Cat Wiggles

If you have ever watched a cat preparing to pounce on its favorite toy, you may have seen it wiggle its back legs from side to side just before it leaps. Why do they do that? It would seem that the movement would alert their prey, so there has to be a good reason for the behavior. To understand that, we need to learn a bit about muscles and tendons.

Trip to Town

Bald Eagle, a visitor to our canyon.

Because of our rural location, a trip to town for groceries is also a delightful opportunity for photography. Today was no exception. I managed to capture a few shots of the Bald Eagles that are winter visitors to the canyon. It would have been nice if they had come closer, but it was still a treat. No matter how often I see them, I still love watching them.

Bird Behavior

Scrub jay at our feeder.

I got the idea for this experiment while watching the sand hill cranes feeding in the fields around Hastings, Nebraska. To most people, bird watching means trying to identify different kinds of birds. Really, that is bird spotting. Bird watching means finding a bird and watching it, to see what it is doing.

A Walk in the Park

Now that we live in Johnson Canyon, Utah, we have all sorts of wildlife wandering through our yard, but we saw plenty of wildlife even when we lived in the city. All it takes is a walk to the neighborhood park.

Bendable Bones

With the Thanksgiving holiday just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to do an experiment with a turkey. I have read that Ben Franklin used live turkeys in several of his electrical experiments, I won't go that far. Instead, I thought we would revive an old but "classic" experiment that you can try with the leftover bones.