backyard dinosaur #7

a Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) i saw stealing food from around our mountain OH-lympic venue (cross-country skiing coming soon!)

backyard dinosaur #6 a quick tale...

today's backyard dinosaurs started off as a random bird snap shoot, and turned into an epic tale of life and death and more life...

i spotted a mother mallard duck and her cute little chicks, and was trying to snap some nice shots of them. however mommy duckie did not want me anywhere near her babies. fair enough i guess, but this would lead to the upcoming drama... for despite all the other stuff around us, momma duck decided i was the scariest thing around even though i was just taking pictures from a distance (i love my new 20x zoom camera!), so she missed the greatest threat to her ducklings...

a minute or two after i started following the ducks, a magpie showed up, and started hovering VERY close by mamma duck and her ducklings. the magpie (i think a female as well... my reasoning for this will be clear at the end) was acting very predatory. i would know too... if you don't believe me just look at its stance in my picture here, not too hard to imagine a raptor looking the same way before a kill!

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moments after i took this picture (seriously a second at most!) the magpie pounced one of the ducklings, grabbed it by the neck and flew off with it. mamma sort of tried to defend it, but because she'd been so busy worrying about me, she was in the wrong spot and couldn't really do anything.

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my first reaction was shock. then i felt sorry for the poor duckling, and by extension its mother who was now clearly very stressed and confused.

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i quickly came to see the magpies as evil, and watching around me the villains were everywhere. the commotion caused by the ducknapping had empowered every magpie in the area, and half a dozen of them were now making plays to try and grab their own baby birds.

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less than a minute after the duckling incident i snapped this picture of a canadian goose warding off a probing magpie (the gooslings can be seen just behind the goose). the blighters were everywhere.

i was beginning to really side with all the poor water fowl, when wandering around the bend of the pond i encountered the cause of the magpies actions...

the magpies had their own chicks. they to were mammas and their offspring themselves needed food. despite the ducklings and gooslings not being nicest source, they were providing for these baby magpies...

i suddenly had a new respect for the event i had witnessed. there was no good guys or bad guys. the duck wasn't necessarily a victim. both sides had needs and wants, and though these may infringe on the others, they were both entitled to try and meet them.

so despite the poor duckling giving up its life, its death had allowed the next generation of magpies to carry on (at least for now...).

the cycle of life, i think one might call this.

backyard dinosaur #5

man oh man... i've fallen way behind on my posts!

all i can say is when you see the results of the first round of the OH-lympic ice hockey and the aftermath, you'll understand why i haven't been able to post as much as i'd been hoping too... stay tuned!

getting myself back on track here is july's installment of backyard dinosaurs (yes i know its supposed to be weekly, but we've run out of those)...



a steller's jay (Cyanocitta stelleri) i saw hanging the mountains of vancouver.

backyard dinosaurs #4

today's backyard dinosaurs focuses on diversity...


while looking out at the bird feeder today i saw a whole bunch of different types of birds. from left to right was a house sparrow (Passer domesticus), ruby-crowned kinglet (Regulus calendula), and purple finch (Carpodacus purpureus).

this got me thinking to how many different birds live together in just the yard! you'd think in such a small space they won't have enough different things to eat or roles to play. yet even just in my bird feeder they were all able to find different seeds to eat, and each went about eating them their own way! (the kinglet wouldn't have been able to eat if not for the sparrow kicking lots of seed out of the feeder for example... where the finch was able to do its own thing regradless of the other two).

so next time your out and about look at all the different birds that live in the same area, and thing about how they all coexist and interact with one another!

backyard dinosaur #3

a cute little mountain chickadee (Poecile gambeli) (or at least i think that is what it is), i saw flittering around the figure skating venue.

backyard dinosaur #2 (delayed)

okay, enough is enough traumador! this is the second time this year i've let my weekly dose of birds fall behind. the OH-lympics have been tying me up a lot more than i thought they would!

so again on with my revamped bird segment. all focusing on scott sampson's concept of "backyard dinosaurs".

this time around i spotted this rather pretty great blue heron (Ardea herodias) while wandering around vancouver harbour.

today's backyard dinosaur challenge is try to spot a bird everywhere you go... i think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find our avian friends are ever present (unless your a deep sea driver or an astronaut :P)

Backyard Dinosaur #1

i've been a bad little dinosaur. i haven't been keeping up with my cousin of the week feature. not just for a little while. for a whole four months!
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so rather than be dishonest about keeping up with that project, i'm going to reboot it into a new format. after hearing a talk by Dr. Scott Sampson, i've been really enamoured with his concept of birds being "backyard dinosaurs". so that's what i'm going to call my bird feature of the week from now. (as for my encounter with dr. sampson, stay tuned it's coming up in the olympics!)
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our first backyard dinosaur is this little downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens). i found it due to the rhythmic taps its beak made on the telephone pole , as it tried to bore through the dead wood to get at some insect or insect larva borrowing inside.

(as a big part of dr. sampson's message about backyard dinosaurs is for people to try and discover lessons from nature in our own lives... i'm going to include a small backyard challenge for you each week. if you have a great backyard discovery tell us about it in the comment section!)

backyard challenge:

take 5 minutes one day and watch what sorts of birds come into your backyard and which parts and things in your yard they make use of.

i bet you'll be amazed at how adaptive all those birds are, and just how things in your backyard they make use of. human made or natural! my woodpecker was making heavy use of that phone pole, something we usually take for granted everyday as a people thing, not used by nature at all...

my cousin of the week #29

a new zealand tui, or Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae. the common name tui is the traditional maori name for these beautiful and energetic birds.

i wasn't the first to visit the zoo this week!

the zoo was just about to close as i walked past the african display once more. my spirits were still somewhere in the upper atmosphere after catching up with norman a. centrosaur.

little did i realize i was about to be thrown the weirdest, luckiest, and yet oddly sinister curve ball imaginable.

as i passed the ostrich enclosure, i casually called out to the now relaxing ostriches (most of the zoo's visitors had already left for the day) "hello there!"

i of course didn't call this out in english, but rather bird speak. birds' fundamental language is just a heavily accented variation on coelurosaurian, the basal language or all bird ancestors. so i can make a half descent crack at talking to birds.

much to my surprise my simple hello invoked a very excited response from the ostriches!

"another ancient!" they excitedly chattered to each other.

this wasn't the first time an ostrich had called me an ancient (actually it is worth mentioning this isn't the first time i've talked to an ostrich full stop!)

though i was puzzled by their saying 'another'? that would imply they'd seen another dinosaur besides me around here... they could only have meant norman.

"i am an ancient," i agreed, pronouncing everything slowly as neither side of the conversation was speaking exactly the same language. "who was the other?"

ostriches liked hearing i was an ancient, but they were shocked when i asked who the other was. they all gossiped between each other, but as they were speaking fast and all at once i didn't catch much of it.

i ventured "the one with the horn on his nose," they looked even more confused. i repeated that sentence acting out a horn on my nose.

finally the head ostrich (man that sounds funny hehehehe) stated. "not the prey item," which was just plain weird. one, ostrichs eat small things like bugs and lizards, norman who weighed as much as this whole flock put together and thus a little out of their menu range. two, it sounded more like something a full grown theropod would have said (though maybe a different word then item... but i might have mistranslated that).

the ostrich answered my question. "a copy, greater sized, of you."

a bigger me... another tyrannosaurus rex!?! my suspicions immediately went to larry, but this was slightly silly. there were several more vivus t-rexs in the world (most of whom i'd met mind you).

after trying to get a name out of the ostrich several times, it just kept replying with colours... which baffled me, till it clicked in my brain. he was giving me a description of his previous visitor. based on this it sounded like a daspletosaurus to me...

which meant there'd been a member of the primoridal feather here at the zoo recently!

indeed prompting more of the story out of the ostrich there had indeed been a visitor from the pack not 3 days ago! due to the language barrier i wasn't able to get more out of the ostrich than the lot of them had been visited by "an ancient who wished to earn favouring of us".

why would a tyrannosaurid care if a bunch of ostriches liked it or not. in my experience big vivus tyrannosaurids were just as likely to eat anything different from them, than befriend it.

"she come to inform us kindly, that the prophecy much closer then ever dreamed possible."

"what prophecy?" i demanded... my last ostrich had said something about legends among the modern birds to due with dinosaurs. only she didn't know much more then that. these ones sounded like they knew a lot more!

the ostrich eyed me suspiciously. "the promise of the ancients to return and take back world that was once ours."

what did that mean? trying to get more details out of this group of ostriches didn't go so well. "you not know legend of the prophecy of return?!? i not sure i like you." with that they walked off, and won't answer anymore of my questions.

not that i had a lot of time to pester the bird brains. a couple of minutes later a zoo security guard politely insisted i make my way out of the zoo as it had officially closed 5 min ago.

as i headed out i had a chill down my spine. the pack of the primordial feather was indeed in town, just as ruffled feather had suspected. more to the point if they were popping by the zoo to boast to ostriches about enacting legends of world domination then whatever they had in this "crate" of theirs must have been as dangerous as ruffled feather was fearing. (though what i want to know is that how a legend about dinosaurs returning got started in the first place? how could any of the prehistoric ones have known about us vivus ones popping up millions of years in the future???).

this all brought me back to the task of tracking down the pack here in calgary. i'd put it off as cowtown is a HUGE city, and i hadn't seen any reason to try and futilely search it for the pack which might or might not be here. however now i knew for sure the pack was in town, and more to the point i now had a couple reasons to believe this crate was mega bad news. not only the legend of today but the fact the pack had tried to kill me in drumheller when they thought i was getting too close.

it was on... even if i didn't want it too be... i was going to have to track down the pack and somehow take this crate and its contents away from them!!!

to be continued... getting some backup

my cousin of the week #28

a blue penguin in its nest borrow. these guys have a lot of names throughout the south. formally it is a Eudyptula minor, otherwise it can be called a little penguin, a fairy penguin in aussie, little blues, and kororā in māori.

my cousin of the week #27

a variable oystercatcher in new zealand, aka Haematopus unicolor, or a torea-pango to the maori.

my cousin of the week #26

a pūkeko and her chick, in new zealand. pūkeko is the māori name for what can also be called a purple swamphen or a Porphyrio porphyrio.

calgary zoo- various exhibits

this is the last of my tour posts about the calgary zoo. not that i've done a good job covering the whole place mind you. in fact, i'm embarrassed to say, this is the worst review i've done (and i've covered a lot of museums, aquariums, and museums here before!)...

though i have a good excuse as you'll see at the end of the post. i had a very unexpected distraction during my visit, which caused me to not visit everywhere. the most noteworthy section i missed was the canadian wilds, which is an excellent gathering of canada's diverse (but mammal dominated) wildlife.

i did make it through a lot of the eurasia section...

one of the hold overs from my hatchlinghood was the flamingo pond. these guys always crack me up... even if these ones aren't made of plastic and on a lawn! if i ever get a house i need to get some. real or otherwise...

the calgary zoo has always made a big deal of its elephant enclosure, which had been upgraded and renovated since the last time i'd been. it is now elephant crossing. i have to say for the elephants the change in home was a real plus! they have way more space to do stuff in... or it might just be that we the public can now see it all...

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in any case i was pretty impressed.

it also has a healthy dose of cute, in the form of a baby elephant. the calgary zoo has a pretty successful elephant breeding track record, as i can think of at least 2 other babies in my lifetime!

sadly it was not all happiness in elephant crossing. a new tank had been put in for these rays, only there'd been a lot more of them in it when it first opened!

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out of 48 rays put in the public petting tank, shortly after being settled in all but two of them died! total bummer!!!

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making even more sad, due to the tragedy the public was no longer allowed anywhere near the tank. i had to take this shot on extreme digital zoom (hence the fuzziness... sorry, best i could do).

outside elephant crossing you hit a lot of outdoor enclosures. many of these are open year round, as the animals contained within are pretty hardy and adapted to the cold.

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i felt dumb going in, as i had a starring contest with this owl. why i felt dumb...

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1. owls don't blink anywhere near as often as i have to!

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2. i always think of owls as really smart, and looking at one for a while makes me feel like someone more intelligent then me is looking at me scoldingly for my tiny brain...

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moving on, there is also a small herd of the incredibly rare przewalski’s horse from mongolia. these guys are on the brink of extinction, mostly due to interbreeding with domestic horses :(
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turning around from the horses i was confronted with this swarm of sparrows.

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sure sparrows, the introduced pest they are here in canada (and most other places of the world!), are not typically associated as zoo animals. to be fair these ones weren't on display, or part of the official zoo tour. yet there were just SO many of them i had to include a photo of the mega flock... so there is a record of why i didn't make it out of the zoo alive!

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there was also the largest of goats, the markhor. which like, sadly, so many other creatures at the zoo are on the brink of extinction. you humans really need to smarten up. please?...

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next came the tiger enclosure. another classic zoo area.

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as i passed through this public viewing area, i caught a funny yet familiar scent. with my t-rex nose i can pick up all sorts of things. sadly as i haven't been out in the "wild" so to speak, i've learned to properly separate conflicting smells. the zoo with so MANY different types of animals in such a small area represents quite an overload for me, and i just don't know how to pick them all apart.

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yet there was a trace scent here in this spot that lingered with me.

rather then let this smell ruin my trip i went to watch the tigers. lucky for me they were in the middle of eating!

it was neat to watch one of the modern apex mammalian predators do its thing. way different from how i eat. these guys are all forelimb based manipulation. me i'm lucky if i can scratch my eye with my arms most of the time!

suddenly there was a shift in the air, and the scent that had bothered me earlier was much stronger... whatever was the source of said smell, was obviously getting much closer!

even the tiger reacted, and looked up alertly to check what was coming.

i knew that smell!

as i turned around from behind me came a powerful bellow... followed by a gruff angry voice. "traumador the tyrannosaur," the intruder addressed me by name! "you've got a lot of nerve, showing up at my zoo unannounced!!!"

turning around i let out, what i'm sure was a very loud audible, eep. towering over the public viewing area, was now the bulk of a massive bull ceratopsian... which instinctively had me slightly panicked! as the horned dinosaurs can be a titch on the reactive side. especially when facing down their ancestral predator...

however i remained calm. in fact i was suddenly overwhelmed with joy!

no i wasn't going crazy or craving an early death... as again with any other ceratopsian i'd have been concerned at the situation, me pinned between it and a tiger proof fence...

this wasn't just any ceratopsian though... this was norman a centrosaurus, and boy did the two of us have a lot of catching up to do!

to be continued with an odd old friend...

calgary zoo- australia

i won't be covering the whole zoo. due to distracting circumstances (next post) i only visited and took photos of about half the zoo. though this saddens me a little, i at least had seen all the missed sections before.

however i do one more section of the zoo i have good photo coverage of. that is the australian house. though this is a misleading name. in addition to having many critters from down under proper, for whatever reason the calgary zoo has lumped in several animals from south america as well...

in good news this building hasn't changed much since i was a hatchling. including my favourite the kangaroo pit.

which of course has a number of kangaroos wandering around within it! red kangaroos to be precise, as there are quite a few different types to potentially choose from.

the kangaroos aren't alone down there though. their kept company by my favourite flightless bird, emus.

their cheeky fluff balls. they are constantly scouting the enclosure perimeter for shoe lace or toes to peck at. as again this outdoor enclosure is a pit, and thus we looking at the animals are high above them. putting your shoes at emu height. so when here watch out when they are close... :P

inside they have the reputed (but unconfirmed or deserving) "most dangerous modern bird", the crested cassowary. i think it is sad they have earned this reputation.

though they have a very sharp claw on their foot (much like a raptor dinosaur) that they do use for kicking threats, they don't seek out things to attack. more to the point the australian cassowary is the one under constant threat, and is on the brink of extinction...

i also liked this cute little blue tongued skink!

i'm embarrassed to say i took the photo of this guy, thinking how cool his pose was. however now coming to the blog post i can't for the life of me, remember what he (or she) was! i have trouble keeping mammals apart at times!

the little cavy was unbelievably cute, but hard to photograph... seriously out of the 10 photos i took of it this was the only one that turned out! at least i got it...

finishing off the whole building was the cool nighttime/nocturnal house, in which they simulate night conditions for a variety of animals that prefer the darker times. of course my camera wouldn't really work in here, so you'll just have to enjoy this attempt at an arty shot of a silhouetted frog.

calgary zoo- african rainforest

wrapping up the calgary zoo's african complex, we hit the transalta rain forest centre.

right away in the front entrance they have some cool reptile displays.

such as this rather fancy chameleon. i'd look as smug as him if my skin could change colour like his!

there was one case though, i couldn't spot anything at all in... oh well.

i favourite of the reptile greeters (who admittedly were further into the building) were my distant ancestors the crocodiles. these were west african dwarf crocodiles to be precise.

still kind of neat to think my kind came from something similar to one of those guys millions of year ago!

here's a better picture of them here.

moving right along was a very pretty tank of african river fish. this being a zoo's aquarium, had me totally onboard with this section of the zoo! if there is nothing i like more than an aquarium, i haven't found it yet!!!

next you enter an indoor aviary. sadly as it is indoors, it doesn't quite live up to melbourne zoo's or even the one in invercargill's botanic garden's aviary. though many of the birds here were cool...

i especially liked the african spoonbill. i have a weakness of spoonbills, which may not be my favourite type of cousin, they are still high on the list. i have to say this african genus looks a lot more dignified then their australasian cousins the royal spoonbill!

this building of the zoo also housed the gorillas... oh how i hate gorillas! (if you're wondering why just watch any [good] version of king kong, and you should be able to figure it out ;P)

even the cute little baby gorilla wasn't enough for me to pass this spot by quick...

the last thing i'm covering on the blog (as you really should just visit the zoo if you can) is the wild african hunting dogs. these guys are super cool, one of the only wild forms of dog in the world, and i've never seen them at a zoo before (mind you i haven't been to as many zoos as i'd have liked).

calgary zoo- african savannah

onward and upward through the calgary zoo we go!

our next stop is one of the several buildings of the african complex of the zoo. this first one houses some of the coolest african animals around...


this is the central "lobby" as it were. you get a great view of the giraffes, from across that really big pool...

of course the question you might ask, is why put a huge water tank in the middle of the african house?


so that the hippos have somewhere to hang out of course!

this has to be one of my favourite things at the zoo (besides the prehistoric park). partially as it is altogether much like an aquarium, and i DO love my aquariums... but it also gives you a rare view of what it is to be a hippopotamus!

my only compliant, is that due to their life style, it is hard to take photos of the hippos... the water gets all murky with hippo poo...

however in a cool true to nature fashion, the calgary zoo has stocked the pond full of fish that eat this gross hippo byproduct. sadly not fast enough for my photos to true out better then this...

getting back to the giraffes, i've always loved these guys. despite their being boring mammals... they are the closest modern creature you'll come to seeing a sauropod!
if you visit during a warm time of the year, you can view the giraffes both inside and outside... but we'll talk about outside in a second...

while i was visiting this time, i was lucky enough to see a baby giraffe running around and playing amongst the adults! man baby giraffes are just too cute! they're all legs, and legs that don't know where they are going!!!

back to the outside exhibits, though i'm sure in the winter there are indoor observation options, it is easiest in spring and summer to see the lions outside.
they also keep the ever funky zebras out here... (sadly they don't pack as many of the classic african zoo animals into one spot like melbourne. i only say this as a comparison mind you. both are fine zoos in their own way)

there are also some very interesting birds outside, like this marabou stork.

this is also where they keep the ostriches... which is the first time i've gotten close to an ostrich in a while.

there is a story to tell about what they had to say to me when i came to see them (remember i've been teaching myself to speak bird!), but it can wait till i've finished my review of the zoo... which has been fun so far! unlike what the ostriches had to tell me... (to be continued after the review)