Praying Mantis fight to kill huge Bumble Bee

Praying Mantis

 The sad reality of Praying Mantis is they do in fact kill Monarch Butterflies.  It broke my heart to look out my window and see this.  When I took the picture I didn't even notice their was another female next to her eating a bee.

 We walked over to our waterfall and found this female laying her egg sack.  This was the first time we have ever witnessed this event with our own eyes!

We walked around the house and found some other egg sacks already layed.  This was under the eves of our roof.

Our visiting wildife on our property

 Last Christmas Ed wanted a webcam so he could know what comes through our property.  It takes awhile to put the cam in the right place but we found the main traveled path.  This first picture Ed is thinking is a mountain lion cub.

This is a mountain lion.

 This skunk comes through every night and tries to eat our cat food if any is left.

 I think this is a racoon.

I think this is a bobcat due to the stubbed tail.

 The kids like this squirrel picture...we have lots of pictures of this guy.

This is the first picture we have gotten of the neighborhood bear.  Big guy/girl.








The last picture is a coyote, which we find to actually be the most dangerous to our animals.  They get many neighborhood cats and we think we actually lost one cat to a coyote.  One day Ed witnessed two coyotes trying to flush our golden retriever out so they could eat her. 

Bear print walk

We discovered bear prints in our yard.  We brought the girls out on a bear print walk to teach them how to identify and recognize bear prints.  We are moving the game cam so we can get a picture of our night time bear. 

A few weeks after moving the game camera we got a picture of our bear.  She is a big girl!!!