benjaminclayton47's Favorites

This observation is a screen capture from a short movie my wife made at the bird blinds at Pedernales Falls SP. If you look carefully, you'll see a Black-crested Titmouse vigorously collecting fur off of the hind quarters of this Gray Fox as the fox was foraging on sunflower seeds at the bird feeder. Mary Kay watched the bird pluck hair from the fox for over 5 minutes and the fox, while not appreciating it, was apparently not terribly bothered! the titmouse eventually flew off with a beak full of fur.

My New Mexico Birding group identified this as a Cooper’s Hawk. It was perched on a fence post adjacent to a Chamisa/Rabbitbrush bush with around s dozen sparrows. That explains the look in the first photo.

This is the male of a breeding pair that wake me up at night calling to each other from my backyard cottonwood.
The audio file is of this pair calling, the louder hoots are from the male who was in my yard directly above me, and the fainter hoots are from the female at her nest about 100 yards away. The background noise is from a busy street about 2 blocks away. This recording was over a period of about 4 minutes. I have deleted the quiet times between calling periods.

This Great-horned Owl observation is of a mated pair that nested here last year and have returned to the same nest.
Photo #1 is the male in his day roost just after he awoke in the evening.
Photo #2 is the female on her nest at the same time. She begins her evening calling for the male from here.
Photo #3 is the male watching the female eat a mouse she captured after they flew to another tree.

Photo #4 is from my backyard looking up at the male after he flew into my cottonwood tree.
The audio file was recorded while I was taking these photos, most of the audio was when the owls were standing side by side. The traditional sounding Great-horned Owl calls are from the male and a lot of the strange hoots and stutters are from the female. I apologize for the photo quality, it gets dark quickly and the photos suffer. The quality of the audio suffers also because the owls have chosen to nest in a densely populated residential area and the rush hour traffic noise is evident in the background.

I'm going to try to be systematic about my moth uploads, but I may jump around a little bit. I thought I'd get this wasp moth uploaded even though it was one of the last moths I documented. This species occurs from Colombia to the Yucatan Peninsula (Belize, Mexico), but I can't find any images or records of it in Guatemala. Geographically, the occurrence is not unexpected since the type locality (coll. 1913) was on the Old River in Belize only about 70 to 80 miles (110-130 km) to the east. It has also been documented to the north in Campeche and Quintana Roo and in Chiapas to the west.