Tag: wild kingdom

Rodent Fights

Right now there are three squirrels and a rabbit at the bird feeders. The rabbit is staying underneath the small feeder and the squirrels are too, mostly. They occasionally struggle their way up a pole and then spend a minute or so eating. I’ve seen them fall off once or twice, and that pleases me.

Sometimes two squirrels get near each other and they wrestle around a bit. Mostly just jumping and swinging their front paws. The best times are when two squirrels go after the rabbit. They run at it from two directions while the bunny jumps straight up in the air and lands right on top of them. Way to go bunny!

Last night as it was getting dark I saw a different rodent hunting around underneath… A skunk. Oh no, what have I done?

Birds – Again

I spent some time watching for birds today. I didn’t get any Earth shattering pics, but I did use shutter priority again, so that was good. I played with some lower ISO settings too. I just didn’t have any real moments where the birds played along.

The few birds that visited tended to stay on the other side of the feeder. They were literally screwing with me. The jerks.
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So close… so not good.
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If this guy were in focus it would be the best picture I’ve ever taken.
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This guy spent quite a long time pigging out.
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This little yellow dude was always just out of focus. The jerk.
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Fathers Day and the Birds

I’m not a father.  I’m a step father.  My step kids were insistant that being a step father is close enough for fathers day.  I went along with it on the sole condition that they promised me that their father came first.  They both made me cards and got me a gift.  One of the gifts is a little bird house.  Now, from the minute we moved into this house I have wanted to encircle it completely with bird feeders.  I don’t know why, but for some reason a bird feeder in the yard is like a symbol of territorial rights.  That’s lame, but it’s something like that.  If I hang a bird feeder, then it means I belong here.  Right.

When we first moved in, my step son and I hung a great big bird feeder from a tree on the edge of the woods.  Big mistake.  The squirrels in the neighborhood were well fed, but the birds… not so much.  I filled it twice that year and never again.  Today, we went to a pet store and bought some seed.  We’re trying again.  I also bought a second small feeder.  What the hell, we’re on a roll.

The one issue with the bird house the kids got is that it does not have any way to actually hang on anything.  My temporary solution was to put the planter box back on the dining room window.  I filled the little house with seeds and balanced it on the corner of the box.  We’ll see how it goes.

 
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The feeder I got for myself was nothing special. I took it out back and hung it from a tallish plant hanger that I found in the back yard when we first moved in. I’ll bet that the squirrels find a way to knock it over, but we’ll see how it goes.

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Snakes

Once in the past, I think it was last summer maybe, I found something unusual in the cellar. It was a little, very dead, garter snake. It was maybe a foot long, just laying there on the cold tiled floor, dead and stiff. I had to look at it for quite a while to determine that it wasn’t some toy I hadn’t noticed before. Nope, it was an honest to goodness dead snake.

Jen one upped me today.

She called me over to the cellar door. Look at the bottom of the stairs, she says. Is that a snake? Holy crap it certainly was! Another Garter Snake, but this time the sucker was huge! He was all balled up on the cold tiled floor, but I’d guess that if we straightened him out he’d be three, maybe four feet long.

I threw some things at it to try and spook it, but nothing worked. I went down to the last step and hit it with something. It moved, but not on its own. So if it was dead it was recently dead. It wasn’t stiff yet. I got a barrel and some cardboard and scooped it into the trash. I’m not sure, but at the last minute I believe it moved its head. I don’t think it was dead, just frozen by the cold tiled floor.

He’s gone now, but I am greatly displeased by this turn of events.

Deer Sightings

For the third straight morning I have seen at least one deer in the woods behind the house. I managed a pic or two today, but I’ll have to see how they look later. I hope this trend continues. I love seeing deer.

Deer!

I walked into the bedroom to get my MacBook to maybe noodle some tunes.  I saw some motion through the window.

A Deer!

I called the kids in and leaned up to the window.  I saw a second, then a young third, then I looked over to the far side of the house and saw four more!  Seven deer in the yard!  Not in the woods, they were trudging through the snow in the back yard.  It was awesome!