Gordon Dietzman

What an interesting find. I've just spent about an hour pondering this spotting. It's built very lightly and there are struts in various places so I'm guessing bird. Here is a bit of an idea. It may not be a skull, despite what appears to be eye sockets, nares holes and a bill. I'm wondering if it isn't a bird's pelvic girdle. I can't find anything quite like this though on image searches, but bird pelvic girdles are often mis-identified even by naturalists as skulls. Eye sockets are well-defined in birds and I don't see that definition here. At least if others are working on this it may provide a different direction to search for an ID. I suspect it is a pelvic girdle. Can you give us dimensions? I'm intrigued....

Now that is one gorgeous photo! Actually, they are both really nice....

This is a pronhorn antelope skull. Notice the teeth in the second photo; it's a herbivore. But the giveaway is in the final two photographs. Pronghorns are a curious animal. They have horns that resemble antlers in the sense that there is the "prong" that branches off the main beam. Also part of the horn, the outer sheath is shed each year, which somewhat resembles an antler. However, the core of the horn is really a bone and isn't shed, which is a characteristic of a horn. In short, what we are seeing in those last two photos are the cores of the horns; the sheaths are no where to be seen. Fascinating animal.....

Based on the size of the scat, it is a fairly large animal. Because of the hair in it, it is a predator. It looks weathered so probably has been there for some time. I suspect it is coyote scat. Take a look at this link: http://www.bear-tracker.com/coy1scat.htm.... Page down to the last photo and see what you think. I'll be curious what you decide...

Thanks everyone. I was going through older photographs and getting rid of inferior photos. This one caught my eye and had such an interesting story and memories associated with it -- plus I hadn't made it a spotting yet -- that I thought it would make a very nice 1,000 spotting.

I'd agree with Cindy's ID; this is indeed an Ebony Jewelwing. Gorgeous insect!

I'd agree that this is Northern Paper Wasp, Polistes fuscatus.

This is a Vespula wasp; yellowjacket. You may be able to refine an ID by starting at this page: http://bugguide.net/node/view/554/bgpage... and sorting through the options. Nice series of photos!

Excuse me, I meant "These look like the clubtails..." not baskettails.

These look like the baskettails, with those large swellings on the end of the abdomen. This often causes people to search the wrong family for an ID. In our area, the definitive ID characteristic is the uneven yellow stripe on the swelling directly behind the wings--technically segment three of the abdomen. You can see this stripe best in photos 3 and 4--a good example of the value of taking photos of an unknown subject from different angles. Nice job!