LET IT BE!...LET IT BE!...LET IT BE!

A while ago I posted this photo of our night-time visitor, the Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis). It was eating seeds left over by the birds.  It also gave me a good scare the night before and made me run the fastest 200m dash since my athletic times million years ago.

The moon was full and bright and there was a very light layer of fog gently hovering just about the grassy lawn. It was strangely beautiful fog, only about one to two meters thick allowing me to wade through it with my torso floating above it, all illuminated by the full moon. The fog swayed gently but mostly, everything was quiet and peaceful as if there was not  a single worry in the entire world.

Nights like that do not happen often and when they do it is impossible to stay inside the house. For me at  least...



Such nights always drag me out of the bed, in my night gown (no we do not live in a city), and take me, like a White Lady for a walkabout in the silver light. We live on three acres of rural land.

I was at peace with everyone and everything I could think of; walking from tree to tree, telling them quietly how beautiful they were. Just then I noticed a white piece of paper underneath that translucent silvery fog. 

Ah, people! Why can't they just keep their trash in their own space? I started forward to pick it up and almost did so when, suddenly, it moved!

Huh?

The air was still, not the slightest breeze disturbed my surroundings. My feet somewhere down under the fog came to a stop.

But the paper kept on moving; TOWARDS me! Only then did I notice the dark shadow that was outlining the white.
My brain took two more seconds to register! A skunk!

Three meters away and coming closer!

I whispered something. 
Maybe "hi handsome" or "wow, you fooled me" ....in any case it wasn't offensive and definitely not loud.

The skunk seemed to like it because it kept on moving closer. 

"No, no, no," I said, my feet down there finally starting to back up. 
.....

"No, no!  YOU go THAT way, okay?"

More I tried to shuffle backwards more enthusiastically the skunk advanced. Maybe it liked my shiny-white sneakers moving in the fog. Maybe it was a social creature and needed company. Or maybe it had rabies. 
It was hard to tell.

It all ended up by me taking a mad dash across the two-acre property with the skunk happily trundling behind. Emerging from the fog I cleared the front steps by two at a time, dove into the dark safety of the house and locked the door behind me. 
Silly, I know. 

But it was memorable nevertheless.

A couple years later I met another one - in the morning. No self respecting skunk works during the day! But this one did. Probably a hungry teenager still having to learn a lot about the world.

It was interesting to watch it digging in the dirt, pulling out fat larvae and enjoying the feast. 
That was it! That's why the lawn often looks like someone ran a semi-automatic across it.

Heavy digging was rewarded with a healthy snack. Large fat beetle larvae live underneath the surface, feeding on grass roots all year long. They are active at night; that's when they come closer to the surface (and that's why the skunks hunt mostly at night).

The would-be ground beetle would never see the world in its adult form - not that one anyway. 

Who else might fall a victim to the skunks nightly escapade? Mostly insects but also frogs, worms and earthworms, snails and slugs .... any protein small enough to tackle will do. But fruits and berries, seeds and fungi will do also. Skunk is an omnivore.

Mephitis mephitis. Those words should serve as dire warning. Mephitis means stinky,.

Really, really stinky!

The skunk is like a living weapon equipped with a double barrel positioned right by its rear end. There are two glands underneath its tail that make a weekly supply of very, very, VERY foul smelling gunky, putrid, noxious liquid that can deter most enemies. (Add your own adjectives.) Bad!

And the skunk is also a very accurate shooter! Not only that, it shoots with its head facing in the opposite direction - MOVE OVER Dirty Harry! It can get you with its eyes closed and as far as four meters away!
So ... really ... MOVE.
I certainly did when this one turned its barrels at me - nobody wants to be on the wrong side of this creature!

Mephitis mephitis. How suitable.

Thanks to its rear end charges, skunk does not have to worry about too many predators. I don't think that any creature will try more than once. Bobcat perhaps. 

But they say that Great-horned Owl will take a skunk for dinner. 

A question arises then: do owls have a sense of smell?

NATURE'S BLUES

It is April.
Again!

In British Columbia April means Spring. 
And Spring means that the birds are back! 
They come in drones from their vacation homes "down south". 
Or is it that their vacation homes are here, "up north"?
Call it what you want, they are back and the world seems to be a much happier place.

The first half of April "up here" means, that unlike "down south", most places are still only modestly green or even beige and brown. 
Some are even white! 
But then a dash of the most attractive blue cuts through the landscape!

Bluebirds have arrived!

There are 3 kinds of bluebirds in Canada and 2 of them, the Mountain and the Western live in British Columbia. The third one, the Eastern bluebird, has not conquered the Rockies yet, it can be found in the Eastern part of North America. 

The one above is  Mountain bluebird (Sialia currucoides).

And, below is a pair - Mom and Dad. 
Actually, there was only one mullein plant there and they took turns perching on it for a better view while hunting for insects. Thanks to Adobe Photoshop the 2 images got stitched into a seamless composition (although color-wise they were a bit different to start with). Just overlap the two, go to Edit, Auto-blend images and choose Panorama. Photoshop adjusted the overall tones as well.

 Here they are again, this time both together at once.

Bluebirds, like many other creatures, were almost wiped out once, courtesy of pesticides and other man-made niceties. 
Mountain bluebirds like treed areas with natural nesting cavities. With their habitat disappearing at the fast rate the bluebird species nearly followed the suit.
Thankfully people realized how close was the race to oblivion and began to put up the nesting boxes.
The bluebirds accepted the alternative.

They are quite territorial and willing to defend their home. 

Still, there are other species such as tree swallows, sparrows and starlings (oh, yes!) willing to oust the bluebirds out of the nesting box or a tree cavity. Despite of that, the bluebirds are making a comeback.

I spent several hours trying to take photos of this couple. I tried not to get too close, and since I did not have a blind, I left my camera on a tripod with the long lens aimed and focused on one spot.
Then, remote in hand, I sat far away from the location (my remote will fire the camera a couple hundred meters away) hoping that the bird would show up in the place I chose. 

Seems crazy but it works - at times.
.It is usually  combination of observation and luck, and if you are short on patience don't try!


Anyhow, "my" bluebird was cooperating for a long while; as long as I was far away it did not mind the lens at all. 

Perched on its fence post it searched for bugs, crickets, cicadas, spiders .... no-one was safe. Mom was on the nest and it looked like Dad was feeding them both. 

And I stayed focused! 

Just when I was ready to pat myself on the back for the work well done, "my" bluebird disappeared. It left the post on my left, took a low-curved path right in front of me and did not return for a long time. 
Finally, restless, I looked around - the bird sat perched on a fence post right behind my right shoulder.
Giving the unfaithful bird a piece of my mind I started to collect my stiff body so I could finally retrieve the camera and tripod from the location on the left.





As I straightened up my aching knees I made an eye contact with something much larger than a bird!

Thankfully the bear got as scared as I, turned back and walked away. 
It must have been there for a while; obscured by bushes and grass, peacefully exploring the ditch on my right. 
Where there is a bear there are bugs and the bluebird knew it. It was almost like the food-home-delivery for it, until I spooked the bear. 
I could see both of them, the big dark one, and the shiny-blue little one, working together for a while until they both disappeared behind the bush.

Who said that one cannot learn from the birds?

In another field  another couple  took up a residence. They were cousins to the mountain bluebirds but as far as I could tell, that's where the relationship ended. 
A pair of Western Bluebirds  (Sialia mexicana) decided to raise their family. 
For that, they chose the nest box 35.

Western Bluebirds are not as widely spread as their Mountain Bluebird relatives. They barely clear the border of Southern BC, prefering the western side of USA and Mexico. 
They also prefer lower elevations and more open spaces. But once in a while their territories overlap.

I photographed the two above in the Palouse area (N. Washington State, USA) about 5 years ago. 
The other photos were taken "just across the border" in Southern Interior of British Columbia where Pend Oreille River meets the mighty Columbia. 

By the time I discovered them, they were a very busy couple: both constantly flying in and out, delivering crickets, cicadas, fat caterpillars, spiders, large flying bugs, you name it....

On her way out the female often carried white baby poop to discard it far away from the nest and to keep the premise clean.

Once in a while they met on the top of the nest box as if to communicate about some important next steps.

All seemed well for a couple of days but then I noticed a brewing trouble. 

It was a pair of cute Tree Swallows seemingly quite determined to chase the bluebirds out of the area. They would not attack the bluebirds physically but bullied them enough to make them uncomfortable. The male bluebird would have to take after the bickering swallows just to have them come back a short while later and bicker some more. Annoying!

I did not make it back to the location for a week. But when I did, the bluebirds were gone and the swallow couple was refurbishing the nest box 35. 

It looked like they managed to harass the bluebirds enough to make them leave the nest.

.

I'll sing and protect, you build. OK?

Hard work, this family business! Where is HE, anyway?

.

What happened to the young bluebird family? I have no idea. I found the male perched on a fence post half a mile away. No female, no juvenile bluebirds. 

And since I would not go near the nest box the end of this Nature story is anyone's guess.

For more information about the bluebirds (and other wildlife) in the West Kootenay area check the following site:Dan Reibin, Birds 2015.