World of Mostly Standing Birds

The World of Birds show at the Minnesota Zoo continues, and I saw it again in August of this year. There was no aerial catch by a raptor this time, but Boyd made an appearance (no photos in this post), and it provides a chance to see raptors and largish birds with no netting in the way.

A toco toucan catches a grape half.

 

knobbed hornbill

Jefferson, a marabu stork, lifts off. I'm not sure this picture conveys his size.

 

A milky eagle owl, from Africa. Eagle owls' eyes kind of freak me out.

One of the owl's talons

African fish eagle

I don't know if the flying bug has anything to do with the open mouth.

Sleeping Bees

Bees--carpenter bees especially--seem to like to spend nights in the missing gardener's celosia patch. Some of them like cosmos, too.

This male eastern carpenter bee hung almost upside down. He was at an angle but the camera's orientation made him look like this. (Focus stack of 28 images)

Easier to comprehend this way?

  

A female. (Focus stack of 26 images)

I found this bumble bee in a blue spruce.

This one was covered in tiny water droplets after an overnight rain.

Focus stack of 22 images, retouched

This bumble bee found a cosmos to its liking.

Same bee. (Focus stack of 28 images, retouched)

The same bumble or different? It was a different day. (Focus stack of two images) 

Construction

Last July (2025), I noticed a bare spot among the weeds in the front yard. I thought it was odd, but the yard receives no care other than mowing, so I was like, whatevs, bruh.

Then I saw this:

A cottontail was apparently harvesting grass for a nest. 

 

She worked at it for a while, but nothing came of the nest, as far as I know.

Spiders Around the House

I found these spiders in or around my house in the last two years.

A jumping spider (focus stack of 3 images)

 

Triangulate combfoot (or cobweb) spider (focus stack of 7 images)

There was spider drama the other day. Unfortunately, my photos are crap and the video is hard to watch. Anyway, here goes. 

I spotted this web just outside the garage. A spider, visible as a tiny blob to the left of the rightmost plant stalk, was hanging from a support strand. I thought, "That's a big web for such a small spider to make." It didn't.

An hour later there were two additional, larger spiders. Well, one was present the whole time, right there in the center of the web. The Seek app identified it as a conical trashline orbweaver. These spiders decorate their webs with lines of prey parts, plant debris, and whatnot, and then they hang out at the center, looking like part of the trash. The third spider was on one of the support strands and seemed to pluck at it.

The tiny one, the web mistress, and the plucker

Every so often, the spider in the center would go to this third spider and fight or mate or something. With the excuse that wind is the bane of macrophotography, here's the plucker in action:

 

Running crab spider (focus stack of 3 images)

American green crab spider (focus stack of 6 images). It's on a bedsheet hanging on a clothesline.

A jumping spider (focus stack of 3 images)