
Cattle egrets look for snacks stirred up by the passage of a lawn mower.

Cattle egrets look for snacks stirred up by the passage of a lawn mower.

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Hooves and Claws.’ See more responses here. First claws.

Then hooves.


Also Posted for Becky’s Squares: Shadows. See more responses here.

The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 208. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.







Driving down to Upolu for a walk, I noticed this cow behaving oddly, so I pulled over to take a look. The reason quickly became clear: a pair of hooves sticking out below the tail. She was about to give birth. I thought this would be a good photo op, so settled in to watch.

The poor cow was up, down, walking, lying down. The pair of hooves did not budge. A couple of times I thought the delivery was nigh, but they were false dawns.

I wasn’t the only one watching the action, or lack of it. Other cows looked on from a safe distance, chickens pecked the ground around the struggling cow, and a cattle egret flew in to see if any bugs might be being stirred up by the activity. In the end, I could wait no longer. I went off for my walk. On my return, nothing much had changed so I went home.

I didn’t contact the dairy. Early in my time here, I tried that, but they weren’t interested and soon after, No Trespassing signs went up on the driveway! I grew up on a small farm and, for us, a new calf was an important arrival to be carefully ushered into the world. But this was a bigger operation, and I’ve learned that the cows are left to get on with it. Truth is, she was probably fine. These things take time and, as every mother out there knows, it’s never easy.


The final posted for this month’s Becky’s Squares: Seven. See more responses here. I had some left over and couldn’t decide what to leave out, so I put them all in. Captions on photos.







The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 160. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.
Also, seven photos posted for Becky’s Squares: Seven. See more responses here.







The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 142. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.
Also posted for Becky’s Squares: Move Forward, Reconstruct, Renew, and/or are Burgeoning. See more responses here.






The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 133. Captions are on the photos.
You can see more responses here.






