Beauty in a Frosty week

"What a dreary day," commented a person I was talking to.  With heavy fog and frost covering everything, from the inside of buildings it may look dark and dreary; but from the outside it is really alive and beautiful.  All wildlife needs to eat to survive as they do not have a fast food joint to stop by to pick something up.

This muskrat and several others were pulling water plants to fill its daily needs

 

Here a Sharp-shinned hawk wait patiently for a hapless bird to come along.

 

A natural flocked fir tree shows which direction the breeze is blowing as it stacks up the frost crystals on the needles and cones.

 

A beautiful Sharp-tailed grouse has been picking up gravel and grain from the side of plowed roads but runs to safety in a snow covered field.

 

A Red-shafted Northern flicker appears to be shivering in a tree where a breezy has removed most of the frost.

 

A beautiful Long-eared owl looks through a frost-laden tree waiting for darkness to gather its supper. 

 

An Evening Grosbeak brings a lot of color to my backyard as he comes in to feed on the sunflower seeds.

 

And this pheasant hen is far from where she should be.  She and her friend, another hen, were found roaming the banks of the Henrys Fork of the Snake River between St. Anthony and Ashton.

 

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and sometimes you must leave the confines of buildings to see it.  Just a couple of days in the wilds of Idaho during a "dark and dreary" week.  Thanks, God, for sending all this beauty for us to enjoy.

Sharp-shinned hawk attack

Wednesday as I was eating dinner, I watched a Sharp-shinned hawk attack a starling.  Life in the world of nature is both cruel and interesting.  This was both of them. 

I watched as the hawk tore off the legs of the live starling.  By the time I ran down stairs to get my camera and got out behind a shed, the hawk was tearing off the head as the starling still struggled minus its already eaten legs.

As I slowly approached, the hawk flew up on a log to finish its dinner.

All that was left of the starling were legs, feathers and the head.

The next day it was back again.  Only this time I found him in a tree with another starling.  He can stay in my yard as long as he leaves the goldfinch, chickadees and evening grosbeaks alone.

Another great time in the wilds of Idaho.