Here's something a little different for you.  Other than a short description, I decided to present a few of my early 2022 wildlife encounters with video.  I still make a lot of photos and although I'm not an expert videographer, I'm developing an interest in wildlife and nature video too.  It'll take you about 25 minutes to view this entire post so I hope you have time and enjoy. 

In early March, some holes began to open in the ice on Lake Wilhelm at MK Goddard State Park attracting gulls and eagles looking for fish (dead or alive).  It is one of the enjoyable activities to watch after a long winter.  The following video is a collection of clips made one evening in early March.

Bald Eagle

Also in March, Elena and I were driving down a dirt road along a creek one afternoon looking for Screech Owls, I saw something orange colored in a distant dead stump. I was hoping for a red morph Eastern Screech Owl. As we got closer, I realized it was a Red Squirrel chewing on a bone.

Red Squirrel

Great Blue Herons nest together in large colony's known as a rookery. I've written blogs about their nesting habits in past blogs so I'll skip the details here.  If you follow my blogs, you also know that Great Horned Owls are the first birds to nest in the new year in Pennsylvania.  The Great Horned Owl doesn't build it's own nest.  They uses cavities in trees or simply hijacks a nest built by another large bird such as hawks and even herons. 

This year, we had that happen in a local rookery.  Although the Great Horned Owl is a predator to the Great Blue Heron, they had to live together for about six weeks until the owlets were large enough to fledge.  I photographed this living arrangement in 2013 too, at this very same rookery.

Below is a video collection of events captured from March through May at this year's Great Blue Heron rookery.

Great Blue Heron

One of my favorite springtime activities is photographing the pups at a Red Fox den.  Red Fox dens can turn up just about anywhere so I rely on people who know me, to contact me if they see one.  I'll visit the dens and set up inside a photo blind while the fox kits are asleep in the den and wait for them to come out.

This April, with permission of landowners, I was lucky to be able to photograph and video two Red Fox dens.

One den was on a mound about 15 yards inside a woods line. I didn't witness a lot of playtime that Red Fox kits are known for because their favorite play area was on the opposite side of the mound. I did get some really nice photos and video from two evenings there.

I spent one evening at a second area that wasn't an actual den. The den was several yards away from large, round hay bales that attracted the kits.

This video is a collection of clips while I watched those dens. Enjoy!

Red Fox

I hope you enjoyed these videos.

Dan