SEMI-URBAN WILDLIFE and FAUNA this week

The peacock at the horse ranch wanted to date for the first time since the peahen's and his relocation here behind my horse's pipe stall at the ranch where he boards. They're already a couple, the peacock just wasn't mature enough until this week.

As the Isley Brothers sang, "come on and shake a tail feather, baby!" Shake them he did, which sounded like a phone on vibration mode, amplified. Be sure to click to enlarge. Musician Brad Laner waxed lyrically of the top photo, "...like a
hundred eyes..."

Wildlife photography is not so much timing as what I imagine the more professional of the paparazzi do: let the subject do whatever he or she was going to do anyway, stay out of the way, and see if there's some complicity in the subject letting you continue under those guidelines. The first shot took an hour of same, whereas I had to keep moving to shoot through the bushes for the second one of his whirling dance for his ladyfriend.

My contortionist horse getting shoes, above; at ease, below.

The Quarter Horse mare down the road from my horse's boarding ranch just had her new foal.

Karis as a dreamy Pre-Raphaelite muse

Sarahbelle does chromatic monotones

The Porch Cat. She belongs to our neighbors, but her perpetual ill health tells us she requires more milk, warmer bedding and more affection than her owners provide, hence her part-time residence on our front porch.

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