Quail!

Quail show up for a brief couple of months at the end of summer here - they travel in family groups and they're really cute, but man, are they fast. And nervous. They are come and gone in an instant, running on their stretched-out legs and disappearing over a rock or behind a tree, in seconds. They also blend in with the ground and bushes really well, so they're hard to see.

But today I was blessed! My husband saw them and called out to me, and I was able to get some close up shots of a quail right near me, for some reason it either didn't realize I was there or it wasn't scared of me. I quietly opened the back door and click, click, click, I got a few pretty good photos:

I have a photo from last year with three of them running like mad across the lawn, they were over that edge in a second but my camera was quicker:

I hope you'll click, click, click on these photos to see them bigger. :)

I believe the species of quail in these photos are "Mountain Quail", but the photos on the Internet always show much fatter and sleeker quail than I see here in the high Sierra Nevada mountains. However, I did determine that these are not "California Quail" because they don't have the feathers on their fronts that look like fish scales. The main threats to quail are hawks, coyotes and feral cats, not to speak of hungry humans. Hunting is limited to 10 quail a day by permit as I understand it.

I enjoy seeing them each year and hope I can continue to photograph them in the future.

Speaking of Wildlife.... From The House Series

A couple of years ago, I was alone in the house, and I started hearing this deep "wuff, wuff, wuff" sound, it was very strange. So I looked out the kitchen window, and this is what I saw:


Click on photos for a closer view.


I was sure glad I hadn't been outside when I heard that sound! As it turned out, this bear was injured and couldn't step on one of its front paws. I felt really bad for it and I called the Nevada Wildlife department right away. While I waited for them to arrive, I was keeping an eye on it and taking photos. Here are a couple showing the bear trying to make its way down the hill without stepping on that paw.




The story gets interesting because when the wildlife guy arrived and loaded his big scary looking tranquilizer gun, I was fascinated. But this dumb guy decided to wait for the other guy who was driving up the mountain with the cage to put the tranquilized bear into. As you see from the photos, that bear was tagged.... so he already knew about the wildlife guys, somehow. We watched the bear sidle off from a vantage point in my driveway, and I kept asking the guy, "Um, shouldn't you do something before it gets away?", and he kept saying he wanted to wait for the cage guy.

He finally realized that the bear was moving away from my house pretty fast, and decided to go after it. Well, I'm so smart (not!!) that I said, "I'm coming with you!" and since he didn't seem to mind, I went along. There we were, hiking through the mountains above my house, and guess what? No bear. I was amazed! There were large areas of manzanita bushes just above the house and to be honest, that had to be where the bear was hiding out. I'd been watching it move along for quite some time already that morning, and it couldn't move very fast at all.

Well, the dumb guy wouldn't give up, and I just wanted to go back to the house, but there I was, out in the forest with this guy who had the tranquilizer gun, and going back to the house alone with no protection when I knew there was a bear nearby would have been silly. So I had to stick near him for an hour or so, until he finally admitted defeat. Was I ever mad! He had his opportunity when the bear was 20 feet away, and he didn't take it.

So the bear melted into the forest and I went home really dirty and hot and sent the wildlife guy off, hoping someone would give him more training before they sent him out again. The cage guy was by now sitting in his truck down the street waiting to put the bear inside, so he went away disappointed, too.

The bear? Who knows? I'm sure he couldn't do much and since it was already November, unless that paw healed enough for him to walk on it and dig a winter hideaway cave, he may have died from lack of food or perhaps made it through the winter to limp around the following spring on a paw that probably didn't work too well. The best hope I have is that somebody else saw him and called the Nevada Wildlife department, and they sent a smarter person out to deal with this bear. Let's hope that's true. :)

From The House Series

I live in a beautiful place. I really dislike it in the winter but I love it in the summer. It's a huge dilemma for me, without a doubt. :)

Lately I've been seeing really neat photos from the house, and luckily my great camera has been allowing me to catch some of them. So therefore, my "From the House" series of photos is born.

This bird was about 15 feet from me, in the double-trunked Douglas Fir tree we call the Twin Towers that is closest to the house. We've called it that for 24 years, so it isn't a take-off on the 9/11 situation. That tree was small when we moved here, now it's so tall it looms over the house! We estimate that it is around 70 feet tall.

I had to quietly sneak out the door, it took about 10 shots to get a good one of the bird, as it was hopping around in the tree and a little worried about me being there, but finally I succeeded! This species is called "Western Tanager" and they are vibrantly colored in red, orange, yellow and black.

I hope this guy comes back again so that I can get even more photos of him, as he is so colorful and pretty. His "lady" was hopping around in the tree at the same time, only on the far side of it, she was not so brilliant as her man.

Click on the photo for a closer view.