Luring your prey
Pardon me for being relatively naive. I thought that images like the one below were a nature study; as in, natural. Not so fast. Look again.
Ignore the bird. And the ice. Focus on the mouse. The one from a pet store, purchased as bait for “the photo”. I’d not considered why so many mice were available in local pet stores. Following a news story on Radio-Canada this evening, I’m rethinking the situation. Turns out that there is a mini-industry, devoted to the photographer with money for travel. For a price, you can photograph birds of prey; the mouse is included in the forfait (deal).
I’m not alone in finding this practice to be somewhat off the wall. One provincial group that deals with rehabilitation of injured birds has posted this. And here. I’ll leave the translation effort to you… in summary, you shouldn’t encourage photogenic birds with cheap lures.
Still on the topic of birds, sort of. Our local KFC is gone. Closed. Out of wings and things. I guess that what seemed like a sure thing twenty-five years ago is less, in a world where food has to be faster (and healthier). Came as a shock when I went hunting for supper though. Had to rethink the situation quickly.
And I’ve learned that grapes come in different flavours, not just different colours. I guess you knew all that, but for someone that believes the supermarket to be the natural cultivator of the grappe, I’d never considered planting my own vines. There are now varieties that can handle the cold (better than I), and maybe I’ll get around to caring for vines at some point.
