Category: Animals

Wildlife Camera (Part 10)

July 29, 2015

It’s been a while, but once again it’s time for some snaps from our backyard wildlife camera! I dusted it off a couple of weeks ago and put it out on the back patio facing away from the house on an angle. Here’s the first shot on it:

If you think that’s me carefully placing a feeder in shot to attract animals… well I’m guilty as charged!

There were about 90 shots on the camera, about 45% of which were like this…

…and another 45% like this…

Yes that’s me mowing!

The other 10% were very interesting though. Let’s get the squirrel shots out of the way first:

We saw chipmunks (and birds) eating from the feeder as well, but apparently they are too small or fact to trigger the shutter so there were no photos of them.

However it seems the feeder wasn’t just popular with the squirrels and chipmunks. Here’s the night photos (click on them to enlarge):

Strangely I don’t think this is the cat we usually see in our yard. I bet Yossie and Emi know all about this visitor 🙂

That’s a deer, hiding behind the first bowl (which is full of dead branches yes I know and I will clean it up soon!)

That one is a real mystery. It’s small and sleek and probably dark-furred. Could it be a rat? I think it’s too big for a mole (which we have seen in our backyard before). Any ideas?

A possum! And the first clear shot I’ve got of one on our camera! I wonder where he lives?

Another first: a skunk! A little one as well, probably a baby. This is not surprising to us, since we’ve seen skunks in our yard before (even a mother and two babies a couple of years ago), but this is the first time I’ve caught one on the feeder.

These night shots surprised me because of the variety and because in every case there was only one of each animal. There were however a few shots with no visible animal and I wonder if there were things lurking in the dark beyond the range of the sensor that had triggered it. I fiddled with contrast on some of them to explore with no luck. Perhaps it was just the wind?

I love using this camera and the excitement of looking at the photos. I’ll be putting it out again this time for a month or so 🙂

Capy Day

May 24, 2015

We recently learned of an animal park about an hours drive from here and yesterday went to check it out.

This is a family run animal park over about 100 acres with many types of animal on display and a safari ride. How did we never know it existed?

Unlike almost every other park/zoo I’ve been to, you can buy food (ryvita biscuits actually) and feed virtually every single animal. Since most of them are ‘horsey things’ and happily chow down on the biscuits, this means you can get quite close to most of the beasts on display. We gave food to deer, llama, alpaca, goats, giraffes, kangaroos (!), zebra, monkeys and even a wolf!

And these guys…

The capybara family! We knew they had capybara before we visited but were surprised by the fact they had a whole family in such a large enclosure. Mum and dad and the three babies were incredibly adorable and we spent a great while admiring them. To her delight, KLS was actually able to entice the placid mother over for a snack:

Here’s her charming face up close:

The safari ride was a highlight. Although not particularly long, it was very well done (especially the narration) and since we went on the first one of the day the animals were all active and very interested in us:

The camel in the first shot is apparently one of the four biggest in the US, standing almost 9 feet in height! The safari had camels (one and two humps), bison, rhea, goats, pigs, ostriches, several types of antelope and probably a few other things I am forgetting. There were quite a few newborn babies and many eggs in nests. Apparently breeding came early this year due to the unseasonably warm weather we had a few weeks ago.

There were some weird elements to the park. Displays such as the above are common in some of these family run attractions here in the US, and this one was part of a ‘western village’ that included similar things like this…

And this…

It was all weird and creepy, and very, very dated. The mystery is we couldn’t quite work out when it had been built or why it still existed (although to be honest, the many kids there yesterday seemed to love it all). The age of the park in general we couldn’t determine, and there doesn’t seem to be any history online including on their own site. Had I know this yesterday, I would have asked someone.

I was surprised they had giraffes. The enclosure was a bit grim, but it opened out onto the safari so I assume they let them wander around when not on display. As with many of the animals, they happily accepted a ryvita biscuit (or ten) from us:

It’s not a massive park, and it took us about 3 hours to see everything they had (and feed almost all of them!). We enjoyed the place quite a bit and are glad we went.

The Fabulous Owlbear

May 22, 2015

First, read this post Adam did on his blog.

I’ve found a similar example. Here is the owlbear (an owl-bear hybrid monster) as illustrated in the first ever AD&D Monster Manual from 1978:

I have a copy of this book. It’s the 6th printing, from 1980, and was owned by KLS long before I met her. The owlbear in this version of the monster manual looks like this:

Fabulous isn’t it! It’s the only monster in the book that has been coloured in, but we can only dream she had done more as a child 🙂

Speaking of the owlbear… what’s this picture?

Interesting isn’t it? A few years ago it was revealed that some of the unusual monsters in AD&D were based on plastic toys. You can read the full story here (with more wonderful pictures). Based on the toy, and the supposition (which seems reasonable) that the toys were bootleg Ultraman monster toys, it’s obvious the owlbear is nothing more than… a kappa!

The kappa is a japanese water spirit which has a very rich mythology. Here’s an illustration done by Hokusai (famous for his The Great Wave Off Kanagawa) in the early 1800’s:

You can see the resemblance to the toy.

So what of the Ultraman connection? Japanese sentai shows often base their monsters on mythology, and it’s almost certain there is an early Kappa-based foe in one of the first few Ultraman series. I did a search and could only find one before 1978, a kappa-influenced alien named Tepeto in an episode of Ultraseven from 1967:

Not very owlbear-like is he?

So my guess is the original kappa designs (such as Hokusai’s) influenced the chinese toy which influenced the owlbear in AD&D.

What of the owlbear today? Here’s the latest illustration:

A bit literal isn’t it?

Robot Claw