Surprise critter cam capture

You've probably seen the mountain lion video clips from my sister's cam in a cave atop our mountain, but none of us expected her to capture footage (22 clips) of a raptor. How cool is that?  My sister thought Peregrine and listening to it call on one of the clips, I agreed, a juvenile Peregrine. Since then however, I've been told it's a buteo, possibly a Swainson's, but not a Red-tailed. Will update when I get confirmation.

I think the extender helps my photography. And possibly the reason my photos were overexposed might be because some spot focus lighting function was turned off. Not sure. Gotta study more on the manual. Here are a few ode pics from today. This Great Pondhawk was quite a distance from me, so I credit the extender that you can see the leg hairs on this photo.

And this is only the second time I've seen a Smoky Rubyspot at CMO, so that was a surprise, especially considering the wildlife pond with the reeds in is still dry. Both of these odes were hidden back in some brush near the back water feature, making it hard to get clear shots.

I'm ready for the big one! Cleared out around the suction intake in the upper dirt tank. Had to deal with hordes of mosquitoes there. I raised that pan up about 6" out of the mud so the pump will work good for at least the next deluge. After that I may need to clean it out again. My husband is going to clean that tank out eventually. Meantime, I can just keep raising things up out of the mud.

And the other big pump has been repaired. My sister had to help me load it for town the other day and re-install it today. There was a broken wire on the on-off switch.