On the way home..

from dropping my son off I saw a couple of sandhill cranes.

The cranes were feeding in a field near the road.

The birds were near a residential neighborhood.

As I photographed them from my car people were driving, biking, and even walking by. It seemed like the birds were pretty accustomed to people. After a little while they layed down in the grass.

After getting up, the birds stretched and started feeding again.

Before they walked off.

I spent more than an hour with the birds and it made for a nice drive home.









Another day, another tree frog

When it rains, it pours.

After several years of seeing no eastern gray tree frogs and one unsuccessful attempt at photographing said frog, I finally found and got photos of a tree frog about a week ago. Then without even trying I found another gray tree frog last weekend.

 

It took a couple of hours for the sun, wind, and frog to all cooperate, but eventually I was able to make some pictures of this frog as well.

 

So I've gone from no good tree frog images to a plethora of them.

Lucky me.

 

I really like the dexterity, balance, and overall stickiness these frogs exhibit. They are some of the coolest critters out there.

I hope my luck holds up and I keep getting more cool things falling in my lap.

At least this one made it

My dad had bluebirds nesting in a house on his land. The birds had successfully hatched their chicks and had been feeding them regularly.

One day when I was with him my dad asked me to check the nest. So I walked over and opened the bird house door to look inside.

The good news was that this fledgling eastern bluebird was inside the house.

The bad news was that its four nest mates were dead and the nest was soaking wet.

It had stormed and rained heavily a day or two earlier and apparently the water got blown into the house and onto the young bluebirds.

I carefully took the live fledgling from the house and then cleaned out the wet nest and dead birds. The little bluebird looked pretty rough and there were no adults around so I couldn't tell if it had been abandoned or not.

I decided to take the baby bird and get some meal worms and see if it would eat.

I googled bluebirds and learned what I should try to do. Once I got the worms from a local bait shop I offered one to the baby bird. It wouldn't eat, but it did poop.

I took that poop to mean that it had been fed by its parents fairly recently. I got some tissues to use as bedding in the now empty birdhouse and took the bluebird back home.

 

I put the tissues and baby bird back in the house and closed the door. Then my dad and I waited to see if the adult birds would come to the nest.

It was less than a minute before an adult male bluebird landed on the birdhouse and then went inside. When he came out he went to the ground, caught an insect and went right back inside the house to feed the baby bird.  We watched for about ten more minutes as the male bluebird continued to catch and deliver food for its baby in the house.

It didn't feel so great to have four bluebirds dead in the house but I was glad one made it. We checked on the little bird the next day and it looked and acted much healthier. A few days later when we checked the bird had already fledged and was no longer in the house.

My kingdom for a tree frog

Several years ago I found a gray tree frog at my parents house in northern Wisconsin. I tried but wasn't able to make any decent images of that frog.

Since then I kept hoping to get another chance. Last week I finally got my chance. I found another gray tree frog and photographed the heck out of it.

I really love the color and expressiveness of this little frog.

 

 

Though it's called a gray tree frog this one was a beautiful shade of green.

 

One of the greatest features about tree frogs are their feet. They seem to stick to almost anything with their specialized toes and feet.

 

 

After I made these images I took the frog back to the spot where I had found him.

Here the frog seems to effortlessly cling to the side of a maple tree.  

Back to Crex Meadows

I was lucky enough to make it back to the Crex Meadows Wildlife Area near Grantsburg last weekend. I was hoping to find reptiles like bullsnakes, hognose snakes, and prairie skinks. The day started out sunny and I was optimistic.

I finally found this eastern hognose snake crossing a road bordering the wildlife area.

After I pulled safely to the side of the road I picked up the snake and moved it off the road in the direction it was travelling before any other cars came. The above photo shows the snake playing dead once I put it on the ground.

I noticed a small foot sticking out of the snake's mouth while I was moving it. Turns out the snake had just eaten an American toad which it spit out once I set it down.



I was sorry the snake lost its lunch because I moved it, but hoped that my help may have kept it from being run over on the road.

I then followed the snake as it travelled more than 100 yards away from the road off into some scrub oak trees. The snake seemed to draw a straight line as it moved through the terrain, stopping frequently to look around before continuing on.

This hognose snake was the only reptile I found or photographed all day, but I did see a black bear with her cub and lots of muskrats.