Basking on your cagemate

turkey enrichment

Tito doesn't show much interest in foraging outside lately. Maybe she's slowing down as she gets older, or maybe it's because it's the dead of winter and there's nothing worth foraging for out there. I hung up some grapes for her.

Digital Zoom

My camera (which you all are fairly intimate with) has a digital zoom feature. While it allows me to zoom in 7x (whatever that means) as close, the resulting pictures are pretty grainy. I'm not sure it's worth using at all, but here's a bunch of pictures I took with it. What do you all think of it? (Frankly, I think when I see something far away, I should just have cottonmanifesto take a picture of it.


This squirrel was doing little adorable human things with its hands.

( more pictures )

365 Urban Species. #022: Eastern Hemlock

Urban Species #022: Eastern hemlock Tsuga canadensis

Eastern hemlock has been a prominent resident of the mixed deciduous forest that more or less blankets the east coast of North America for millenia. Happily, though much of the forest has been altered into other kinds of habitat, the hemlock has survived. It has adapted to live in the shade of larger neighboring trees, which translates into an ability to live in the shade of tall buildings. Also, because it is attractive year-round, keeping its leaves (needles) in the winter like most conifers, it is a popular choice for urban landscaping. Unfortunately, an aphidlike insect accidentally introduced from Asia, the hemlock wooly adelgid, is threatening this native tree. A healthy hemlock can live up to 1000 years. A hemlock infested with adelgids may die in four years.

( 3 more pictures )