last pic, this one came out pretty well
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Best use of a gopher as far as I’m concerned.
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I had no idea a heron could consume an entire gopher.
That is kind of terrifying.
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I had no idea either until the first time I saw it happen in my yard. I figured they just ate fish and I was kind of wondering why they seem to like my yard so much, but once I realized they eat gophers, it’s like a smorgasbord out there for them. Seriously we have so many go–amn gophers.
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Wow. I have never seen a blue heron eat anything other than fish. Amazing.
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Reminds me of some images in Roman art of chickens chasing or holding mice in their beaks. There’s a lot of “why would chickens be after mice?” when people see those. People don’t realise that chickens will eat anything (oh, and they’re not above cannibalism). There’s a nice video somewhere, which I’m too lazy to look for now, of a cat watching a mouse scurry around when a chicken suddenly leaps in and scarfs it down.
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Great shots! Zoom lens?
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This makes me wish I could give more than one reaction, because I feel like all of them are applicable here
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Zoom yes but not my zoomiest zoom – I didn’t want to take the time to go fish out my extra long lens. I used a Nikon D750 with a 24-85mm lens zoomed all the way in, -2/3 exposure compensation, 5.0 f-stop, 1/2000 second (I generally use aperture priority and let the camera pick the speed).
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I wouldn’t mind crows.
Crows serve a purpose.
But what big black bird do we have around here? Eastern starlings. Which don’t do anything as far as I can tell.
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In Texas they had grackles and my sister loved them. I think she enjoyed the grackles more than the eclipse 
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Yep, we had grackles.
One of the dogs we had when I was a kid would chase the grackles and starlings. My mother would stand at the door, say “icky bird” and off the dog would go, tearing back and forth across the yard as the birds flew away.
All starlings seem to do is scream from the trees.
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We get Starlings and Grackles. The Starlings nested in my vents once. That sucked. They still test the anti-Starling chicken wire vent covers every year, just to be sure.
Grackles fascinate me because of those crazy noises they make. They sound like, I dunno, rusty hinges? When a flock of them show up in spring, the noise is crazy.
Oh, and they march through the woods and flip over all the leaves looking for bugs. That’s pretty fun to watch.
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My last two trips out west were a bit of a disappointment wildlife-wise, but here’s some highlights:
A herd of elk does wandering around Estes Park CO. They’re as common as squirrels.
The buck watching them from across the street.
It looks like an exhibit at Disney, but this mule deer was in Zion Natl. Park.
A gray jay at Crater Lake.
I ran into a small family of bighorn sheep ewes in Glacier Natl Park. It looked like there was a matriarch and a few subesequent generations.
This little one didn’t know what to do.
Yellowstone. This guy just wanted to be noticed.
I’m no expert, but the face on him makes me think he was a grizzly. Sequoia Natl Park.
An amazing picture of a seagull by a friend of mine, somehow surviving running along the rocky Maine coast.
And from the exotic island of Tahiti, this may be a magpie. I’ve never been able to pin it down.
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These are great! (Note: there are no known grizzlies in Sequoia NP, so what you’ve got there is a very handsome black bear. Sadly there are no more grizzlies in California 
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Love that bison pic. Really shows just how tiny their butts are.
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It’s a myna.
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Elk. In Estes Park. Say it ain’t so!
They are everywhere in the foothills. My in-laws have a rather large local herd in their area too.
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