Antlers

I found this antler on the lawn by our place. It's not too surprising, there are lots of deer around (black tailed, a kind of mule deer) and this is the time of year they shed their antlers.

Antlers (e.g. deer, elk, moose) are bone that grows out of the skull. Usually only males have them, although both male and female caribou have antlers. Horns on the other hand (e.g. sheep, goats, bison) are covered in keratin, the same material as our fingernails, and usually aren't shed. When antlers are growing, they are covered in skin, known as velvet, that provides oxygen and nutrients to the growing bone. Once the antler is grown it loses the skin and the bone dies.

Shedding the antlers is triggered by the length of the day and testosterone level. Special cells called osteoclasts dissolve the bone at the base allowing it to detach. Judging by the pink base (presumably remnants of blood supply) I think this was quite recently shed.

Macauley Point

A few photos from a walk at Macauley Point just after our cold spell. I didn't have my big telephoto lens, so of course I wished I had it :-)

In the first photo you can see a rounded hump in the water beyond the bald eagle. I think that was a sea lion. It must have been lying on a submerged rock. Every so often it would stick its head or fin out of the water, but never enough to get a good look. We don't usually see sea lions in Victoria. (Mostly just harbor seals.)

The other thing we don't see very often here is ice.

No shortage of sparrows or water and reflections, of course.

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Patience

It snowed all day today. This great blue heron showed up in the morning and was still there when it got dark. As far as I noticed, it never left. Usually they don't stay long so at first I didn't bother getting out the camera. But it seemed to settle in so I got out the telephoto lens and the teleconverter for roughly 1100 mm (almost 10x a new iPhone's 120mm "telephoto"). I didn't want to go out in the snow, so I shot through the dirty window. I did get out the monopod since even with good image stabilization it's too hard to hold that long a lens steady. The tree it was in is across the street and past the next house so I wasn't expecting too much, but with a little processing it came out ok.

Later, after dark, I saw a heron by the water. Can they see to catch fish at night? If it's the same one, why did it wait till dark to go fishing?

Road Trip Day 14, 15 - Chiricahua Mountains

The Chiricahua Mountains are in the south east corner of Arizona. They are sometimes referred to as one of the "sky islands", rising 6000 feet above the desert around them. This gives them a variety of climates - five of the nine different life zones are found here. The area attracts bird watchers to see the 375 species of birds. Perhaps the last jaguar in the United States is found here.

There is a surrounding national forest, a wilderness area, and a smaller national monument. I think the monument on the west side is probably the more popular part but I met some people who had a home in Portal on the east side, so that's where we've visited before and did again on this trip. This was the only place we spent two nights in the same place on this trip. It was relatively quiet and we enjoyed some nice hikes.

I think we saw more birdwatchers than kinds of birds. As much as I like photographing birds, I'm not a serious birder. Mostly we saw Mexican Jays and Acorn Woodpeckers.

Acorn Woodpeckers store their acorns in holes they drill (and reuse) in "granary" trees. As the acorns dry out and shrink they move them to smaller holes, requiring considerable maintenance. They also have to defend them from other birds. They are cooperative breeders living in groups of up to 15 birds.

It was fun to watch this group of wild turkeys scratching through the dead leaves. I'm not sure what they were finding to eat - insects? seeds?

There were also some interesting plants. I think these are Mountain Yucca fruit: (roughly pear sized)

There were some tall agave seed stalks. They are sometimes called "century" plants because they only flower once, at the end of a long life (although not necessarily a century) and then they die. If you shook the stacks the seeds would come raining down.

There was a lot of bear poop on one of the trails we were on. Luckily we didn't see any bears. They seemed to be eating a lot of seeds (juniper berries?) which they weren't digesting too well.

Most of the trees were conifers, but there were enough other trees, especially down by the creeks, to give some nice fall colors.

Although it was getting cool at night up in the mountains, there were still a few insects around. Unfortunately no one on iNaturalist has identified this interesting beetle:

Water striders are tricky to photograph as they tend to zip around constantly. This one happened to pause long enough to catch. (with my long telephoto lens)

There were lots of deer around, not too concerned about humans. (no hunting here)

Also see Shelley's post

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Many-plumed moth

This moth appeared on the wall beside my desk. It was tiny, a little over 1/4 inch across. I ignored it at first, but then I decided I should at least have a look with a magnifying glass. Some of these tiny moths can be quite pretty when you see them up close. It turned out to be a plumed moth, which is unusual, so I got out the camera and macro lens. iNaturalist identified it as a Montana six-plume moth. At least it wasn't yet another invasive species for a change.

Unlike most moths and butterflies, the wings aren't a "sheet", they're more like feathers. There are only a few species in North America. The caterpillars feed on snowberry bushes, which are quite common around here. The moths overwinter as adults, and the warm weather probably fooled it into emerging. When I came back from supper it had disappeared.

I photographed another plume moth a few months ago but it had its wings folded up so you couldn't see the structure.