Baby Skunk
As we enter mid-June we find ourselves in one of the quieter times of the avian season as nearly all of our northbound migrants have found their way to their nesting grounds. A few birds may still be trickling through, but most of what we see now is breeding in our region. This seasonal bird post is being hijacked to deliver another message with a Sunday skunk! Isn’t it adorable? I saw this baby skunk earlier this week, and it reminded me to put out a brief message about the many miniature mammals we see emerging as we head into summer. While they are so very cute, we want to treat...
Read MoreGray Four-eyed Opossum
This is a young Gray Four-eyed Opossum (Philander opossum) caught in one of our mammal traps, as we were surveying for an unusual jungle rodent called Watson’s Climbing Rat (Tylomys watsoni) in Rara Avis Nature Reserve, Costa Rica. Believe it or not, the rat would have been bigger than this opossum (and particularly fond of chocolate and soap). Like it’s cousin, the Virginia Opossum, these guys show a remarkable resistance to venoms and poisons, including snake venom, and are relatively immune to dangerous snake bites. In North America, opossums have been credited with being a biological...
Read MoreBobcat
They say any evening you spend with a Bobcat is a good evening – okay, maybe they don’t, but I did, and I do, so here’s a photo of a Bobcat that I took about an hour ago after sunset. What a magnificent creature! We will be buried in snow tomorrow in Connecticut, and I hope it comes back to play then. Scott Kruitbosch Conservation & Outreach Coordinator
Read MoreRed-shouldered Hawk
This is not one of the winter raptors we have trained our volunteers to record this season, but I will nonetheless take it. The Red-shouldered Hawk seen here was photographed earlier today while very engaged in tracking some sort of prey. It flew off a moment after this, attempting to go for it on the ground, then after missing out it flew into another tree across the street. I did not see what it was after but some small mammal was lucky – at least for the moment. Scott Kruitbosch Conservation & Outreach Coordinator
Read MoreWhite Squirrel
One of the most familiar backyard creatures we have in the eastern part of the United States is the Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis). They are on our trees, robbing our bird feeders, “begging” for a snack in the park, but they are not always all the same. Some areas have local populations of melanistic, leucistic, or albino squirrels, and in some cases, these black or white appearances seem to possibly even be a color morph. I photographed this squirrel last week, and its dark (not red) eyes suggest it is not an albino even though it looked so very white. Such a...
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