rodolfosalinas's Favorites

This one hurts. A lot!

NOT the way I wanted to get a Cook County Barn Owl for this year, but looks like a hungry Peregrine got it first.

My sincere thanks to Greg Neise for his astute awareness that though this wouldn’t count for any birder’s Big Year, for iNaturalist, the bar is lower than “living, wild and unrestrained.” INat just requires the organism is wild, not cultivated, with proof of the organism that a peer can confidently ID.

Nice Cook County tick, sad it is such a rare bird that’s dead.

These remains were collected 12/6/2020. and are now part of the ornithology collection at The Field Museum in Chicago.

After spending over a week canoeing and camping in Temagami, Ontario, on July 14, 2012 we arrived in Toronto at about 7:00 pm; as always, Catherine moved her van from her driveway as I was going to park there. As I was very slowly backing up into her driveway, I suddenly felt that one of my tires ran into something in the driveway and I was unable to continue. I got out of the car and saw a big, dead raccoon lying next to the rear car’s wheel. Initially, I thought that perhaps the raccoon was simply hiding under Catherine’s van, seeking shade, and as Catherine was moving the van, she inadvertently ran over it. But once we closely examined the hapless creature, we immediately discovered the cause of its untimely demise: apparently, it had found a big empty peanut butter jar, which had some traces of peanut butter inside, so the raccoon obviously attempted to get whatever was left inside the jar by inserting its mouth inside the jar, which got stuck… unable to remove it, the raccoon simply suffocated! Catherine’s father was not aware of this incident, but said that indeed, Gabby the dog was somehow attracted to something on the other side of the parked van! Catherine called the City of Toronto and the raccoon was removed overnight.

The second photograph is the same, but much bigger.