I saw this squirrel gathering leaves for its nest in its mouth and then climbing a tree in my backyard. It repeated this many times all morning. I saw it doing so at least 5 times and likely it did so many times when I did not see it.
See more backyard wildlife posts on the Curious Cat Science Blog
Related: Squirrel Eating Holly Berries – Backyard Wildlife: Red-tailed Hawk – Backyard Wildlife: Family of Raccoons
I see red-tailed hawks in my backyard occasionally. This one has a squirrel on a high tree branch in my backyard. The video shows it fly away.
When I hear a murder of crows squawking loudly I often can spot a red-tailed hawk (or perhaps some other hawks) near my yard.
Related: Backyard Wildlife: Sharpshinned Hawk – Red-shouldered Hawk – Backyard Wildlife: Fox – Backyard Wildlife: Blue Jay
Despite significant recovery successes, the black-footed ferret remains one of the most endangered animals in the world.
Black-footed ferret, photo by J. Michael Lockhart, USFWS.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has developed a plan to use (UAS) to deliver prairie dog sylvatic plague vaccination.
The primary purpose in this proposal is to develop the equipment, protocols and experience in use of UAS (drones) to deliver oral sylvatic plague vaccine (SPV). It is anticipated that this approach, when fully developed, will offer the most efficient, effective, cost-conscious and environmentally friendly method to apply SPV annually over large areas of prairie dog colonies in support of black-footed ferret recovery.
Plague is a primary obstacle to black-footed ferret recovery. After more than 20 years of intensive reintroduction efforts across 27 reintroduction sites ranging from Mexico to Canada, approximately 300 ferrets were known to exist in the wild at the end of 2015. Ferrets are constantly threatened by plague outbreaks that affect both ferrets, and their primary prey and habitat provider, prairie dogs.
To date, SPV has been applied by hand with people walking pre-defined transects and uniformly dropping single SPV baits every 9-10 meters to achieve a deposition rate of 50 SPV doses per acre. Depending on vegetation and terrain, a single person walking can treat 3-6 acres per hour. All terrain vehicles (ATVs) have been considered but have various problems.
The bait treats are M&Ms smeared in vaccine-laden peanut butter.
Preliminary discussions with people experienced with UAS suggest an aerial vehicle travelling at a modest 9 meters per second could drop a single SPV bait once per second that would result in treating one acre every 50 seconds. If the equipment and expertise can be developed as proposed here, a single UAS operator could treat more than 60 acres per hour.
If the equipment can be developed to deposit 3 SPV doses simultaneously every second, as they envision is possible, some 200 acres per hour could be treated by a single operator. The idea is that the drone would fire the treats in 3 different directions to increase the spread of treats.
The areas to be treated are located in South Phillips County, Montana.
Related: Using Drones to Deliver Medical Supplies in Roadless Areas (2014) – The sub-$1,000 unpiloted aerial vehicles UAV Project (2007) – Autonomous Flying Vehicles (2006) – Cat Allergy Vaccine Created (2011) – AlienFly RC Mosquito Helicopter (2007)
I think this is a Great Tailed Grackle, please comment if you think I am wrong. This is taken in my backyard in Arlington, Virginia.
Related: Red-Shouldered Hawk – Backyard Wildlife: Fox and Deer – Backyard Wildlife: Blue Jay – Backyard Wildlife – Chimpmunk – Backyard Wildlife: Robins Attack Holly Tree
A Cougar’s Thousand-Mile Quest to Find a Mate
In Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cat’s Walk Across America William Stolzenburg provides an exciting tale of the cat’s journey.
Related: Backyard Wildlife: Mountain Lion (2012) – Mountain Lions Returning to the Midwest USA for the First Time in a Century (2012) – Big Cats in America (2004) – USA Designates Large Areas of New Mexico and Arizona as Critical Habitat for Jaguars (2014)
I have seen this (or another fox) several times recently but this was the first time it stayed visible long enough for me to get a photo. It is fun having backyard wildlife to connect us to nature.
A few years ago another fox enjoyed laying out in the sun in my backyard for a few weeks.
I am amazed how many animals I have seen in my backyard in a very urban area. In the last few weeks, in addition to this fox: possum, raccoon (I’ll post photos later), deer, squirrels, and various birds.
Here is an updated photo of deer, since my first few sightings didn’t result in a good photo.
Blue Jay in Arlington, Virginia (in my backyard). See more of my photos.
This is a picture I simply could not have taken before I bought my new camera (a Canon PowerShot SX60 HS Digital Camera with 65 times optical zoom). Birds are still hard to photograph but now at least occasionally I get a decent photo of birds. If you want to get photos of wildlife it is a great camera. And it is a wonderful camera in general.
I like just planting things that will feed and shelter birds (and others) rather than filling bird feeders myself. There is information on how to use your backyard to promote wildlife. I see many birds flying around in my backyard, which is quite nice. Blue jays are some of my favorites.
Blue jays diet is composed mostly of insects and nuts. They especially like acorns.
Young jays may be more likely to migrate than adults, but many adults also migrate. Some individual jays migrate south one year, stay north the next winter, and then migrate south again the next year. No one has worked out why they migrate when they do.
The pigment in blue jay feathers is melanin, which is brown. The blue color is caused by scattering light through modified cells on the surface of the feather barbs.
Related: Backyard Wildlife: Robins Attack Holly Tree – Backyard Wildlife: Birds – Backyard Wildlife: Crows – Backyard Wildlife: Fox – Backyard Wildlife: Chimpmunk
Deer in backyard by John Hunter – see more of my nature photos
Deer populations have been exploding across the USA in the last century. Before that deer populations had collapsed largely due to hunting. In the last 10 or 20 years populations of deer have been largely stable (though varying quite a bit by area).
The deer populations had increased (many predators were largely wiped out and with a dramatic decline in hunter) so much that more and more complaints were being made to local governments of problems with deer grazing on property and damaging cars when the cars hit deer crossing the road.
My neighborhood is urban and I have never seen deer in the neighborhood. About 5 blocks away there is a bike path with a tree lined strip of nature where I have very occasionally seen deer. The deer in the photos I imagine got here from that strip of habitat. There is a small area (next to a school which has trees that wouldn’t be so bad for a deer for 1 night). I figured the deer would leave.
But a few days later I saw new evidence of a deer eating some small trees in my backyard – though I wasn’t sure if I missed it before. Then a couple nights later I saw a deer grazing after dark in my backyard.
I have posted about other interesting wildlife in this backyard previously: Backyard Wildlife: Fox and Backyard Wildlife: Sharpshinned Hawk (see more below).
This video show some wonderful images from remote cameras equipped to film when an animal is spotted. These camera have aided scientists in understanding wildlife in their natural environment and also by providing us cool images.
Related: Rare Chinese Mountain Cat – Bornean Clouded Leopard – Photos of Rare Saharan Cheetah and Other Wildlife – Scottish Highland Wildcats
Nautilus Live provides a live view of the E/V Nautilus as it explores the ocean studying biology, geology, archeology, and more. The site also includes highlights such as this video of a siphonophore.
Siphonophores are actually made up of numerous animals even though they look like one animal. These amazing colonial organisms are made up up many smaller animals called zooids, and can be found floating around the pelagic zone in ocean basins. The Portugese Man O’ War is a famous siphonophore.
Each zooid is an individual, but their integration with each other is so strong, the colony attains the character of one large organism. Indeed, most of the zooids are so specialized, they lack the ability to survive on their own.
Related: Giant Star Fish and More in Antarctica – Hydromedusae, Siphonophora, Cnidarians, Ctenophores (what are jellyfish?) – Macropinna Microstoma: Fish with a Transparent Head – Large Crabs Invading Antarctic as Waters Warm
Here is another video from Nautilus, showing a large dumbo octopus:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated 764,200 acres of critical habitat for the jaguar (Panthera onca) under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This habitat is found within Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties in Arizona, and Hidalgo County in New Mexico.
photo taken by US Fish and Wildlife Service employee
The final rule reflects the following changes from the July 1, 2013, critical habit at proposal: exclusion of Tohono O’odham Nation lands (78,067 acres) as a result of the Tribe’s efforts working in partnership with the Service to conserve jaguar and other listed species’ habitat on the Nation’s sovereign land. Exemption of Fort Huachuca lands (15,867 acres) due to the conservation benefits to the jaguar provided in Fort Huachuca’s approved Integrated Natural Resource Management Plan.
The revised proposal was based on an updated habitat modeling report that more accurately reflected habitat essential to jaguars in northwestern Mexico and southwestern United States.
Mexico borderlands area is very different from habitat in Central and South America, where jaguars show a high affinity for lowland wet communities. Jaguars have been documented in arid areas of northwestern Mexico and southwestern United States, including thornscrub, desertscrub, lowland desert, mesquite grassland, Madrean oak woodland and pine oak woodland communities. Critical habitat in the United States contributes to the jaguar’s persistence and recovery across the species’ entire range by providing areas to support individuals that disperse into the United States from the nearest core population in Mexico.
Critical habitat is a term defined in the ESA and identifies geographic areas containing features essential to the conservation of a threatened or endangered species and that may require special management considerations or protection. The designation of critical habitat does not affect land ownership or establish a refuge, and has no impact on private landowners taking actions on their land that do not require federal funding or permits.
Related: Jaguars Back in the Southwest USA (2006 post) – Big Cats in America (2004) – Mountain Lions Returning to the Midwest USA for the First Time in a Century (2012) – Backyard Wildlife: Mountain Lion
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