Images from:
1 bluebird of bitterness (Scruffy)
2 WDS (Red Shouldered Hawk) The female did buzz me the other day while I was standing in the front yard, so close I could’ve touched her. She didn’t make a sound. All I felt was a blast of air and a view of her feathered empennage during her departure.
3 Principal Poop (Great Blue Heron) Snapped a pic of this Great Blue Heron on Naples, FL beach a few weeks ago. I think they are majestic and beautiful.
4 Truckbuddy (Red Fox)
5 systemically confused (Kilo and Logan)
6 Mansfield Lovell (Auggie Doggie) at the vets this morning
7 Cisco Kid (Mystique and Bailey) chilling at Grannies House
Do you want to submit your critter pictures for a future Sunday Critters? Please email them to:
They must be a picture you (or family/friend) took and are willing to have us publish them on this site. Do not send any images you found on the internet.
Use ‘Critters’ in the subject line. Include your screen name in the body of the email. Tell me the name of your critter so I can include it with your screen name. Let us know in the comments any other info you want to share!
NEEDED: If you send me pictures for any of the following themes, please tell me the name of the theme they are for.
- Critters posing for their ‘portraits’ – Please have your pictures in to me by Friday Noon.
- Assimilated by the Borg – Critters with glowing eyes from the camera’s flash
Thanks to all who submit their critter photos!
Happy Sunday…. Good Morning IOTWrs..
Thank you Claudia. Always a treat.
Nicely diverse!
Good way to start the week.
Thanks, Claudia!
Thanks as always Ms. C!
Great photos, Claudia! I’m always happy to see the pets of this group. My hat is off to the Heron shot, they are nervous birds.
Happy Sunday everyone!
Good morning and happy Sunday!
Cool critters, as always Mrs. C!
Good Morning, it’s a great day everyone especially with all of our friends of fur and feather. God Bless and Thank You Claudia. 🕊️❤️🙏😉
Once, the DirecTV kept blinking in and out, the RS Hawk was sitting on the receiving arm of that dish. I finally had to go out and shoo her away lol. Great pics you guys!
Hawk: “There’s a fox in the yard!!!”
Cats: “Really?”
Dogs: “Yawn…where’s my treat?”
Great Pics, Claudia! Love Sunday morning Critters show!
God Bless us all!
💕
Mornin'(still), everyone…and great pics.
@WDS – amazing what they sometimes will decide to CLAMP onto?? Cold, or hot, rigid metal…hmmm.
@Principal Poop – EXCELLENT shot, you have it all there, the fore, mid and back round, with the subject in perfect focus. Herons are my fave to photograph and observe, I call them ‘majestically mangy’.
@Truckbuddy – nice profile!
Pat on the head to the domestic ones posted…
Thanks C!
Ghost
Love all the pictures (as usual) but Mansfield Lovell is Augie Doggie okay??
Wow, Scruffy looks a lot like my KC.
Do Dogs Deserve this Label. Have they earned this song?
I Think My Dog’s a Democrat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3VLqLLWxbQ .
Claudia. Before your next animal post, I’ll send you a close up picture to put up of my Petey B’s favorite critter, my unbleached elastic starfish!
Nice pictures – great to see them and thanks to those that took them. Awesome shot of the heron…looks to me like it’s wading through a lake rather than the ocean. Maybe one of the Great Lakes? Oops, never mind, now I see it was taken in Florida.
Regarding birds who clamp on to anything….I’ve heard they can perch on high tension wires without harm. I don’t know if its true or not. Anybody know?
Principal Poop of More Science High approves of all the beautiful pics. We were walking on Naples Beach (on the Gulf) and this great blue heron could not have cared less. It was as if he struck a pose for us. They are so beautiful and majestic. The pelicans always bug the shit out of you for a handout. Gulls, too. The herons are the only republicans in the bunch.
@Timbuktu – I hope this helps. If you mean electrical wires it has to go with being ‘grounded’…
https://sciencing.com/dont-birds-electrocuted-electric-wires-5180022.html
@Principal Poop – they also take no shit and will EAT anything smaller than it, herons that is…the wingspan when flying is some else to watch, the low lumbering strokes. They have these rookeries they mate and live in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4UIwy0wsBs
They are the Lords of the Swamp(s).
@ TimBukTu”….I’ve heard they can perch on high tension wires without harm. I don’t know if its true or not. Anybody know?”
Of course it is true. It’s just a wire. As long they are only touching (perching) on one power phase. If they could touch 2 phases at same time, they’d become a direct short circuit, and transform instantly into either crispy critter, or bits and pieces of crispy critter.
People do it too. But they have a trickier process to follow to get onto or off of the H.T. line. They have to use a “magic wand” to equalize the voltage potential between themselves, their helicopter ride, and the H.T. line, before crawling onto the wire. Or back off.
765,000 volt line, no problem.
I don’t know if birds perch on these lines. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at power lines that high. I’m pretty sure I have seen birds sitting on 345,000 and 69,000 volt lines. And definitely seen them on 7.200 volt lines that run through residential neighborhoods.
A 765k volt power transmission line run north-south a little west of my house. They emit quite a flash when one phase breaks and lands on the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YmFHAFYwmY .
Fun around or on a bit lower voltage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIrcRu-dsV0 .
@Blink
Thanks for the information. I knew as much about Hi Voltage as about particle physics – nil.
Now, a tad bit more.
@Blink
The videos were amazing – but I would not like that job, as it combines height and electricity…no thanks. I imagine it takes nerves of steel and an acute attention to detail in getting on and off those wires. It looks like one mistake in procedure could be deadly.
@Ghost
Thanks – interesting articles – so if a bird sits on a wire and somehow touches ground or a different wire – it’s curtains.
Related and sad story – a star college basketball player in California a few years ago came across a live wire laying on the ground (knocked down from winds, I think) sparking all over the place. There were people nearby and he tried to protect them by moving it away. He picked it up and he died pretty quickly. Poor guy. He only wanted to help.
@Blink
Maybe you know this. When power companies have to string wires over a deep canyon or valley, or a wide river, how do they do it? Nowadays I suspect they may use helicopters, but what did they do before they had helicopters?
If they do it from the floor of the valley in a manual fashion, and if the canyon/valley is wooded, how do they get the wires up high enough so that they don’t get tangled up in the tree branches?
How they manage to string wires across wide obstacles is a mystery to me.
These are making me miss my own pup.
Buster was a very good dog indeed, someday I hope I can find another dog as sweet as he was.
@TimBukTu – Maybe you know this. When power companies have to string wires over a deep canyon or valley, or a wide river, how do they do it?
The 765k volt H.T. transmission line near my house was installed about 35 years ago. Large sections of the towers were assembled in a field about 5 miles away, and carried to the mountain tops by large heavy lift helicopters. Similar to the method shown in the below video. Except the towers here are a different design. The base is a V-shape, that the helicopter carried as one assembly. Ground crews would attach the support cables. Later the helicopter would carry in the cross piece assembly that sat on top of the V-shaped base.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTfx9n2ImMc .
I did not see how the power wires (cabels) were installed. I think I was working out of state when they were pulled in. Recently traveling across Ohio we passed a place where we could see new power towers on both sides of the highway. At the highway on either side were a pair of tall poles with cross piece. There purpose appeared to me to be to hold the power line off the highway, and high enough for traffic to pass underneath them, while the wires were pulled in, until they were pulled up tight.
But I do not know exactly how the install the power cable were pulled into place here. They are quite heavy. Each power phase is actually 4 cables kept separated by X-shaped insulators. And there are three phases. I think helicopter can only install pieces (pulleys) needed for the lines to run through but the pulling is done be heavy ground based equipment. Perhaps they do something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sMfrxdJfn8 .
Also close to my house are older H.T power transmission lines. 345k volts (I think) that were installed, I think, in the 1930s. The old timers told horror stories about that work.
When they were ready to pull in the lines the construction company purchased ever horse and mule they could purchase. They used several pairs of them to pull in the lines. But as the tension on the lines increased the lines of course were pulled up off the ground. And once they started pulling the lines. They did not stop. I was told sometimes pairs of horses were pulled up into the air, hanging on the lines. Which of course killed them. They were later cut loose to fall to the ground. People tried to purchase them back after seeing the abuse. But only the ones that survived were sold after the work was completed. Brutal, but also back at that time companies did not care about their human employees either [read about construction of the Hover Dam]
About 4 years ago during a severe storm at about 11 p.m. one of the phase lines on the 765k volt line broke. There was a tremendous “boom” and a very bright flash of light.
I have no idea how the power company did it. But by day break they had repaired the broken line and had the power line re-energized. You can hear them humming on damp days. The line runs across a mountain valley that runs east to west. The two towers supporting them set on mountain tops to the north and south side of the valley. With binoculars you can see where the power lines were spliced back together. Impressive work completed in the dark. On heavy cables that are several hundred feet above the ground when pulled back up into place.
Oh, btw, I have never seen the guys crawling along on one phase of the 765k volt power lines, but my neighbors have told me they have seen them a couple of times.
And every few years helicopters with long saws hanging below them on cables come through trimming the trees on each side of the power line right of way. They should be due to come again soon. But last year I saw them working in Pocahontas county where we have a vacation house. That is fascinating work, too.
https://illumination.duke-energy.com/articles/helicopter-with-saw-trims-trees-from-the-sky .