It has been a pretty productive couple of days off. The Utah Prairie Dog pups are growing rapidly and I spent some time with them yesterday in the morning and afternoon. Not sure what the pup on the right was yelling about, but it made for a nice pic anyway. What is sad is while "my" prairie dogs are protected as a threatened species, the Forest Service is getting ready to poison thousands of Black-tailed Prairie Dogs on the plains. Please take a moment or two and send a comment to them so that maybe the slaughter can be stopped.

Here's one of the most skittish birds in the neighborhood, a Northern Flicker. I hear them frequently and have even seen them at the bath drinking a few times but this was the first time one posed long enough for a clean shot. The flickers here are the red-shafted race, the red underneath their wings clear visible when the fly off. Early this evening I was out chasing Pronghorn (see below) and, when I arrived back home, heard one in a tree next to my trailer and discovered a very whiny fledgling male up there!

The flicker fledgling wasn't the first "new bird" I saw today - in fact I've seen quite a few. First thing this morning a pair of robins were at the bath along with a heavily spotted fledgling. A short time later I noticed this White-breasted Nuthatch gleaning insects (and/or spiders) from the bark of a Ponderosa Pine, then flying up high in another tree to 3 young nuthatches who were begging and fluttering their wings. Then tonight after the flicker flew off I saw a female Cassin's Finch who was also attending to 3 young beggars.

I did have some luck finding the Pronghorn fawns though they were in really difficult light (as in "backlit"). I snapped off a shot of them anyway, while the image is pretty soft it was still quite a sight to see three of them chasing each other around while the moms grazed. I have no clue as to their ages but I can tell you that they are FAST. They had to be going between 30and 40 miles per hour - they were just ripping across that meadow. I can only hope to get another chance with the light behind me . . .