roboraptor's Favorites

I was hoping to see an owl today. But not like this. Just lying dead in the middle of the trail.
I said a prayer that it hadn't suffered and made my apologies for the indignity before photographing it. Gently repositioned it to see if there was any obvious cause of death.
Didn't appear scrawny and overall looked in good condition to my uneducated eye.
(Feathers on the back of the head show as very disturbed in photo 12, but that's just from turning the bird. That shot is to show the bird's size vs. my hiker.)
Moved it off the trail.
Reported to the Central Ohio Owl Project and the county park system.

Turtle was almost certainly hit by vehicles coming in and out of the beach access parking lot located very near to here (the dead turtle was located just outside the lot, on the road, at the turn-in point).

I saw 2 turtles this day; the 2nd was alive and heading quickly to a burrow that is located in the forementioned parking lot; unfortunately, there’s no “real” curb separating the grassy areas of the parking lot from the driving surface (just a very small and low asphalt hump). In the very short time I was at the lot today, a car drove across the grass and back onto the parking surface — although this particular car did not drive over the burrow (as the car was on a different grassy part of the lot), the situation paints a picture of the useless “curbs” (which are really just small bumps) and the unprotected burrow.

Perhaps a turtle warning sign could be installed, and the burrow sectioned off. Adding a real curb would be another consideration. In addition to the camera photos, I took a couple phone photos to ensure as precise a GPS as possible.

—>My observation for the burrow (live turtle) is here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/160139557

—>Click the “i” on a photo to access the observation for the dead turtle.

1.0 AUSTRALIA

1.5 South Australia, ssp berigora
Goyder’s Lagoon Area, near one of the Diamantina main channels, 1 seen in tree around waterhole, light phase, Waypoint 69, 28 m, photo, 31 December 2003.

A pair of Red-shouldered Hawks established themselves here in late February and the Broad-winged Hawks have just returned - trying to stake out a territory. The Red-shouldered got the worst of this aerial jousting, but there will be more encounters and, hopefully, these birds will again arrive at a truce.