Out shooting and all of a sudden a feature comes alive in your camera but YOU didn’t activate it? Well, it’s that time of year when we wear gloves and next time this happens to you, blame your gloves! They can easily and without our knowledge hit a button we have programmed activating that feature. It can really be jarring and you might want to blame the camera in the cold. But if could be as simple as the gloves giving you wacky settings when you’re shooting.

This capture of a meadow vole was pretty text book. The Coyote slowly walked the field, stopped when it first heard a sound, slowly adjusted its position as it calked its head pinpointing the sound and then …. pounce! The whole process brings a huge smile to me whole body as it looks like as much fun as it is essential for survival. It’s the next pounce that I totally missed. That’s when it did as I just described above but when it made its pounce, it smacked right into the trunk of the tree. You coul hear an audible “THUD!!!” when it landed. I missed most of the shots as I was laughing too much to even get a sharp image. Below is the first image I took after I got composure. Love watching these critters!

I have no doubt some of my dear birder friends will be shocked, shocked to see that I took a Starling photo let alone posted them on my site! That’s because they are not my favorite bird, period! Long ago I was on a project where I witnessed this effective invasive non-native bully pull nestling bluebirds out of a box and take over the box. The USDA states, “The first recorded release of the birds was in 1890 in New York City’s Central Park. Because starlings easily adapt to a variety of habitats, nest sites and food sources, the birds spread quickly across the country. Today, there are about 150 million starlings in North America.” The story goes that the Shakespeare Society brought them over from Europe and released them. Besides the incredible damage they have done to our native birds (again the USDA, “Starlings compete with native bird species for cavity nesting sites and may impact species such as eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis), purple martins (Progne subis), wood ducks (Aix sponsa) and several species of woodpeckers.) there is this. Quoting the USDA, “A flock of 1,000 starlings using a CAFO for 60 days during winter will eat about 1.5 tons of cattle feed, representing a loss of $200 to $400 per 1,000 starlings. About 250,000 starlings that were using a Midwestern feedlot increased the cost of feeding a ration of steam-flaked corn by $43 per heifer over a 47-day period between mid-January and March.”

Long ago I was out shooting with my dear friend, Roger Tory Peterson (related only by a passion for birds). Roger who has been called the father of birding was quite something, we had some mighty lengthy conversations about birds (I miss Roger!). One of those was brief and to the point concerning my disdain for the starling. Roger simply looked at me and with all sincerity said, “We not natives either.” And we all know what we humans have done to the environment.