Occasionally I see Short-eared Owls hunting from the ground but it’s nearly always from a distance. This guy didn’t care that I was close. Very close, especially for a SEOW.
Blog followers know I have a strong aversion for power poles and wires in my images. But thanks to input from readers I’ve had a change of heart when the poles are ancient and the insulators are the old-fashioned kind.
Relative size apparently makes no difference when birds are competing for nesting cavities. In this case the Northern Flickers are twelve times larger than the house wren (130 g vs 11 g).
I sure do miss this woodpecker and its mate. I photographed them for parts of two breeding seasons in Clark County, Idaho but about a month ago some idiot chopped down their nest tree (the one in these images) and I haven’t seen the birds since.
I’ve returned home from my Montana/Idaho camping trip and overall the trip was spectacular but the good times were tempered by a nasty surprise on my first day there.
Northern Flickers tend to use existing nest cavities (rather than excavating new ones) more often than other woodpecker species and this bird followed that pattern.
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