Far beneath the eagle's path, much smaller birds eke a living. Most songbirds are consumers of plants or small insects, like this meadowlark:



But a few are bona fide predators in their own right. On a isolated bush, a shrike stands sentinel. It's either a loggerhead or a northern shrike; the two species are very hard to tell apart, but both are rare. Their prey includes lizards and even small birds.



In warmer months, even humans should be a little cautious



But even now, in the cold, sharp-tailed grouse keep open a watchful eye.



As well they might!



It would be a lucky badger who caught a grouse, but I continue to be surprised by the energy that these high-speed versions of my relatively stolid British badgers display.



But the view is more peaceful in the ruins of an old homestead. Two Nuttall's cottontails, completely fearless of me, graze in the shadow of both sage and abandoned settler endeavour.







The open nature of the prairie and the sheer abundance of small mammals makes viewing them infinitely easier than it is in the Rockies. But, even so, for every ground squirrel and rabbit that I do see, there must be dozens of other animals that quietly slip past my gaze. I photographed these tracks in a little patch of snow at the entrance to a prairie dog burrow. Winter will reveal more secrets for any human visitors who are hardy enough to endure the severe Saskatchewan cold