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Thursday, October 1, 2015

Where'd You Get Those Peepers?

Becca stared intently into the desert, but I could see nothing
In addition to possessing a great sniffer, Becca has incredible eyesight.  When we were hiking along the high foothills trail this morning she stopped to stare unblinkingly into the desert.  I could not see what she was looking at until I noticed a slight movement over two football fields (200 + yards) away.  Hard to tell from where we stood, but it looked like a mature male.  He was obviously aware of us, too, as he stood staring back for a bit before moving along.   I have a certain affinity for Coyotes, and I love spotting them in the natural world.
And then I noticed movement in the distance

She was staring at the Trickster, a lone Coyote

Coyote (Canis latrans) stared back for a short while before moving on

We contintued looking for it, but never saw the Coyote again

So let's keep moving, huh?

Shooting the moon

Blood moon?  No, moon shot through a lens of my sunglasses

ATV belonging to the university coming down the mountain

Barreling down a steep dirt road

Break time

Plato's photographer

Desperate for shade

4 comments:

Dr. K said...

Packrat, why are you Plato's photographer?

Scott said...

Our coyotes seem to have disappeared. We've observed that many of them had mange, and I suspect that it significantly reduced/eliminated the population here. They won't be gone forever, but it seems like their presence in my preserve going to be a cyclical affair, with invasions, population expansions, and then declines all occurring over periods of years. We have a huge red fox population now (with no competition from the coyotes), and we've observed that now some of the foxes are developing mange.

I don't want to jinx things, so I'm cautiously optimistic that Hurricane Joaquin will largely miss us. I certainly hope so. We've had rain, on and off, every day for the last four days; the last thing we need right now are high winds that could topple trees in saturated soil.

packrat said...

Dr. K: Just talking about the shadow of the photographer a la Plato's analogy of the cave. Bad joke. :)

packrat said...

Scott: Strange about the coyotes and mange. I heard just this morning that forecasters feel pretty confident that Joaquin is heading out to sea.

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