Prophetic words! Back on August 11th I decided I had to buy this t-shirt and anted up the cash to Amazon. Early this morning I decided it would be fun to wear my new shirt to my Cardiac Rehab appointment. The nursing staff at Essentia is fantastic, and many have become friends. Just prior to leaving I discovered today was a very appropriate day for “the shirt.” Five minutes before leaving for my medical appointment, I found out I had once again been “beared.” Here are my trailcam photographs from the past 24 hours …

With the extreme drought in northern Minnesota, which I have to assume is affecting the berry crop, bears will very much in evidence this fall. I had not been beared for over a month.

Mr. Bear (or Madam Bear) approaches

Mr. Bear tells me what he thinks of my bird feeder protection system

Yours truly working upon bear repair this morning

A close-up of the t-shirt!

Let’s check your powers of observation! These two photographs were taken seconds apart yesterday evening shortly before sunset. There is a subtle difference. Same juvenile owl … near Lake Superior in Duluth. You may need to maximize the images. I will admit it took me a while to figure out the difference, but I knew w/o knowing why the photos were different!

It has been fun to find my family of owls again after 2+ weeks of zero sightings. Over the past 3 days I have seen the juvenile Great Horned Owls many times. I suspect the parents are feeding them less and less. Thus, the owlets need to start hunting more on their own. I have even surprised one of the juveniles on the ground right at sunrise yesterday morning.

Yesterday afternoon, I heard the crow attack from my desk. It was hot outside … 90F. Hard to believe in just a few months it will be -25F. Anyhow, I went hiking over to my favorite pine grove and found one of the owlets, now almost fully grown. The owl was having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” (see Alexander). If the heat was not bad enough, the crows had found the poor bird and were pressing home their attack.

Great Horned Owl (juvenile) panting to beat the heat

For email subscribers, I forget to include the actual photographs of the Black-Backed Woodpeckers in my Greenwood Lake Forest Fire post. The images have been added to the online version. Sorry for the omission.