When you can't find a suitable topic, just file under "miscellaneous". No matter what I'm working on, I seem to have more "miscellaneous" than anything else.
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| These feathers were in a circle radiating out from a small rock. A quick look at my Feathers book (Bird Feathers, Scott & McFarland, Stackpole Books, 2010 - highly recommended if you are looking for yet another field guide) found them to be from a mourning dove - mostly tail feathers. I can't think of what predator might be on the ground during the day when mourning doves are out. We don't have a domestic cat and it seems unlikely that our resident bobcat(s) and coyotes were out in the daytime. Maybe a hawk? Or maybe a snake? (See below.) |
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| That's not dirt on the lens, but gnats. Ugh! (This photo is from my "Picturepost" series.) |
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| More gnats - looking straight up. |
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| I hadn't thought about snakes until I found this 5-ft long (at least) shedded skin while watering our new winterberry plants. We have a healthy population of black rat snakes - for the last two years we've found hatched eggs in our compost. This is the longest skin we've seen. A snake this long would clearly be capable of eating a mourning dove. I wish it would feast on the mice in our shed instead! |
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| The head portion of the snake skin. |
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