Adorable moment baby skimmer bird gives mom a hug after she fed him first

The affectionate black skimmer chick was photographed by wildlife fanatic, Thomas Chadwick, 21, from St. Petersburg, Florida, US.

He had been following the nest since before the birds hatched and had watched this chick being bullied by his sibling.

I saw a live owl once.

Let me tell you my owl story ...

While assigned to Charlie Company, 2/12th Cavalry, my battalion was rotated for a year to Germany in 1976 as part of the Brigade 75 rotations. Charlie Company was based in Wildflecken (the only place I ever found where wherever you went, it was always uphill).

The night came that my squad was assigned the duty of pulling individual walking patrols around the ammunition point. There were two of us on each patrol and we were basically walking around the ammo point so that, at any given time, we were on opposite sides of the storage area. Obviously, the powers that be didn't think that there was much danger of an attack or infiltration of the ammo site because, other than our normal winter uniform, we were wearing shined helmet liners instead of our steel pots and, instead of any sort of weapon, we were carrying axe/mattock handles.

Somewhere between midnight and 0200, I was walking on my side of the ammo point, when I felt a slam against the side of helmet liner, knocking it off my head and send me to my hands and knees. At first, I thought the Sergeant of the Guard had sneaked up on me and whacked me on the helmet to show me how inattentive I had been. But when I looked around, there was no one there. When I picked up my helmet liner, I observed that there were a number of wicked looking slashes on it which, in a couple of places, had even penetrated through the helmet liner.

Then I saw it sitting on one of the concrete posts surrounding the ammo dump: an owl which had to have been at least two feet tall, mixed brown and white in color. The monster must have mistaken the shine of my helmet liner for something edible and had made an attack on it. The look that it was giving me indicated that it was not happy with the situation and so it stared at me for several moments and then silently took off looking for something more palatable.

I ended up having to buy a new helmet liner ... the company supply officer didn't agree with my assessment that it had been damaged in a hostile action.

As an aside, because of my eyesight, my nickname in the unit had always been "Magoo". After this incident, my nickname became "Owl" ...

The most amazing bird display I ever saw was 2 years ago, I was shredding a field that was overgrown with "mare's tails" weeds, as I would shred a terrace a cloud of small insects that were feeding on the still green weeds would cover the tractor (the AC system has a good filtration system). It did not go unnoticed by the surrounding birds. 30-40 Mud Martins would dart in and out of the cloud of insects. Never saw so many Mud Martins

Sand Martin

and they are so quick as they caught the small insects mid-air. It was late in the afternoon, I think they primarily feed in the evening, but it was an amazing sight. Lasted until I stopped shredding at dark.

Note: Sand Martins and Purple Martins are not the same bird. But both are great insect control around a home or garden. Both are present here in the part of Texas we live in.

Purple Martin

Our town is small, we have Roadrunners (El Paisano) who live in our neighborhood, they pay us very little mind. In a recent cold spell during the Christmas Holiday we had a very large pair of them in our front yard. We also have coyotes, fox and raccoons who venture into town. The local railroad went through our town in about 1907, about 20 years ago the tracks were removed. The liquidation company sold the rail right of way to locals, after that they deeded the portion going through the town to the city. Now there is a patch of semi-wooded area through town. It hides the wildlife.

I don't encourage wild game intentionally in our yard in town or at the farm. Raccoons are a big pest issue, same with wild hogs. I see them both in daylight and the more often evidence of their presence from the night before. Hogs are awful to root up the yard for grubs. Between the Hogs and the raccoons it takes special effort for me to get any of the pecans in our orchard at the farm. The raccoons get a lot of the pears on our pear trees unless I pick them early.

We are remodeling the home at the farm and will be moving back their when that is done. Hopefully this year.

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