You'll like my jury-rigged mailbox attachment – March, 2016. It was the best I could do at the time.
I inspected the box interior. It turns out, there were two spider cocoons, full of little babies. What hubby spotted were the ants dragging away the spider babies. Cycle of Life. Sigh.
Mailbox news from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
In the morning, I'd taken a walk down to the meadow. There was nothing on the trailcams, but quite the fooferaw, on behalf of the robins. Something was irritating them. It wasn't until after lunch that I figured it out. The tree canopy provides both protection and cover for predator and prey.
I sat down to lunch looked out the back door, and spotted our regular hawk. I last spotted it Tuesday, July 19th, right there on the post beside the driveway. I drove up beside it, and it was quite bold.
You'll see in the video that the brave little robins were dive bombing it, trying to encourage it to leave the territory!
After lunch, Daisy and I went walking in the FRONT yard. An Osprey! Seriously! They eat fish and eels. Apparently, they are now hunting snakes. It's partner flew right over my head with a snake, straight as an arrow toward the nest, while this one just sat. It was eyeing Daisy, but didn't seem too interested. Thankfully. The nest is about 2.5 km away. This one took off west toward the lake.
Cedar waxwing, it was in the tree beside the Osprey. Thankfully, the osprey doesn't go for fur or feathers.
Daisy and I went into the back yard. There, on a little violet leaf, a redbelly snake. The photo is an archived one, I didn't touch the snake, as it was quite happy in the violets, curled up into a ball.
Northern redbelly snake from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
Hawk from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
7 comments:
There is always something around to entertain you1
Hello, my computer is slow today so I am not able to view all your images. I love the Osprey and the cute little snake. Happy Thursday, enjoy your day!
That's a beautiful picture of an osprey! We have a township close by called Osprey Township. -Jenn
So much variety right there. I will leave the snake with you though!!!
Quite a collection of birds, and what a snake!
There's always very interesting stuff to see in the outdoors.
I know from personal observation that Northern Harriers will take basking Northern Water Snakes, but Ospreys seem to feed exclusively on fish as far as I know. However, most birds are both opportunistic and adaptive so I would not rule out Ospreys feeding on snakes. Their entire method of hunting and their morphology is geared towards plucking objects out of the water. How they would fare capturing prey outside of that element is open to conjecture.
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