Pryor Mountains

The last couple of weekends I've been going up to the Pryors to help Rob out with his small mammal trapping project. The trapping was ok, nothing really exciting, but we had some good times in the mountains.

















Bear Canyon













Trying to set traps in the hail/snow/fog day.













Finding a turkey and a campfire.









Found a bullsnake and, of course, a cow.
The next weekend was a shorter one, just Friday and Saturday for the end of the study.









A juvenile golden/bald eagle and camp.














A grouse and the low clouds coming down off the mountains.









A tiger beetle in the desert and a yellow-headed blackbird at the Bighorn visitor center.

Goo Goo Dolls Concert

I'm not very good at indoor low lighting pics, but here's what I got, plus a full moon!

Birding around Billings

Nothing says summer quite like ducklings, and we have a family right down the road!




















I also went birding on an Audubon field trip to Riverfront Park, we saw a lot of cool birds including black-headed grosbeaks, American redstarts, ovenbirds, osprey, yellow warblers, and several species of both vireos and flycatchers. I didn't get many good pictures of any of these, but did get a couple of a cedar waxwing and a Swainson's thrush.

Rims

I've been on so many trips or in Riverfront so often that except for Owl, I haven't been out to explore the rims much, until this weekend! I was looking for snakes, but unfortunately didn't find any, but did find other creatures and have a lot of fun!




I had some really pretty lighting right at sunset for these flowers.





This is a lark sparrow that cooperatively posed for me!




This mouse does not have stellar survival skills, but it did let me take its picture.






A really cool colored carrion beetle, I especially like the orange tufts on the tips of the antennae.






And of course during the course of a geocaching outing things get very silly!

Graduation and Associated Adventures

Preparation for graduation mostly consisted of Hannah, Anne, and I decorating our caps. Mine was probably the most silly and labor intensive (I used a road-kill pheasant Rob found while we were checking on owl), but all of them look awesome! Otis was also very pleased with the pheasant.





























Then we blew bubbles (because we're mature now) and actually graduated!
The next day Mom and I and Gretchen and Bjorn's families went to Yellowstone and saw some cool critters!
On Monday, me and Mom went out to explore the other Yellowstone: the river. We had fun hiking around and saw some cool stuff too:

Owl Saga-Parents are back!

On Tuesday when Rob, Mike and I went out to check on the owl, we saw no sign of parents, but we did capture a mouse on the hike in, and had brought two more from the trap line in to feed it.





On Wednesday, Rob and I went back around noon to check on it again, and as I approached the nest the chick started clicking its beak, and an answering click came from the tree behind us: the Mom! We watched her for a while, and heard the dad calling, but didn't see him. Then we came back at dusk in the hopes that they would be more active, and they were:

The Owl Saga

Sunday morning I got a call from my cross-country coach telling me that out on their run they had come across an owlet whose nest tree had blown down from all the wind lately. After a series of phone calls, FWP asked if I could go out and check on the chick and see if its parents had come back yet. Coach took me out there and this is what we saw:













It is a great horned owl chick and was pretty active, clicking its beak and hissing if we got too close. We waited with it for quiet a while, and saw no sign of parents. I called FWP back to see what the next step would be, and they said to take him home, try to feed him, and call on Monday when they would be able to do something for it.













I got some pinky mice to feed it, but at first it wasn't very interested. Around 8 pm though it perked up and started eating!


It was pretty quiet through the night, but did wake me up at 5 because it was hungry. We had fun before taking him back out with
FWP to the nest site to see if the parents will come back: