We had a visitor in the back yard.
I opened the window so I could take a picture and the cats came-a-runnin’.
Animals
Tag: Deer
Deer
I took these through the window next to my desk. It was right around sunset. Please forgive the reflections of the lights that are getting in the way of everything.
Back yard wild kingdom on the first day of winter, 2023/24.
Deer!
One of the upsides of moving my office into my step son’s bedroom is that I get a window facing the back yard.
That means I can see the deer when they visit!
Wild Kingdom
Would ya look at that! The bugs in the daily writing prompt system have been fixed! The text box with the responses link is back again, and the question is in sync between the web and the mobile app. Excellent! Thanks, dev staff!
Do I ever see wild animals? Yes, yes I do. My home is technically in a city, a small city at least, but my house is in a very sub-urban neighborhood complete with a patch of woods behind our back yard. We get the usual suburban rodents, squirrels (I hate them) and chipmunks (adorable) and stuff like that. We have a groundhog in our back yard. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but he/she/whatever is exceptionally cute when waddling around. We get skunks who only come out at night too, but we’ve never had an issue with them.
We have tons of birds. The usual fare, robins and blue jays and crows and chickadees and little guys like that. I am a big fan of cardinals and we get a few. We’ve had a whole flock of turkeys visit us. We also get little yellow finches (adorable) and woodpeckers (awesome). The best birds though are the hawks. Redtail hawks mostly, but there have been others that I don’t recognize. I saw something once that might have been a falcon but I’m not sure. I saw an eagle in the distance once, but it didn’t hang out in our yard at all.
We’ve had some bigger, less New England suburb common animals too. I woke up to find a grey fox terrorizing my bird feeders once. I saw something in the woods in the distance that I think was a bobcat. I know we get them around here, but it never came close enough to be sure. I saw a coyote once in the pre-dawn hours. He/she/whatever was hanging out down the street from us a ways, but it was definitely a coyote.
The best non-rodent/non-bird visitors, and the most common (though not that common) are the deer. I love the deer. I want them to be our best friends. I want them to let us feed them and ride them and sing xmas carols with them. The deer are the best. I’ve seen as many as eight or nine at once before, but that large a group is rare. Usually it’s only 1-3 at a time. I don’t care how many we get, I love them all.
Neighbors
Wild Kingdom
Wild Kingdom, outside:
Wild kingdom, inside:
No difference at all.
Deer
Oh, hello neighbor.
Cat Meet Deer
We had 12 deer in the yard just now. Twelve.
Three Stops on a Sunday Morning
I went to three places this morning. The first two were sort of a bust but the third worked out nicely.
I tried to retrace my steps from Friday and hit a couple of things I saw on the Plum Island Turnpike. The first was the little airport on the side of the road. It wasn’t as nice as it was on Friday. I think there were fewer planes parked there, but I’m not sure. I pulled over on the side of the road and then wussed out and took a couple of pics through the windshield. They kinda rot.
There was also this cool abandoned looking house so I drove up to it, but the sun was directly behind it so I had to find a place to turn around. That took approximately 3000 years, but I managed it. This pic is also through the windshield, but it’s not as crummy as the last couple.
That house has to be haunted, right? Otherwise someone would have bought it and fixed it up (and then probably sold it for a fortune).
On the way back to civilization I stopped in the airport parking lot and tried again. The pictures are better, but the view was better from the road, I think.
The next stop was a pretty major fail all in all. It was Water Street in Newburyport, I think. There’s a marina on what has to be the Merrimack River, but might be the Parker River? Not sure. I wanted to get close but it’s right in the downtown area and the waterfront is super built up and I couldn’t find a parking lot or an entrance or anything. I found one little pull off on the side of the road just outside of the downtown that was about 235236236235 miles from the boats. I pulled off and snapped a few in hopes of getting something decent.
The view in the other direction wasn’t quite as New Englandy picturesque, but it was better (I think?).
Check out the house with the observatory looking thing on the roof.
One last shot at the boats.
At this point I was feeling pretty blue about the whole morning’s adventure so I headed back home. I had a thought about trying to find the airport in Lawrence, but I set the GPS for home thinking I’d adjust it after I got back to the highway. There was a stretch of road in Amesbury that was on the river as well with a couple of bridges. I thought about finding a place to park on the way in but passed. One the way out I found a little spot called Alliance Park that was right next to another marina type thing, and a cool looking bridge. There was a parking lot and I was the only visitor. I wandered around the park and got some decent looking pictures. It sort of salvaged the trip for me.
Once I got back to the highway I did point the GPS at the airport in Lawrence, but it was all fenced off and you couldn’t really see anything. There were parked planes in view but the fence ruined the vibe. I didn’t stop and just headed home.
That’s when I got this bonus shot. I got out of the car with my hands full of stuff and started walking up the side of the driveway. 30 yards away from me, along the trees in the backyard, was a deer! I couldn’t get a pic because my hands were full. We just stared at each other for a few seconds and then it hopped into the woods. Crap. I started walking up the driveway again and saw two more.
I quietly put my stuff down on the steps and snuck around the corner of the house. When I lifted the camera the went into the woods too. Damn. I crept into the back yard to see if I could see them through the trees. I could. They were just standing there, eyeing me with suspicion. I tried 5-6 shots but only one of them came out.
Can you see her there, through the trees? I told her she could come back any time. She and her friends are always welcome in our yard. Probably not in the house though, sorry.
Inside the Red Head's Head 