Insects Feeding on Hawk Leftovers

The young Cooper's hawks are becoming the center of their own ecosystem. Their overworked parents bring food, drop it off and leave again, just that fast. With four juveniles that eat as much as they do, each parent is having to catch three times its normal prey. 


 
They aren't restricting their hunting to birds, they are bringing back whatever they can find. Rats have definitely been on the menu.


The juveniles eat their fill and then, similar to owl pellets, they cough up clumps of hard to digest bones and fur.


These "casts" are a bit gory, but they are in turn providing food to carnivorous insects like the yellow jackets in the video here. Listen and you will hear one of the young hawks calling in the background. Ants and flies are eating the leftovers, while western fence lizards are then pouncing on both species of insects. Spiders also will benefit. The ring-necked snake benefits from the success of the lizards.


Our yard is alive with biodiversity. Thanks to Eclipse-1 Media.

Wild Gopher Snake Feeding

Seeing a snake in the wild is unusual, spotting a wild snake that has just caught its prey and is in the process of feeding is rare.


While fishing on a stream in the Eastern Sierra mountains, we happened on a gopher snake that had just constricted a pack rat and was starting to swallow it. You can see the bottom edge of the pack rat's stick nest in the top right of the photo.


When a snake is swallowing its food, it is vulnerable to predators. It was evening and this gopher snake was not happy when it initially realized it was being observed. But we kept our distance and just watched and the large gopher snake settled into consuming its catch.

The snake was approximately 1.75 inches in diameter, while the rodent was about the size of my fist. It took 5-10 minutes for the six-foot snake to swallow it's large meal. 

Once the large rodent was swallowed, several of the observers were surprised that there wasn't an equally large lump in the snake's body. But a snake body is very muscular and unless a meal is supersized, the food is compressed down and sent on its way to the very efficient digestive system. Most likely, this snake will not need to feed again for at least 3-4 weeks.

Amazingly, within 20 feet of this sizable adult gopher snake, we also saw a new hatchling (about the width of cotton yarn) swimming up the stream and a yearling (about the width of a pen and 2 ft long). Obviously this stream-side ecosystem was providing enough varied-size prey for multiple generations of gopher snake.


Note the pattern on the gopher snake, kind of checker-board black with yellowish. Frequently, gopher snakes are mistaken for rattlesnakes and killed without hesitation. These snakes are important rodent predators and not dangerous to humans.


I am hoping that one day a gopher snake will one day take up residence in my yard. However, we do have a ring-necked snake that has moved in. But we have what gopher snakes are named after, more on that soon.

A Real Valentine's Day Love Letter

Think about the most romantic love letter you've ever read. Is it filled with images that depict the lover as "lovely as a bloom," more temperate than "a summer's day" or as constant as the sun? Does the soldier promise his love that he will return, even if that return is manifested as "a soft breeze upon your cheek"?


When we long to connect to pure beauty or timeless truth, humans are drawn not to ourselves but to nature, the best aspect of our being.


The tree budding on a gray day. A goldfinch splashing in a fountain. The bluest sky that reminds you of a loved one's eyes. This Valentine's Day avoid the glittery wrappings that scar the earth. Give a gift from your heart, from your history or from your pen - Send a Love Letter.


Need a little inspiration? Join Eclipse-1.com for:

Reaching Across the Distance 

Love Letters 2012

a Live Internet Broadcast 

Sunday, Feb. 12 at 3 PM Pacific Standard Time

CLICK HERE http://eclipse-1.blogspot.com/2012/02/reaching-across-distance-love-letters.html

There will be original music, real love letters and inspiration.

Gifts of the heart and for the planet:
Fair Trade Chocolate
Cherished items
From the Hearth and Yard

Discovering Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Refuge

great egret and coot by Michael Lawshe

Take a mini-bird walk through Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Refuge.
Click on the link below for a 4 minute video that was shot for "One Day On Earth" 10/10/10. Video courtesy of Michael Lawshe and  Eclipse-1 Media.

Mini-Bird Walk

Turkey Vultures at Sepulveda Basin

A True Ghost Story

It's nearly Halloween and time for tales of the unexplained and mysterious. The following is a true tale that demonstrates the senses of our animal friends.

You can hear the original story below and other ghostly tales, poems and music on "Ghosts of the Internet, 3" at eclipse-1.com

Hear the story, CLICK HERE

Boot Hill
by Keri Dearborn

You say you don’t believe in ghosts? Well neither do I, not in white sheets billowing in the wind or magnetic force fields measured by TV ghost chasers gripping their electronic gadgets. Let me tell you a true ghost story.

You see, I believe in the tangible, a poke in the arm, a spectral man seen by a group of strangers and the reaction of an innocent.

People can conjure up things. Our emotions and fears get the better of us and paint the world we want to see or are afraid might be true. But a dog, well a dog has no preconceptions. A dog hasn’t read Poe. A dog doesn’t pursue frightening experiences for the thrill of it. Animals know that the world is dangerous. Real threats abound. To have a cozy and comfortable life beside the hearth is a blessing, not a bore.

Dodger was a mix of golden labrador and laughter. He was broad chested, surefooted and after a good romp sat with his tongue lolling to one side of a wide smile. He would chase a stick for as long as you could throw it. He was well-traveled and well-behaved, but he insisted on walking in front. Oh, he never strayed off, he just liked the freedom of being the leader.

One summer driving through Canada, we stopped in Barkerville in British Columbia. Barkerville was a gold rush town in the 1860s. Today it is a Provincial Park and the wooden buildings of main street are open to visitors during the day. Some of it is restored, but some of it stands weathered and aching with the past.

It was a rainy evening. The campground was empty. We ate dinner in the car and decided to walk through the closed-up town before crawling into our tent for the night. Gray mist shrouded the quiet street of hand-hewn plank buildings. Dodger couldn’t be happier. He was always ready for a walk. The wet street offered a new place to be explored combined with the aroma of horses and mud puddles. It was a canine heaven.

I’ve always loved deserted towns. I like to look in windows and image what scenes have played out inside. Here each glass pane was a portal to a time when your income came out of the ground, when men left their families to search for El Dorado, when one night of gambling could cost a man a year’s hard work. Much of the street has been resurrected to its former glory, a saloon, a dry goods store, and of course a Chinese herbalist. On this quiet evening, tin cups still rested on tables. The splashing stream continued to drive a huge water wheel. And through the shifting ground fog, two horses chased after each other in a field. There was a feeling as if the miners had all run to the next canyon because someone had struck it rich and, any moment, they would all be back.

As we wandered the town, Dodger trotted ahead. He’d catch a good scent and get lost in the discovery, then race to catch up again. When we came to the end of the town’s main street, we followed a road that went back around the outskirts of the buildings. The gravel was easy walking and Dodger dashed ahead. His ears and tongue flopped with each bound and I’ve never seen a truer expression of bliss.

As we came around a bend, the road followed an old wooden fence. The timbers were gray and twisted. The white flowers of Queen Anne’s lace rose up behind the fence, its foliage lush a wall of green. As the road curved, there was a break in fence. Dodger trotted right up to opening. Then he stopped. His ears perked and his head tilted to the side.

“Good boy,” we said. “You wait for us.”

A narrow path made its way through the vegetation. It seemed to turn back toward the town, so we started to follow it. But no canine friend raced ahead. Dodger stood at the fence line. His ears still up, the smile gone.

“Come on, boy. Let’s go this way.”

He didn’t budge.

“Dodger, come on.” Michael called.

Then I noticed a drab gray board half hidden in the damp grass. A wooden cross. A low iron grating in the shape of a rectangle. Another cross and another. “I think we’re in the town cemetery.”

“Cool,” Michael said. “Dodger, come on.”

But the dog wouldn’t come. We couldn’t coax him, we couldn’t order him.

What could an old cemetery mean to a dog? He couldn’t know a tombstone from a fence board. Could he? Nothing had been buried here for a very long time. But Dodger wasn’t thinking of the past or the meaning of the place. He perceived just what it was in that real-time moment.

We looked at each other and realized that if Dodger wasn’t willing to walk through the cemetery, maybe we shouldn’t either. We went back to the road. Once we were both at his side, the dog turned with a bounce and skipped toward camp.

What did he sense in that ghost town cemetery? We’ll never know. But no one told him to be afraid. He didn’t read it in a book or see it in a movie. There was something real that night, something real and tangible that a dog could sense, even if we couldn’t.

Badlands National Park & National Park Foundation Video Challenge

This summer we visited Badlands National Park in South Dakota. When we came home we discovered that the National Parks Foundation was doing a video competition.

You can support our 2-minute entry by watching the video and then voting for it.

When you click the "vote" bar it will take you to the National Park Foundation website. They will ask you to "sign-in" so that there is only one vote a day from an e-mail address. They assure us that they will not sell e-mail addresses and you can opt out of being on their e-mail list. FaceBook members can use their FaceBook accounts.

When you go to the "Log-in" page the link to the "Sign-up" page is in the upper right hand corner where it says "Register." (I didn't design their website.)

Thank you for your Vote. We could win a trip to a National Park of our choice.

Submit entry

Contest details

Use this link if you can not see the video here.

http://yourparks.nationalparks.org/contests/showentry/86122

4th of July Audio Play

Happy Independence Day !

It's 100˚F in the shade, but still cooler than yesterday. While I'm happier in the house, the Western fence lizards and the alligator lizards are frolicking.

To celebrate the 4th of July, my husband Michael Lawshe (soundzgood.info) researched historical documents and eyewitness-accounts and prompted me to write an audio-play. We gathered some friends and neighbors and reenacted some of the historical events leading up to 1776. We call our LIVE CAST recording "Prelude to Revolution." (1 hour in length)

CLICK HERE to link to Eclipse-1.com and hear the voices and events on the road to American Independence. (Yes, we did really reenact the New York Riots and the Boston Massacre in our living room.)

Why is my personal Liberty important to the lizards in my backyard? It means with my voice and my vote, I can support conservation issues and environmental protection.

As more and more of the world is degraded by human activity, it becomes increasingly vital that we stand up and speak out to preserve our democracy. If we do not, if our government is owned by the highest bidder, we will not have the ability to stop those who would threaten the entire planet for temporary profit.