Leave him a apple core. He’ll thank you.
I spotted eagles doing a bit of hunting along the river and some turkey vultures further away. The vultures made me wonder if they were hoping the eagle would do some hunting for them.
It snowed here last night, about 5cm, so this morning I had the opportunity to investigate where exactly our foxes go. Firstly I was surprised by how few tracks there were - there were 4 tracks in the back yard, so maybe they stay indoors more when it’s cold. Three were in the open (two right by the side of the house and across the patio); and one led into the bushes. Maybe their preferred route depends on whether it’s daylight or not. All of the tracks in the open led behind the garden shed (and the bushes run up to the shed). I took a peek at the earth (den) behind the shed - which is under trees but had some snow at the entrance - and there was no indication that it was in use (!). The shed is mounted on paving stones, and there has been digging under them; so now I’m inclined to think that the area of digging under the shed represents the entrance to a new earth, and that the old one hasn’t been recommissioned.
I need more snow!
j
A song sparrow was sitting on my Christmas wreath on the front door. This has happened in years past, and they don’t want to move, so I have replace the wreath with a tinsel candy cane.
I went on a birdwatching weekend at the coast last weekend and the coolest thing we saw was these guys:
Male and female snow buntings, who don’t usually show up on the NC coast, but there are a few of them this year.
Was idly watching the suet feeder in my backyard. Saw a downy plus a mob of sparrows.
Suddenly, the woodpecker flew off, just as every last sparrow in a half-acre vicinity descend. I juuuust had time to become indignant on the downy’s behalf, when …
… a flutter of large, barred wings, and something quite large and hungry chased a sparrow into the neighbor’s bushes.
I’ve never seen a hawk hunting at my bird feeder. Now I’m cheering the downy for being smart/observant enough to fly off in time.
(Screw house sparrows; they’re an invasive menace in the U.S.)
Here’s a shit quality photo of the hunter:
Cool pic, even with the quality. Anytime you get a raptor with prey it qualifies as cool in my book 
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It’s either a sharp-shinned or a cooper’s hawk - i.e. in the second case the adult version of the immature hawk I posted above. They’re separable, but only by a combination of characters because of individual variation and things like posture making shape differences difficult to tease out at times. Basically they’re one of those co-occurring pair of lookalikes that can be a challenge to ID. It doesn’t help that the size can overlap - a large female sharp-shinned can be bigger than small male cooper’s. I’m slightly leaning sharp-shinned, but I don’t think I’d be willing to bet a dollar on it 
. Do a search on comparisons on the two and a ton of guides will pop up and you can make your own guess that would probably be better than anyone else can get out of the photo since you saw it more clearly.
At least they provide food for hawks and other birds of prey.
@Tamerlane you inspired me to haul out my big guide to Midwestern wildlife, and I’m inclined towards a shin, too - the picture in the book looked just like what I saw, including the smallish head. (Coopers have a bigger head, the book sez.)
It was really neat to see so close, and so fast too!
A pair of Blue Cranes, my adopted country’s national bird.
And a juvenile with them, it must have hatched less than a month ago, it was so small.
The cranes mate for life, and they are endangered, so I wish this pair a long and productive life.
Gorgeous birds. I’d love to come visit your adopted home to see them.
Last year, the main road to our home was washed out.
It has since been repaired. Look on the right (north) side of the photo. See the tree almost out of frame? The closest one to the road? Today I was driving home and, looking slightly down, I saw a bald eagle sitting on a lower branch of that thee.
[FWIW, there are a lot of bald eagles around here.]
I certainly hope the wolves don’t find you out while they’re scouring!
Where do you live that you have wolves in your neighborhood? I once laughingly recommended that we needed to reintroduce them to our Cleveland suburb to handle the excess deer population but my wife thought it more likely that they’d eat fat slow old me first!
I’m in northern MN. Last week we had a two-day blizzard that left almost 30" of snow. The second day of the blizzard, I opened the curtains in my bedroom at the first sign of daybreak. There is a large tree/bush outside of this window that still has berries on it. I saw a bird land on a branch and because it wasn’t fully light out yet I couldn’t tell what kind of bird it was right away. Then it turned towards the window and I saw it’s orange breast. It was a robin! Then 2 more landed on the same bush. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a robin this late in the year. I’m sure they were all thinking, “why didn’t we leave 2 months ago?”
First real snowfall this weekend. All the wildlife seemed amped up by it, so we made sure all our feeders were full.
Our one dog Kizzy was offended by the squirrels romping in the yard, so she began stalking them. We sat inside watching her. She looked leonine, moving sooooo slowly. It took her five minutes to advance 20 yards toward them.
Then, out of nowhere, Simi became aware of the squirrels and came running across the yard, barking, prancing, leaping. Poor Kizzy, that was the end of squirrel stalking for the day for her.
In a park in Potomac Maryland, on a cold afternoon recently:
I’ve never seen an owl so up close. It was truly magical.
I’ve seen many up close, but not a single one in the wild (I’ve done some volunteering for rehabs). Great picture!
Thanks! It was just luck that the bird was sitting there on a branch near a small stream as I walked by.
Which park?
It’s gettting cold here:
I wonder whether those are frozen spider webs? Anyway, they look cool.