bringing home dinner or moving puppies to a new home?

2023-03-30 - Fox with captured prey or just moving her own puppies?

2023-03-30 - Coming back for more

This fox came running across my front yard with a small animal in her mouth. She came through a second time with another one several minutes later. I grabbed my camera and went to the front door to wait in case she came back. She came back four more times. Each time with a small, limp animal in her mouth that I assumed were the hapless babies of some other creature living in our neighborhood (I thought they might be the babies of a Fisher Cat that ran across my back yard a few weeks ago).

But taking a closer look at the pictures, I wonder if these are victims or her own pups that she wanted to relocate? The animal in her mouth has a tiny white tip on its tail just like she has.

The fox either cleaned out the nest of some other grieving mother or just moved her own large family to a new home. I’ll never know for sure, but I think she was relocating her family.

I’m referring to the fox as “her,” but I don’t know the gender for sure.

Think about the mental processing for the fox. She had to remember where she made her original den and the location of her new den to make the back-and-forth trips over an extended period of time. She had to engage in forward thinking (planning) after recognizing some inherent risk to her family at the original den. She had to think about where her pups would be safer, then find a location that she felt was better and then begin the extended effort of moving her pups, one at a time, to their new home.

At one point I brought out a tripod to try for some video but she saw it and took a detour through a neighbor’s back yard to get around me. She came back through my front yard after I removed the tripod. Evidently, she wasn’t threatened by me standing alone in my doorway but the tripod looked suspicious.

A lot of nature is going on in my yard all the time. So cool.

Monte

Brian

Brian at Chapoquoit, March 24, 2023

Another great evening at the beach.

Monte

Geese in the Backyard

March 22, 2023

March 22, 2023

This is what was happening outside the kitchen window while I made breakfast yesterday morning.

Monte

surf day?

Paul at Chapoquoit, March 19, 2023

Peter with his wing at Chapoquoit, March 19, 2023

Beautiful, sunny day with west wind at 20 mph. I headed for the beach expecting kiteboarders, and they were there. However, I underestimated how cold the 35 degree F temperature would feel while being fully exposed on the beach in high wind (even though I’ve been doing this for more than ten years). I stayed for about half an hour and got a few shots before my face and hands became too numb to stay any longer.

Monte

unexpected

Near sunset at Chapoquoit, March 16, 2023

Hovering, March 16, 2023

March 16, 2023

March 16, 2023

Sunset Chapoquoit, March 16, 2023

I packed up my cameras in the late afternoon yesterday to go to Chapoquoit but almost didn’t go because the sky was a dull, featureless grey outside the front door. I forced myself to go ahead with the plan because I hadn’t been to the beach in over a week. The evening I experienced was unexpected. First, the sky at the beach was magnificent. Second, a single gull decided that right in front of where I was set up on the shore was where he wanted to spend about an hour fishing before sunset.

How many times in life have we missed a good experience because we made up an excuse not to go out?

Monte

Watson

Watson with his big stick at Chapoquoit beach March 3, 2023

Slipper shells at Chapoquoit beach March 3, 2023

I was trying out a new macro lens by photographing small shells yesterday at the beach. I think they were slipper shells. A man and his dog, a couple that I frequently see at Chapoquoit, came walking past and the dog,Watson, had that big stick in his mouth. He seemed very content with it. I asked if I could take a picture and, as you can hear in the audio segment, the owner worked hard to coax Watson into posing. I finally got a shot on a random pass.

Monte

People I meet at the beach-Andrew

Andrew at Chapoquoit March 1, 2023

This is an idea I’ve been thinking about for several years: collect images and audio from the many people I meet while at the beach. It is stolen (“inspired by” sounds better) from Brandon Stanton and his wonderful Humans of New York project. Others have copied him as well. I’ve been going to Chapoquoit with my camera for years and during that time I’ve had many chance encounters with people curious about what I’m doing. So often they start talking to me and saying extraordinary things that I want to capture, but I usually can’t think fast enough to ask them if I can record them. If I can train myself to be ready for these serendipitous events, I think they would make a nice collection.

Monte

another word for ranting

I have a habit of writing down interesting words when they come up in something I'm reading. Vituperative, an adjective for excessively harsh or abusive criticism, seems like a perfect description of some (not all) of the comments I've seen on social media.

Monte

how nature connects us

At the beach tonight a man came up to me and, after noting my camera tripod, asked me how I knew it was going to be such a special evening? He explained the he'd had a wonderful walk on the beach and just wanted to share the experience, even with a stranger like me. That’s how nature makes us feel - happy.

Monte

fox

In our backyard, February 12, 2023

It is a common experience: I was standing at the kitchen sink washing fruit for lunch and staring out the window overlooking the backyard when something interesting happened. A fox came creeping out of the trees into the open. He was obviously stalking one of the many other small creatures living in my backyard, probably a squirrel.

I hesitated to get my camera because I feared opening the glass door to the backyard would startle the fox and it would run away, but I tried it anyway and, to my surprise, the fox didn’t seem to care. He just gazed over at me with an insouciant stare and then went back to sizing up his prey.

I never saw the animal he was after.

Monte

reimagine

The Beach is my favorite place to sort out the anxieties induced by current events.  Frequently I find myself staring at the ocean and wondering why humanity can't do better?  Why can't we work together toward solving the challenges, many of them of our own making, that threaten us?  The inspiration for this short video happened while watching the sunset at Chapoquoit.

Monte

the edge of the sea

A passage from Rachel Carson's book, The Edge of the Sea, inspired this video. Carson wrote of the sense she got at the beach that the creatures were connected to each other and to their surroundings. As the human impact on Earth produces more environmental calamities, I am hopeful that we can save ourselves from ourselves by learning to appreciate the rareness of a planet like Earth. Carson's love of the natural world is as relevant today as it ever was.

eating crepidula - extended version

I was lucky enough to encounter a couple of marine biologists while photographing the seagulls and sanderlings eating sea snails at Chapoquoit beach. They told me the name of the snails, Crepidula Fornicata, and provided a brief lesson on them as well as a sidebar on the egg case of a Whelk.

Just another great experience at Chapoquoit beach.

Monte