Can you see three mountain goats in this picture I took while driving through Hardscrabble canyon?

This porcupine (Left) was nested in the tree next to where I was studying one day. To the right is one we saw on the side of the road near Arapahoe Basin

This was one of many unsuccessful attempts to photograph a trout in the nearby pond. My boys threw a dead fly into the water to lure him, but it wasn't until after he jumped that I snapped the shutter. The red streaks are his fins.

I don't know how many times I tried to photograph the big black squirrels in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, they are such shy creatures. These squirrels are jet black, rather large, and have long tufts of hair protruding from their ears which make them look for all the world like bushy-tailed rabbits!

Paula took this photo of a majestic Alpine Mountain Goat out the car window as we were driving along the top of Mt. Evans.

This marmot was in the middle of the road as we were driving along Mt. Evans. He ran into a hole in the road, and Paula took his picture as we were driving over him!

Chipmunks a.k.a. "Ground Squirrels" are plentiful in the mountains. Although they look a lot like squirrels, they are smaller and striped. When frightened, a Squirrel will run up a tree, but a Chipmunk will run for a hole in the ground.

In the mountains, the jays are much bigger and blacker than the jay birds I grew up with in the Southeast USA, these Steller's Jays also have big crests on their heads.

We ran across this herd of elk right off the side of Highway 285 an half-hour west of our home in Denver.

We went to a vacation cabin in Frisco, CO, and were awakened in the night by strange barking noises. The next morning we discovered that this vixen had two cubs living underneath the back porch!

This male and female pair was making a racket chirping on our roof one day. This type of swallow lives in the woods and has shorter wings than other varieties, perhaps to enable it to swoop in tighter flight patterns among all the trees.

This is the only blackbird I like. It sits on fenceposts in open fields and bursts into a really loud, but lovely warbling when you pass by.

I hope to get a better picture some day, but even from this back shot, the bright yellow and red coloring of the taninger is obvious. With all the muted colors of birds in the pine forest, this garishly-colored bird seems quite out of place, but it is a regular here.

I think this might be a purple martin. I've seen a couple in the pine forest. I've heard that it is a voracious insect eater.

The bald eagle in this photo was scanning a pond next to Highway 127 near Pomona, Illinois. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw it as I was driving down Highway 127 - it is a huge bird!

I've seen hawks perching on fence posts and trees throughout the high plains - but always when I am driving and unable to stop and take a photo! I took this photo at the Callaway Gardens raptor show.

As Spring hit our rural home in Southern Illinois, this herren became a regular visitor to our little lake. My son, Beniah, took this picture.

This 'possum came onto our deck to eat the cat's food. Don't try this at home, by the way; this trick should only be done under the supervision of a teenager who knows all there is to know about everything.

We've also had lots of racoons visit our cat's food dish, so we set a live trap and caught this coon. Josh took this photo.

Crawdad in a stream. Photo by Peter Wilson.

The Random Woods skunk patrol stopped at our back porch every night to finish off our cat's food - until we discovered what was happening and started putting the cat food away in the evening!

I've seen wild turkeys about once a month since I moved to Manhattan, KS. Every time, I was without my camera, of course. These three turkeys were in a clearing on the way to our church meeting place. I took this picture with my cell phone; how I wish it had a zoom lens!

My 6-yr-old photographed this wild rabbit.

Related to the Jay is the Magpie with its bold black, white, and blue tuxedo. The only place I've seen many Magpies has been around the office building in Littleton, CO - they seem to like the open fields - but only on bright, sunny days. Still they don't let you get very close to them. After years of trying, I finally got this close-up from a car window as we were driving by.

Not as common to the mountains, Canadian Geese love to stop on flat fields where they can graze on grass roots. I took this photo from the window of my office in Littleton, where thousands of geese stop by on their journeys inbetween Canada and the South lands.

Unlike Groundhogs/Marmots, Prairie Dogs do not hibernate, and they do bark. I pass by this prairie dog village every day on my way to work in Littleton, so I had my 9-year-old lean out the window and snap this shot as we drove by.

Flickers (a type of woodpecker) are hard to photograph - they blend into the surroundings with their mottled feathers, and if you get too close they take off in a long, swooping flight, exposing a white patch on their back - which is what you see here. I haven't seen them in the mountains or in the prairie, but rather where there are mature trees.

They love Virginia Creeper berries (which are so acidic they'd cause liver damage in a human), so I was finally able to get close enough to one while he was eating these berries outside our kitchen window - you can see some of those berries in the foreground. But we've gotten even closer on one remarkable occasion: One day, a snow storm rolled in suddenly, and several flickers tucked their heads under their wings and hibernated right there in the Virgina Creeper. I was utterly shocked when our boys went right out and petted one of these temporarily-hibernating flickers - they would have never gotten that close in normal circumstances.

The killdeer looks and sounds like the sandpiper with its long legs and its simple piercing cry, but instead of living on the ocean shore, it lives in meadows.

You can get a lot closer to squirrels in the city - this one was perched just outside my living room window. In fact, one of these squirrels played tug-o-war with my 5-year-old son when both the squirrel and Josh wanted the same stick off the ground! There is another kind of red squirrel in the mountains which is much smaller and hates humans - it will chatter at passers-by from the top of a tree - I doubt I could ever get a photo of one of them, although you can often see their huge piles of pinecone discards underneath their nests.

I debated whether or not to include the humble robin. It's ubiquitous presence in America makes it seem almost too common to mention, but I was pleased with this picture and thought I would include it. The Robin spends a lot of time on the ground, picking up worms and such. It doesn't mind living close to humans, but if you get too close, the robin has an unmistakable warning chirp as it flies away to a safe distance.

This is a juvenile woodpecker, but looks much like its adult counterparts. It was making a racket just outside our door with its chirping, calling for food from its mother.

This Tufted Titmouse is a regular visitor at our birdfeeder in southern Illinois. The Titmouse is very furtive, and will not come unless there are no other birds at the feeder.

I have seen only a very few of these kind of Jays in urban areas of Denver, but they are common where I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and they are common where I now live in Carbondale, IL. The Eastern Jay competes with smaller birds for food and can be quite a bully.

Another bird I grew up with in Alabama and which I missed seeing in Colorado was the Cardinal. From the finch family with a penchant for eating seeds, this bird enlivens its surroundings with its brilliant color and warbling song.

My six-year-old daughter found this turtle in the woods and carried it to our back porch, where it was promptly photographed by my eight-year-old son!

Where there are plenty of trees that aren't evergreens, the sound of summertime is that of the noisy cicada! It makes its buzzing sound by popping stiff plates on either side of its head in and out with muscles attached to the middle of the plates. This one was resting on the comfrey plant in our garden.

This male oriole fought with his reflection in the windshield of our car for about half an hour! At one point, his mate perched on the antenna of the car to watch. She was more of a pale yellow-grey color. Their song is a very simple, plaintive chirp.

To see my wildflower collection, click here and follow the link!

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