View allAll Photos Tagged critters
What a great day today for taking pictures. With all the feeders filled, and both the Goodie Cup and the Goodie Bowl restocked with "critter mix" all I had to do was sit back and start snapping photos.
Before I knew it, I had taken what seems like a gazillion photos in just a few short hours. It has taken a while to go through all of them, deleting the no keepers, and deciding what to do with the rest? There were so many of the Goodie Bowl, I've decided it was best to just make one long super-series to document all the visitors who showed up while I was watching.
Here they are in order of appearance.
Well, not a critter exactly, but here's JBC Rail Services GP35(?) 3517 resting in the last seconds of sunlight at Kingsbury Industrial Park in rural La Porte County, Indiana.
The park, such as it is, was formerly the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant, used during World War Two. Since the Army divested itself of the huge complex, it has struggled to find business. JBC is the major user of the facility, storing railcars on the miles of spurs connecting the former ordnance warehouses. Judging by stacks and pallets of material, a couple other customers must use the warehouses as well, though it's hard to tell, as access seems almost as restricted as it must have been while the Army was here!
After pulling onto the Bloomer and dropping off 75 empties, a clean UP shoves 65 loads off the Bloomer, onto the NS and off to Decatur
Am so disappointed that I didn't get this shot just right and chopped off their paws a smidgen ...dang!!!!! Must practice more.
I still love the poses though....Beaker wants to be Critter...soooo bad :-)
5 in comments and if you wanna see all of the photos go to Critter's facebook page.
September 1, 2021, at the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad found 2-8-2 No. 484 pulling the regular train from Chama to Osier, and No. 487 with a one-car special following behind it. The visiting locomotives from the Victorian Iron Horse Roundup (Eureka and Glenbrook) had been loaded on truck and had left town the previous day.
At Hamilton City, California, Holly Sugar used this industrial locomotive to switch out empty beet racks. We caught it behind the plant switching, late on a perfect fall afternoon.
Welcome to this week's edition of "Guess That Critter," the fascinating game that's become all the rage.* Eligible contestants** can win up to 1 million Flickr Bonus Points*** to be used at the vacation spot of your chosing.***** 1 important clue is provided in the 'tags' section. Good luck! :-)
By the way, a very Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there. My kids are blessed to have a great one in my family; no monetary value can be put on a mother's worth.
*claim not substantiated
**we'll determine that
***only we know what those are
****Flickrland only
Used to see these lil critters on the Torquay beach by the thousands 20 years ago sadly not so many of them Nowa days.
Soldier crab
light-blue soldier crab, Mictyris longicarpus, is a species of crab found on sandy beaches from the Bay of Bengal to Australia; with other members of the genus Mictyris, it is "one of the most loved crabs in Australia".[2] Adults are 25 mm (1 in) across, white, with blue on their backs, and they hold their claws vertically. They feed on detritus in the sand, leaving rounded pellets of discarded sand behind them. The males may form into large "armies" which traverse the beach at low tide, before the crabs dig into the sand to wait for the next low tide.
The light-blue soldier crab is nearly spherical, with an upright body.[3] Its carapace is powder blue, with the rest of the body being white except for purple patches on the joints of the legs.[3] The chelae are slim and curve downwards, and are held vertically in front of the crab.[3] Given the crab's upright posture, the eyestalks are short.[3] The body is up to 25 mm (0.98 in) across,[2] or "about the size of a cherry".[3]
Distribution[edit]
M. longicarpus is found from Singapore and the Bay of Bengal to New Caledonia and Australia, reaching as far south as Perth, Western Australia in the west,[4] and around the coast of Queensland and New South Wales to Wilsons Promontory, Victoria.[2]
Ecology[edit]
Examination of the gut contents of M. longicarpus showed the crabs mostly feed on detritus, and any small organisms in the sand, such as diatoms, gastropod eggs, or nematodes.[4]
Predators of adults include Threskiornis spinicollis (straw-necked ibis), Todiramphus chloris (mangrove kingfisher), Egretta alba (white crane), Tetractenos hamiltoni (common toadfish) and Metopograpsus messor (a grapsid crab).[4] The soldier crabs are also attacked by the ghost crab Ocypode ceratophthalma and the moon snail Conuber sordidum.
Behaviour
This crab spends much of its time buried in the sand. They emerge to the surface a few hours before low tide, although some individuals may remain submerged for the entire tidal cycle.[4] The first sign a crab may emerge is the development of "hummocks" which appear on the surface of the sand and increase in size over a period of 10–30 minutes. The number of crabs which emerge is influenced by temperature, wind, and rainfall, with the sexes responding differently, such that one day, nearly all the emerged crabs will be male, while the next day may have a mixture of males and females.[4] Emergence of a population from the sand may take up to an hour, or be completed in five minutes, with the adults generally appearing before the juveniles.[4] Upon emergence, the crab performs "the most aerobatic grooming mechanism recorded from the Brachyura";[6] in less than a second, the crab falls onto its back, thus removing any sand it has accumulated on the carapace, and then flips upright again in a "half somersault".[6]
Initially, the crabs feed only tentatively, and within 15 minutes of emergence, they begin the "trek", where large numbers of crabs walk simultaneously towards the water in an almost straight line.[4] Mictyrisspecies are among the few crabs adapted to walking forwards, rather than sideways.[3] Juveniles only proceed about 50 m towards the water, and feed at that level of the beach.[4]
An "army" of M. longicarpus at Labrador, Queensland
Having reached a suitable moist area, the crabs begin to feed rapidly, working transversely across the beach. Feeding comprises raising scoops of sand to the mouthparts, with inedible material accumulating at the base of the third maxillipeds, and drop off the crabs as round pellets.[4] Feeding may last one to 2.5 hours, with the crabs spending less and less time feeding as they aggregate into armies.[4] The armies are generally composed solely of males, with the largest individuals at the front, probably because their longer legs mean they walk faster.[4] The army as a whole progresses at a speed of 10 m/min (0.34 mph or 0.55 km/h), continuing for 0.5–2.0 hours.[4]
Eventually, the army breaks up and the individual crabs travel up the shore, and dig themselves into the sand in a unique corkscrew motion.[4] The crabs dig down with the legs on one side of their bodies, while the legs on the other side walk backwards.[3] They then leave this burrow, and dig another. During this period, encounters between adult males result in both males adopting the threat display (rearing up onto the last one of two pairs of legs, and stretching the other limbs out as wide as possible), after which the loser – generally the smaller crab – backs down.[4] Eventually, the crabs remain in one of the burrows and await the next falling tide.[4]
Michael Tweedie considered crabs of the genera Mictyris and Scopimera to show types of behaviour also seen in human society. While Scopimera crabs were caricatures of the middle class, Mictyris crabs were "cheerful bohemians, living crowded together and out-doing in unrepressed and irresponsible behaviour even those human communities which aspire most strenuously towards this ideal".[3]
wikipedia
A card for both the SSS Flickr Challenge and the Love handmade cards challenge using stamps and dies from Simon Says.Blogged here
Justin was eager to dig his hands into all sorts of suspicious looking nature. This guy was pretty nice though!