A place for me to share photos and videos of wildlife around the house and neighborhood. It all started with recording activity in a finch nest on our front porch.
For more videos, check out YouTube channel Our Wildlife.
We caught this meeting of nutria pups and ducks on the east shore of White Rock Lake the other day. The nutria pups were very playful and a bit pushy - not sure the ducks knew what to think of them. :-)
Music Credits "Scheming Weasel (faster version)" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Recently, we have been checking in a few times a week on the bald eagle family that's taken up residence near White Rock Lake. The adults, Nick and Nora, showed up a few years ago and have had a few attempts at nesting but based on what we've heard each nest ended up either blown down by a storm or was in an area with too much foot traffic. This year though, they took over what we understand was the nest of a red tailed hawk. The hawk's loss is the eagle's gain as they have two chicks in the nest. From talking with people who live nearby and have been monitoring the nest daily, it looks like the chicks should fledge in about 5-6 weeks. You can see movement in the next in this clip with one of the chicks stretching their wings.
This week instead of just taking binoculars with us, I took my Nikon D750 camera and captured this video. It's not great as the longest lens I have is 200mm and even with a 2X teleconverter and using the cropped (DX) mode while shooting, it's nowhere near the resolution and sharpness of images being shared online but some of the folks who shoot the eagles regularly. Having a 1000mm lens (even a 500mm lens with the 2X TC) sound tempting but that would be a big investment and I don't often shoot subjects that would benefit from that long of a lens.
Instead, we'll continue following the other folks who post such amazing photos of this bald eagle family.
Years ago I bought an owl house and mounted it about 15' up one of the 45' cedar elms in our front yard. Unfortunately, the only occupants it ever had were squirrels, which I spent untold hours chasing out of it. Finally, I figured our yard just wasn't attractive to owls so earlier this year I donated the owl house (and the never-occupied bat house I'd mounted on the chimney) to the White Rock Conservancy. Hopefully, the Conservancy was able to install both houses in locations where they are now being used.
But we do have owls in Hillridge!
Tonight, I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing a barred owl in one of the other trees in our front yard. The owl house we had was built for screech owls so it wouldn't have been big enough for a barred owl. But perhaps this one has a nest close enough that he or she will visit us again from time to time.
Click on the image to see enlarged.
Besides the photo, I took video. It's too dark to see anything but the audio is great. Listen closely and you'll hear another owl elsewhere in the neighborhood responding to this one.
Update: Corrected to reflect what I saw/heard is a barred owl rather than a barn owl.
For the third time this month, we spotted a bobcat on the southwest end of White Rock Lake.
The first time, we were sitting at the south end of the sidewalk along the pump station and saw one just stroll across from down by the building over into the woods across from us. I tried to catch it on camera but it was gone by the time I got my phone out.
The second time, we were walking a little north of that spot just beyond the filter building and saw one cross the street over into the woods across from us. See my last post for video of that encounter.
Yesterday, I was walking our Weim, Luna, on the north side of the pump station building and she spotted a bobcat walking into the shrubs along the edge of the building. In this video, I caught it walking out of the shrubs and down the sidewalk along the pump station building. It looked like it started to cross over about halfway down but changed its mind and trotted on down to the end of the sidewalk and down the steps.
By the time Luna and I got around to the south in the building where Linda was sitting, the bobcat had crossed beyond her into the woods. Linda said it's strolled across just as casually as the first one we saw.
It's amazing to me how unafraid this bobcat is.
I had always heard stories about how furtive they are and how hard it is to spot them.
This one sure is bold. Or perhaps there are more than one of them, in which case they are all bold!
