I see wildlife

Behold Chelydra serpentina, the common snapping turtle. Every year about this time I'll spot at least one female snapper trucking on down the road looking for a nesting site. I have a hunch this one was heading for the CN tracks because there's a fair amount of exposed stamp sand as part of the roadbed there. Maybe I'm giving the turtle more credit than she deserves, but I assume she had a goal in mind -- she was walking along the road and not just crossing it.

I always wonder how turtles manage to survive -- they pick some of the riskiest sites I can imagine for laying their eggs. A few years ago a painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) decided the turn-around for our driveway would make a good nesting site. Granted, the spot she picked was sand so I guess it's kind of beach-like, but it was also right in the middle of where we turn the vehicles around. After she left, we marked the spot so we'd know to avoid it, but that didn't really help. The S.O.'s elderly cousin who has some vision problems (we joke about his "seeing eye 4-wheeler" because he's driving the local roads primarily by memory) couldn't see the marker and drove right over it. That suggests that particular turtle's reproductive success for that year was Zero. Still, some turtles must be nesting successfully. If they weren't, we wouldn't keep seeing other turtles picking high risk locales.

Wildlife

I'd been noticing that the stray cat and squirrel populations around the apartment complex seemed to be dropping.  I wonder if this guy perched on the light pole next to our apartment building is the reason why?  I know broad-winged hawks are one of the smaller raptors, but they're not much smaller than red-tailed hawks, and we used to watch red-tails hunt rabbits in the vacant lot next to the NPS regional office in Omaha.  If a red-tail can carry off an adult cottontail rabbit, I don't think a broad-wing would have much of a problem with a kitten.