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A lame deer around noon today walked by me, I said Hi. Very close to me, ten feet maybe. I think a doe. She couldn't run. I could tell her knee hurt, or both knees. Read up on it, read leave them alone, some actually survive for years lame.
A hawk but I couldn't identify which kind, didn't get enough of a good look.
Sandhill cranes flying overhead squaking are a regular thing.
A cottontail that eyes my garden nearly everday.
A chipmunk that I put out pistachio nuts for spooked me. She lives in my yard traveling the same route daily behind the shed, over the fence, into the garden, along the side of the house. I think she's got young ones.
Carpenter ants from the next door neighbor's woodpile. I take pleasure in squishing them one at a time when I can.
Knocked down another wasp's nest on my eave today. That's 5 the last week and also one bald faced hornet's nest.
You can tell I spent several hours outside today!
Probably the first critter I see/hear every day is the golden-crowned sparrow brawling with his reflection in the bank of living room windows. Begins about 4 am and continues periodically until 11 pm. Our dawn chorus starts about 3:30 am right now. I have an indoor aviary housing a pair of honeycreepers. To give them longer summer nights I pull camouflage fabric curtains around the aviary for about 10 hours. They can get some sleep and can't see the sparrow. Once the honeycreepers are up they react to him. Feel sorry for the little guy's frustration but other than taping something on the outside of all those windows not much I can do.
Other daily creatures include snowshoe hares, sandhill cranes, magpies, moose, bald eagles, ravens, fox sparrows (one is leucistic), varied thrushes, gray jays, Steller jays, yellow, Wilson's, and orange-crowned warblers, and a couple of neighborhood kids. Based on the noise, yes, they are animals. They just have more effective opposable thumbs.
Last edited by Parnassia; 06-11-2020 at 06:33 PM..
At 5:15 am, I was wakened by a loud snap, followed by a banging-around noise. I got up to investigate and there was a large rat, caught in my trap. A guy in the neighborhood fed hundreds of rats and the day after he died, 15 months ago, they spread out and infested the area. I've caught 10 in the last 4 months and another neighbor has caught 20. A couple were so large, that they carried away traps set outside. So that was the last animal I've seen, but not as pleasant an experience as some others described here.
If only the neighbors who had a rat and squirrel-catching cat still lived next door. Here's a video of him making a good try on a squirrel.
When I was coming home with a friend earlier I saw my friends beautiful LAB out for a walk with them (And earlier I saw 3 dogs at my other friends house)
Joe Joe left a second surprise on someone's lawn during our walk last evening. I had to jump on my bike and ride to the spot with a flashlight to clean it up. There were rabbits everywhere. They're bold and get very close to you. They congregate on lawns and discuss whose garden will be destroyed next.
The Robins start singing at around 3am here. They're very noisy. Some raccoon left a large surprise by our bedroom window on the second story. Peeping Tom stalker! This woodchuck started chewing on our fence. It did a lot of damage. I saw it in another neighbors yard. I was actually able to get quite close to it as it was trying to chew its way out of a chain link fence. The skunk was back digging grubs in the yard. I wonder if it was the same one that sprayed Joe at midnight last summer when everything was closed and I couldn't do anything but give him a regular bath that doesn't work.
There's a hawk that frequently flies over our yard. I hear coyotes singing on my late night walk with Joe last week. In the winter after a large snow fall its fun to watch the deer walk down the sidewalks. I see them all the time, and if you're lucky, you'll see the bucks in the fall.
There's a lot of wild life here. We're just 20 minutes from down town Chicago among the satellite suburbs of urban sprawl, yet if feels like a world away. We all have to coexist. There's no where else for them to go. I miss the fox I used to see and that huge beautiful male coyote I used to see on my late night walks with the dogs. We had some nice conversations
Wouldnt it be nice if they would let us pet them and all??
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(And earlier I saw 3 dogs at my other friends house)
