining how it works — my bad.
Right now, anybody can view and share pictures posted there, but I’m the only one who can currently upload.
It is my intention to make that a free picture host for the SDMB, but there’s a technical hurdle I have to deal with first. It’s a side project I’ve been working on, and I’ll fast-track it and try to get it working properly after Thanksgiving week.
Absurd aside. The efforts to work around imgur are truly appreciated, but no longer necessary in my case. I had to replace my computer (Windows 10 and all that) and so took the opportunity to get a vpn installed at the same time. Now for the absurd bit. I also bought some new mic headphones with the intention of using Duolingo to clean up my French. However, I foolishly started doing this with the vpn on, so Duolingo decided that I’m in the US. I can’t reset this, and so I’m now (re)learning French in US English. Two languages for the price of one - how 'bout that, y’all?
j
Yesterday morning, we found this guy with his antlers tangled in our wire fence. He was alive and didn’t seem otherwise injured, but seemed exhausted and mostly unresponsive. My husband cut him free and we put out some water for him, but as of this morning, he’s still there. He moves and changes position a bit, so I’m hoping whatever ails him will pass. 
