"What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked." -Aldo Leopold
“No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affection, and convictions. The proof that conservation has not yet touched these foundations of conduct lies in the fact that philosophy and religion have not yet heard of it. In our attempt to make conservation easy, we have made it trivial.”
-Aldo Leopold-
“How many mouths Nature has to fill, how many neighbors we have, how little we know about them and how seldom we get in each other’s way! Then to think of the infinite numbers of smaller fellow mortals, invisibly small, compared with which the smallest ants are as mastodons.”
-John Muir-
“Red-shouldered Hawk Nest, SNR 2012”
Although I still have quite a few images from this year’s nest in my “to process” list, this one may be my favorite pic for the year. In this image the smallest chick, who was always the last to be fed, is looking up at mom and seeming to wonder where her share of the latest kill was. Mom is taking a break after tearing apart and passing out the meat. She has a look around before taking again to the wind to find more. While watching the nest I was always excited to see this small one be able to swallow down a large piece of meat and I was always prompted to send the camera’s mirror flapping.
“Hungry Eyes”
Monday greetings, human. Another great day at work instead of taking pictures of birds. I heard the migratory songbird fallout was quite nice around the St. Louis area today. Good thing I was at work. One or two days a week being able to do what I want just doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. I will have a week’s vacation coming up next month, but that seems a long way off.
Anyway, I’m finally getting around to processing some photos of the Red-shouldered Hawk nest I photographed over several weeks this past May. Here, this little one is showing off one of those innate behaviors. I’m sure those of you with human babies wish they could do something like this a lot earlier than they do. Have a great week.
“Red-shouldered Hawk Nest”
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 