Another Hike in Madera Full of Wildlife

The stars of my last hike were definitely the two mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) who were hanging out with us for quite a while. They were right on and next to the trail and seemed quite undisturbed by our presence.

Having grown up around white-tailed deer, mule deer's ears always seem comically large to me.

Do you see her tongue?

Another tongue!

Look carefully and you can see her eyebrow whiskers.

The squirrels (Sciurus arizonensis) were also having a ball, dashing about...

Finding acorns...

And even caching them.

This brown creeper (Certhia americana) was especially well camouflaged. Do you see it?

I know some people find jays (of all types) annoying, I suppose in part because of their tendency to monopolize bird feeders, but I love their stunning blue and their behavior and cognition are really interesting too. Not only do they have amazing memories for cache locations, they pay attention to who is watching them cache and therefore might steal their food later! Here's a Mexican jay (Aphelocoma wollweberi) that was particularly cooperative in posing for my photos.

The exciting invertebrate of the day was a tarantula (Aphonopelma) of some type that was right on the trail. No, I'm not going to try to specify the species (invertebrates are hard!), but I think it's a male because they are smaller and darker than females.

Another interesting site along the trail was this mysterious bird graveyard. It looked like maybe a predator of some sort (maybe a canid or felid??) had a nice avian meal.

Any ideas on what bird species this might have been?