Pileateds, Long-tailed Weasel, NPO (201501010) What else can we find at FCPP

Jamie, Kerri and I agreed to meet down at Fish Creek park@ 10:00 a.m. The hope was we could find a couple of subjects to shoot.  The "celebrity owl" was present and sitting high up in the trees not providing great angles for shots, so we headed out walking. 90 minutes in we found this rooster Pileated Woodpecker. This is the first of the specie that I have found that has the same hair dresser as me.

This will give you an idea of how it gets into such a mess, mine on the other hand is just naturally unruly :)

Not very far away we found his mate. I took some video of her working the bottom of a spruce tree.Let's see if this will load for you, check out Hammering. Please notice how nice her 'doo looks :)

We bumped in some other smaller birds before this little star stole the show as far as we were concerned.

We were in some pretty heavy Spruce tree cove and the skies were threatening snow again so light was at a premium. This was all that I saw of this little carnivore, but it was just enough.

This little critter did a lot of looking around and did very little traveling. It was nice to not have to keep track of it and guess where it might be going. I like this shot as it shows the double ear structure that they have, kind of two earlobes.

This weasel, like others I have seen, licked its lips a fair bit. I know that there are folks out there that like to see a tongue shot or two:)

We left after just 5 minutes, even though a red squirrel showed up and we thought that there may be a hunt about to happen. We thought we would leave the woods to do what they do.  Back at the vehicles the NPO was in a little more cooperative position so I grabbed a couple of shots. Here is one to wrap up this post.

We had a great day and got a little exercise in the process. Put some wild in your life, it will do you a lot of goood.
Turbo