Busy air traffic day

Today's weather was not nice. Almost constant raining and the sky was just gray, and well, not fun at all (in terms of sky watching and mood uplifting). I braved the rainy weather to go out to the dyke for a walk. One really noticeable thing today was the numerous helicopters flying across the Sturgeon Bank this afternoon.

Not too much wildlife activities out there today, except for the usual Mallards, Great Blue Herons, and Northern Harriers. However, I did came across this regurgitated remain of a rodent. I took some photographs first and then collected some of the bones to take home for a closer look.

R.I.P.

While I was on the Terra Nova Natural Area, I saw many small critters inside a crack on the rail. They should be the same species as the ones that I saw last time. But there were also brown ones that I didn't noticed last time. Maybe I should submit these pictures to BugGuide for help. [Edit: Never mind, turns out Wanderin' Weeta recently asked the same question as I did. Great!]

Globular Springtails (Symphypleona)

I was also trying to photograph this Northern Shoveler, but it kept avoiding me. It always stopped for a while before I catch up, and then it swam forward again, and ahead I went again. Therefore, it resulted in many poor pictures. When bad pictures occur, just think of them as an unique artistic style, at least that's what I always tell myself when sorting through these pictures. And then the bird got tired of playing with me and flew away.

That's about all I saw today. Not too much wildlife, but definitely a lot of helicopters.

Here are the photos that I just took of the lower right mandible of the animal. Going to have to dig out my old mammalogy lab manual to see if I can identify what species it is. Wish me luck!