{"id":70953,"date":"2019-04-15T06:28:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T12:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=70953"},"modified":"2019-04-15T07:12:09","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T13:12:09","slug":"some-recent-non-bird-critters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/15\/some-recent-non-bird-critters\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Recent Non-bird Critters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some have fur and some have scales but there isn’t a feather to be found in this collection. All photos were taken two days ago (corrected from three to two).<\/p>\n

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While I was photographing the newly found pair of nesting Red-tailed Hawks this Red Fox appeared on the hill above me. At the time the female red-tail had been perched close to the ground between me and the fox and his presence made her nervous so both red-tails took off and landed close together on a safer, more elevated perch. There had been recent rain and snow so “his” fur was wet and somewhat matted down.<\/p>\n

In the only two shots I got of the fox while he was turned my way he had his eyes almost closed into a squint and after that he almost immediately trotted away and disappeared. I don’t see foxes very often so I was definitely happier to see him than the hawks were.<\/p>\n

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Later that day I spent some time with some Yellow-bellied Marmots whose pups were very young – so young that I suspect they had only recently emerged from their burrow. This one sought the security of its mother and I was close enough that I couldn’t keep both of them entirely in the frame. But this photo does show how small the pup was relative to its mother.<\/p>\n

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As does this shot at the mother’s other end. There were at least three pups, possibly four, and they were the personification of cute.<\/p>\n

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I don’t have any unobscured shots of multiple pups but given their preferred rocky habitat I don’t think that’s necessary to enjoy an image.<\/p>\n

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Even at this tender age pups have itches that demand to be scratched.<\/p>\n

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Late that afternoon after I arrived home I found this cluster of garter snakes near the stump of my huge old elm tree that I had cut down a few days before. When I documented that tree removal in a blog post<\/a> I mentioned that there were at least eight garter snakes denned at its base but the process of removing the tree apparently destroyed their den.<\/p>\n

Here three or four of the snakes are clustered together but we can’t see mama’s eye because she’s looking at the entrance to their new den just out of frame at upper left. Soon after this shot was taken all of them disappeared into the den.<\/p>\n

In previous years I’ve seen the occasional garter snake or two in my lawn and garden but I never knew where they came from. Now I do. I’ve always been afraid I’d run over them with my lawn mower or garden tiller but as far as I know it’s never happened.<\/p>\n

I love having them around.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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PS – A beginner’s mistake prevented me from posting an image that included the entire marmot family, including mama and three of her pups. I was too close to them for my big lens but that’s why I carry my 100-400 zoom lens on another camera. I used that combination to take a few shots of multiple pups and their mother and I hoped to include one of those photos in this post.\u00a0But when I spotted the garter snakes I ran into my house, grabbed a camera, inserted a memory card into it and reformatted the card as I was walking out to photograph the snakes.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

You guessed it. Those marmot photos were on that card and I deleted them when I reformatted the card and before I saved them to my computer. Poop!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Some have fur and some have scales but there isn’t a feather to be found in this collection. All photos were taken three days ago.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,1148,3953],"tags":[4501,3954,262,1512],"class_list":["post-70953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-red-foxes","category-yellow-bellied-marmots","tag-garter-snake","tag-pups","tag-red-fox","tag-yellow-bellied-marmot"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/yellow-bellied-marmot-0204-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-isp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}