Charlie Gives ‘Small’ Wildlife Some Deserving Love

We certainly live in a beautiful area with lots of exciting wildlife! It is usually the larger wildlife that seem to get most of our attention or photos. Today, we are going to focus on the smaller end of our wildlife spectrum.

THIS WEEK’S STORY

I have been, “Under the weather” for the last few days. My new drug prescription’s side-effects literally put me out of commission! It is now Saturday evening (January 14^th) and I am finally beginning to somewhat get back to normal. I decided to keep my Photo of the Week article short and simple. I also decided to show off some of our smaller Wildlife Friends.

MOTUS OPERANDI

Go through my files from last year and look for photos of smaller wildlife. That game plan worked out pretty well for me as I came across subject photos quickly! Labeled the photos and figured that would be that!

HOWEVER – THERE WAS ONE EXCEPTION….

That one photo had a story behind it, AND an anomaly. It departed from showcasing just smaller wildlife as it included one of our larger predators in it. One other unusual circumstance is that both birds have the word ‘Red’ in their names: Red-tailed Hawk and Red-winged Blackbird (photo above). This photo was taken from Shades of Death Road near the Drake Farm. I was just getting ready to round the bend and I noticed this large Red-tailed Hawk on the ground in a freshly mowed field and it looked like it was eating something!

I pulled over to take some photos and then noticed there were quite a few Red-winged Blackbirds right in the same location and they were dive bombing the hawk! Made a video of the harassing activities of the Blackbirds, which actually caused the much larger hawk to take off. I didn’t leave the car to check what the hawk was eating, so I have no idea whether they were mad about losing a family member or just aggravating a larger predator!

The photos below are some of the other small wildlife I have photographed. See if you can identify them!