This post was planned for 'Show me your photo (of a bird)' contest, round #102. Week's topic was 'Footprints'. I exhausted my archives and was going to take fresh photos, but ... situation with snow in my city recently was bad, the sun didn’t kiss us either, so I didn’t succeeded with fresh photos.
But on Sunday, I managed to steal one hour of a sunny day from nature, after lunch I grabbed my camera and ran to the park, and took quite fresh photos (and I already nailed the subject in my own yard ...) I just didn’t have time to make a post before the onset deadline. But I'm posting it anyway!
First I found these two three-toed paw prints. By the way, do you remember that birds are the closest relatives of dinosaurs?.. No, this is not a dinosaur ran in my yard. I decided to follow where these tracks lead to find all the other participants.
I managed to do it! soon there were more traces, more and more participants added theirs... You probably guessed who trampled my yard in such numbers, in the most impudent and shameless way? ..
Yes, you guessed it right: it were pigeons! My best feathered friends pigeons, they are always out there, at hand, at my service, ready to help and pose for one or another theme of the week. They never refuse to pose, whether it's a fence, wires, food, and so on. This time they provided me with imprints of their footprints - in an incredible amount!
Isnt he nice?!
Well, jokes aside -- in fact, when I started photographing their footprints, I was completely alone. But the pigeons were sitting somewhere near in a secluded place and were on guard. As soon as they noticed that I was not going anywhere, but on the contrary, I lingered at one _ well-known place _, they flocked and surrounded me, looking expectantly. Yes: they are used to being fed by kind local grannies, and they took me for one of them... They did not receive any bread from me, but something better: they went down in history! left not an ephemera imprint on the snow, but a strong, durable digital footprint in the blockchain :)
Most of them looked pretty entangled, and some of them being pretty nice looking! Like this one above... it contains also a few doggie footprints, and one may guess -- was it a joint walk or something else? Enough room for fantasy and speculations :D
And the last, but not the least. I found some more footprints, but not birdie's: some kitty ran through here. Of course, since I was on a photo hunt, I took pictures of them too.
Ok, I deceived you :) that was not the last one, I have more leftovers. Next photo is better to look at in a separate window (clickable). The area free from footprints (yes, there were several such pieces) is covered with stuff sticking out of the ground, mostly acorns. Usually all this stuff is covered with snow, but not now - as you can see for yourself, the thickness of the current snow layer is less than an acorn.
Yes, it is difficult for birds to forage in winter.
It's good that they have bird feeders!
