Visitors to the Yard

19 November 2012
7:41 AM

Sunrise at	9:42 AM	in direction	140°	Southeast
Sunset at	3:30 PM	in direction	220°	Southwest

Duration of day: 5 hours, 47 minutes (6 minutes, 18 seconds shorter than yesterday)

Hunters love members of the grouse family.  Grouse and Ptarmigan are relatively easy to kill, plump, and tasty (I am told).  That they survive at all is remarkable because they have not evolved to a point where they can easily save themselves.  There are three types of Ptarmigan: Willow Ptarmigan, Rock Ptarmigan, and White-tailed Ptarmigan.  All three can be found in Alaska -- see Alaska ptarmigan facts and photographs.  In the interior there are Ruffed Grouse along the low lying water ways.

Possibly White-tailed Ptarmigan out of the mountains for or Ruffed Grouse
in birch and spruce stands instead of aspen

We only knew they were in the yard because our youngest doberman went berserk.  I let her out, not seeing anything at first.  Then I noticed a big, dark blob in the driveway.  It appeared to be inanimate and my mind thought bird? No, it is not moving.  A burl fell from the trees?  It doesn't work that way.  Someone walked into the yard and left something?  Well, we have had neighbors walk through lately, but that seemed unlikely on a Sunday morning.  Then I saw the other two moving and pecking.

I watched and watched and watched.  Why is that bird just sitting there so still?  Then I thought about the dogs making an enormous ruckus.  They very much wanted to get at those birds for a tasty meal.  I considered strategies that birds had and one of them was to hunker down and attempt to fade into the background.  Could this Grouse/Ptarmigan be doing that?  It was not fading all that well.  The feathers were not fully molted to blend with the background, in fact until I looked at the photos, I couldn't see any sign of white at all.

I brought the dogs inside.  That took some doing because they definitely were a pack in the hunt.  But they finally all came in and stayed in.  I looked out a little after that and the statue had become alive!  That poor creature was attempting to save itself by not moving.  Grouse can fly and do so very well, agile enough to outmaneuver birds of prey.  And two of them did not care one bit that the dogs were carrying on enough to fly, when I went out to take photos, the sound of my camera shutter spooked them.  One by one, all three flew to the north.

Humans are the most dangerous and unrelenting predators on the earth.