End-of-Year Photo Dump Triggers Many Memories of 2025

   We didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to identify the feathered victim.

   Neither did we need John James Audubon to list the possible killers when finding blood and feathers scattered beneath our bird feeders in late November.

   The feathers’ dark undersides were more rosy red than rusty, with streaky orange above the quill’s bare base. Inches away, fluffy tufts of afterfeathers fluttered atop the snow, weighted just enough by bloody tissue to mark where a cardinal, probably a male, died that morning.

   If you keep your smartphone ready, you’ll end each year with more memorable photos than you’ll ever write home about, whether it’s browsing elk, hungry hawks, feeding woodpeckers or mooching loons. — Patrick Durkin photos

   I scanned the yard and its big oaks, thinking maybe a Cooper’s hawk — or possibly a sharp-shinned hawk — would be feasting nearby, its beak jabbing and tearing breakfast from beneath the scarlet feathers. If the “Coop” was still hanging around, I missed it. A quick walk-about also turned up no further signs of predation in the snow.

   This wasn’t the first songbird to die by talon in our backyard, though we’ve yet to be eyewitnesses. The closest we came was several years ago in Waupaca when my wife, Penny, spotted a Cooper’s hawk dissecting a robin’s breast on our snow-covered yard one late March. The hawk spooked and flew off with its meal, leaving behind only feathers and bloody blotches atop the snow.

   Those are just a couple of memories I shook loose the other day by scrolling through my smartphone’s photos of the past year. Among many memorable 2025 photos are several showing elk browsing along Ashland County’s Highway GG in late April. Another shows a bald eagle sitting statue-still atop a branch on July 4 as I fished beneath it with two grandsons, Lleyton, 9; and Eddie, 7,

   I’ve never calculated it, but I probably write only one column for every 200 photos I snap. And though I neither saw nor photographed the alleged Cooper’s hawk that killed “our” backyard cardinal a month ago, I took several photos of a sharp-shinned hawk while bowhunting elk Sept. 10 in southeastern Idaho.

   In fact, my iPhone says I snapped all my photos of the little raptor between 10:26 and 10:29 a.m. that Wednesday. I was sitting in my treestand a half-mile up the valley above camp, and I hadn’t seen or heard an elk since starting my hunt two days earlier at dawn.

   That encounter began with a rush of air, beating wings and swishing pine branches. One bird flew out of sight in a blur, while another alighted in a lodgepole pine 12 yards away. Seconds later, the first bird returned to resume the noisy skirmish, but then fled for good, leaving the other to watch me from its perch.

   Though I recognized the birds as raptors, and thought they looked and acted young, I had no confidence in claiming they were Cooper’s hawks, sharp-shinned hawks or northern goshawks. Once I had cell-phone reception, I emailed a photo to Ryan Brady, the Department of Natural Resources’ avian biologist in Ashland.

   Brady is a patient sort, and doesn’t humiliate me when I send photos that misidentify immature bald eagles or up-close red-tailed hawks as golden eagles. I always picture Brady glancing at my photos and politely typing his answers. In this case, writing: “It is a sharp-shinned hawk, and likely a larger female. But yes, it’s a juvenile, given its brownish, streaked plumage. By (September), it’s no longer with parents, so it has to figure things out on its own.”

   My 2025 photos also featured an uncommon scene involving an adult male pileated woodpecker feeding suet to two fledglings in early August. The three woodpeckers moved about for several minutes on a sugar maple tree in our backyard. The parent flew often to our suet block, snatched a chunk, flew back to the youngsters, and shoved a piece into each beak.

   On several occasions, the adult settled below the fledglings and scooted backward down the tree. Each time, the youngsters followed, scooting backward down the trunk as if practicing what the adult was teaching. I sent Brady a video of their moves, and asked if the parent could be drilling its fledglings to hone needed skills.

   Brady didn’t care to speculate on my anthropomorphic interpretations. He wrote: “I don’t think there’s any purposeful intent in backing down the tree, but maybe they know something I don’t (likely). It’s surely good practice, as that’s something they do regularly as adults, using that big tail as a prop.”

   Two weeks later, I didn’t need Brady’s help identifying the ring-necked loon that boldly hung around our boat Aug. 22 while we fished Lake Vermilion in northeastern Minnesota. Time stamps on my photos showed the loon hung around over 6 minutes. Each time it dove, I assumed it was bored with us and would move beyond camera range before resurfacing. But then it silently popped up nearby, possibly expecting we’d toss it a dead minnow or undersized perch. Eventually, though, it swam off, perhaps seeking more cooperative anglers.

   While heading home from that trip, we heard a sound nowhere near as beautiful as loon music while navigating a detour near Eveleth, Minnesota. As I pressed the accelerator on our 26-year-old Ford F-250, its engine suddenly roared like a pack of Harley-Davidson motorcycles rolling up an interstate’s on-ramp.

   Hmm. That’s not good. I suggested to Penny that maybe the exhaust manifold had just blown out. After all, while idling at the detour’s stop sign minutes earlier, I had snapped a photo of the truck’s odometer, which read 380,001 miles. Manifolds don’t last forever, right?

   But a day later, we learned I’m no better at diagnosing engine sounds than identifying small raptors. After popping the truck’s hood and starting its engine for our truck’s favorite mechanic in Eau Claire, I heard him deliver bad news as a question: “How much do you like this truck?” He then explained that one of the truck’s 10 cylinders had blown out its spark plug.

   After driving home, I took another odometer photo, documenting the truck’s death at 380,193 miles.

   We’re driving a new truck now, a 2025 Ford F-150, and I’m trying to catch up on a quarter-century of automotive technology.

   Maybe after driving this truck 12 months I’ll learn to navigate its 1 million steering, trailering and transmission options for short drives on dry roads in normal conditions.