We take our lifestyles pretty much for granted these days. We have innumerable stores and shops plus the Internet where we can purchase every imaginable food, beverage, dessert and edible treat. The variations in what is available to us are nearly without limit. We have grocery and specialty food and beverage stores, clothing, homes to buy or rent and everything else to survive and thrive! Not so for the other life forms and creatures who share this little planet with us. For them, each day is another day where they must start and live each day in their pursuit of food to feed themselves and then during the breeding season, provide shelter and for their young. Then they only have a short time to teach the young the skills to obtain their own food and the tools of survival.
Photo 1 (Featured at the Top of This Page): In this image panel, beginning with the left image: A Cooper’s Hawk has just captured a Gambel’s Quail, pinned it down, plucked the feathers and is beginning to eat the captured prey. They have to capture and process the food themselves, no grocery stores, butcher markets, restaurants or kitchens. In the middle image are several honey bees doing dual service. First, they are busy collecting pollen, which they bring back to the hive, and there it will be converted to honey, which is food for the hive. Secondly, they are pollinating the flower so that it will produce seeds and assure its continuation and survival as well. In the right panel is a Western Grebe, a waterfowl that spends nearly its entire life on the water and feeds on fish and other creatures found in lakes and ponds. In this photo, he has captured a meal and is preparing to down it whole.
Photo 2
Photo 2: No refrigerators, bars or other places to hydrate. Several wild donkeys are lined up at the shore to get a drink.
Photo 3
Photo 3: The hunt! A Harris’s Hawk sweeps low over the high desert range near Flagstaff, looking for a rabbit or other small game to convert into food and energy. It’s an amazing little world we live in and share with other life forms!
