Cool Nature Photos

[jk96]

A few pics from the stand yesterday.

 

[kenmbz]

Needs a ladder, knew stump was useful.

 

[dj1701]

Here is a couple I took a few days apart.

 

[Thomas]

Taking it easy while keep watch on property.

 

[deserteagle71]

Struttin' across the road....

Paradise Valley, Nevada:

 

[dodge man]

Northern lights are out tonight.

 

[jk96]

Not often we get to see the northern lights here in Missouri. Some 25 second exposures. They were very visible tonight to the naked eye.

 

[dodge man]

My daughter lives in St. Louis and she could see them even with the city lights but the camera brought them out better.

 

[jk96]

My daughter lives in St. Louis and she could see them even with the city lights but the camera brought them out better.

Yeah I almost didn't look. Last time they were mentioned really couldn't see anything. After seeing a few posts on FB I walked outside and was surprised how visible they were. We are outside of the city so that helped.

 

[lman]

All we've got are clouds around here plus 10" of snow.

 

[BnRidge]

Mineral Bluff Georgia.

 

[alpha&omega]

A couple of shots taken of a tree frog atop my bearded irises as he awaits an evening meal.
The last one is actually a rainbow and the light shattering as a following storm goes underneath it.

 

[MossRoad]

Struttin' across the road....

Paradise Valley, Nevada:

View attachment 4393637

I haven't seen a pheasant here in decades.

 

[MossRoad]

All we've got are clouds around here plus 10" of snow.

We had overcast past my bedtime. Our kid in Lafayette got some nice pictures, though.

 

[deserteagle71]

I haven't seen a pheasant here in decades.

That's surprising, being that Indiana is farm country. We had pheasants everywhere when I grew up in Pennsylvania, and they are thick in the farming/ranching areas of Nevada. As are wild turkeys, geese, mule deer and antelope.

Which is why I say "BS" whenever I hear someone saying wildlife numbers are diminishing due to human encroachment/habitat loss. I travel a lot - mostly in remote outback country. And my personal observations are that the numbers of wildlife around farming and ranching areas far outnumber what can be found in wilderness areas.

 

[MossRoad]

That's surprising, being that Indiana is farm country. We had pheasants everywhere when I grew up in Pennsylvania, and they are thick in the farming/ranching areas of Nevada. As are wild turkeys, geese, mule deer and antelope.

Which is why I say "BS" whenever I hear someone saying wildlife numbers are diminishing due to human encroachment/habitat loss. I travel a lot - mostly in remote outback country. And my personal observations are that the numbers of wildlife around farming and ranching areas far outnumber what can be found in wilderness areas.

I gotta ask when's the last time you hunted pheasant in Pennsylvania, as they are experiencing the same thing as Indiana.

From the indiana dnr website...


Hunting

The largest Hoosier harvest of pheasant took place in the 1960’s, when there were massive government farm “set-aside” programs, which resulted in a large amount of habitat. During this time period, over 100,000 pheasants were harvested annually. Since that era, Indiana’s annual pheasant harvest has hovered around 25,000. The decline is due to changes in available pheasant habitat, cleaner farming practices and man’s encroachment into rural areas with concrete and housing developments.

https://www.in.gov/dnr/fish-and-wildlife/files/WMFS_Pheasant.pdf

 

[deserteagle71]

I gotta ask when's the last time you hunted pheasant in Pennsylvania, as they are experiencing the same thing as Indiana.

From the indiana dnr website...


Hunting

The largest Hoosier harvest of pheasant took place in the 1960’s, when there were massive government farm “set-aside” programs, which resulted in a large amount of habitat. During this time period, over 100,000 pheasants were harvested annually. Since that era, Indiana’s annual pheasant harvest has hovered around 25,000. The decline is due to changes in available pheasant habitat, cleaner farming practices and man’s encroachment into rural areas with concrete and housing developments.

https://www.in.gov/dnr/fish-and-wildlife/files/WMFS_Pheasant.pdf

LOL! Last time I hunted pheasant in Pennsylvania was 60+ years ago!

I don't go back there anymore, not since my parents passed away. And now so many neighbors and classmates have passed on also, so no reason to go back. So I don't know what the population of pheasants is in Pennsylvania...but the few times I've been back there I've seen big flocks of wild turkeys and geese grazing what farmlands are left - something I never saw when I was growing up back there. And from my reading I understand the black bear and coyote population has exploded, also two species I never saw as a youngster. And of course - the whitetail deer population is completely out of control - I remember reading there are something like 30 deer for every square mile in Pennsylvania! Why isn't everyone in Pennsylvania eating venison??

So maybe the pheasants just aren't adapting well to "human encroachment", while other species are. When the Navy moved me to Nevada back in the 60s there were huge herds of mule deer everywhere. Now mule deer populations are way down, and antelope have taken over. They are everywhere and in huge numbers. Species that were pretty much non-existent when I moved here 50+ years ago are moving in - black bear and elk and even moose! Yes, moose here in the desert - Nevada opened a moose hunting season last year!

Try counting the antelope in this one herd...just one of many herds in this area:

Pic I took a couple years ago of a cow moose and her calf:

And quail...when I first moved to Nevada it was rare to see quail. Now I bet I have 200 of the little buggers within 100 feet of my house right now. And my neighbors report the same:

So don't ask me why some species are thriving and others are fading away. The "experts" can give us any number of reasons but I think even they don't have the full picture.

 

[MossRoad]

LOL! Last time I hunted pheasant in Pennsylvania was 60+ years ago!

I don't go back there anymore, not since my parents passed away. And now so many neighbors and classmates have passed on also, so no reason to go back. So I don't know what the population of pheasants is in Pennsylvania...but the few times I've been back there I've seen big flocks of wild turkeys and geese grazing what farmlands are left - something I never saw when I was growing up back there. And from my reading I understand the black bear and coyote population has exploded, also two species I never saw as a youngster. And of course - the whitetail deer population is completely out of control - I remember reading there are something like 30 deer for every square mile in Pennsylvania! Why isn't everyone in Pennsylvania eating venison??

So maybe the pheasants just aren't adapting well to "human encroachment", while other species are. When the Navy moved me to Nevada back in the 60s there were huge herds of mule deer everywhere. Now mule deer populations are way down, and antelope have taken over. They are everywhere and in huge numbers. Species that were pretty much non-existent when I moved here 50+ years ago are moving in - black bear and elk and even moose! Yes, moose here in the desert - Nevada opened a moose hunting season last year!

Try counting the antelope in this one herd...just one of many herds in this area:
View attachment 4408644

Pic I took a couple years ago of a cow moose and her calf:
View attachment 4408645

And quail...when I first moved to Nevada it was rare to see quail. Now I bet I have 200 of the little buggers within 100 feet of my house right now. And my neighbors report the same:
View attachment 4408646

So don't ask me why some species are thriving and others are fading away. The "experts" can give us any number of reasons but I think even they don't have the full picture.

Now I'm agreeing with you. We never had turkey when I was a kid. The state had a very rewarding re-introduction program and now there are turkeys everywhere. Similar with white tailed deer. We never saw them as kids, now everywhere. Geese? When I was a kid, a flock of 20 Canada geese landed in the park across the lake from us. They were so rare, they made the news and the Audubon Society came out and photographed them. Today there are tens of thousands. Coyotes? Never back then, many now. One bad winter we had a herd of deer come down from Michigan and winter in the park. Again, out came the photographers, as they were quite rare. I can recall seeing only 1 (one) deer in our area before age 25. Now I have them watching me mow my lawn! We planed mums at the family cemetery plot a few weeks ago, went back two days later to water them and they were all pulled out and laying on the ground... deer tracks everywhere.

On the flip side... pheasant, quail, fox, pretty uncommon anymore. We used to hear Bob White quite often. I'd have to say I haven't heard one in 45-50 years. I have spooked a few of them in southern Indiana, as well as pheasants, but that was 20+ years ago.

 

[MossRoad]

...

So don't ask me why some species are thriving and others are fading away. The "experts" can give us any number of reasons but I think even they don't have the full picture.

I'd guess that geese thrive on office park and residential lawns and drainage ponds, as do deer. Turkey's were just plain hunted out of existence (extirpated) in Indiana around 1900 and were reintroduced in 1956. White tailed deer were extirpated from Indiana in 1893, and there were no deer in the state until they were re-introduced in 1934.

When I was a kid, we had ducks everywhere. Now they are few compared to back then. There are approximately half as many mallards as there were in the 90s. That's being blamed on hybridization with farm ducks, though, not loss of habitat.

 

[EddieWalker]

The moose really surprise me!!