As seen from the windows. . .

See it?



Watch out for the hawks, snakey.



You aren't as hidden as you seem to think you are.



When Chris dived for the camera yelling what I though was a four-letter word. . .



. . .he was actually yelling "oh, FOX!"

One less bunny, too.


Other wildlife observed recently:

Salamanders under the log segments everywhere, even in Gabe's Garden.

A great horned owl hooting late one night.

Chipmunks.

A plague of squirrels, dining on nuts in the giant mulch mess.

A red tailed hawk eating a rabbit on a sidewalk on Martha's Vineyard.

The kik calls of a male Cooper's hawk letting his lady friend know his whereabouts.

Bunnies. In the yard. In Chris's garden. Chris is not pleased.

A black and white house cat in the yard, sauntering.

Crows, at the compost pile, as usual.

A snapping turtle at the side of the road, carried to the safe shade of poison ivy by a kindly old man who didn't lose a finger. It gave Gabe nightmares.

Blue jays in the yard. One of them screeches like a hawk.

A doe, on a drizzly day, spotted a block from home while pushing the little boy on his tricycle and carrying the baby in the mei tai. I have never seen a deer leap before. Impressive.

A chukar partridge, the size of a small turkey, seen from the window of a local coffee shop, swiftly identified by a group of regulars armed with ipads and smart phones. What is a chukar partridge doing this far from Asia, anyway? This one looked like it was waiting for a cab.

Salamanders

When the Fios guy came to install it there were a bunch of these salamanders trapped in the pit of the conduit box. I collected them from amongst the stones at the bottom of the pit and placed them near a nice pile of rotting logs. I may not have placed them in the best spot, but they would have died of starvation trapped in the pit if I didn't move them.

We'll see if anymore show up in the pit this spring, now that I know to check it I will.

Fisher Cat

I would like to tell you that this image is as cute as it looks.

This creature, I am fairly sure, is a fisher cat, Martes pennanti. My neighbors have reported occasional sightings of these reclusive predators in their yards, and I had seen prints through my own yard that seemed to be the right size, but this is the first time I have ever seen one. Sadly, sometimes the only way to get a good look at a wild animal is after it has died. And this, I am sorry to say, is a dead fisher cat. I spotted it a couple of miles from home as I was en route to the weekly grocery outing, and I returned for a closer look at mid-day, having traded the toddler for the camera.

The fisher cat was a casualty of a car, no doubt. There is a small amount of blood in the following images, so if you are sensitive to such things, you may want to skip this post.



From this angle, its weasel heritage is quite apparent. She - as I assume this one is female, by its smaller size - is about three feet long. Three feet may sound tiny, but when I got up close to her and saw no obvious indication that she was dead, I stood and looked a long while for any hint that she might spring back to life. This is not a wild animal that I would want to get close to while alive. I hear that they can be quite fearsome in life - and the build of this creature is magnificently ferocious.



Look at those teeth, and those giant paws! Note, too, that her nose is still moist, and the blood has neither clotted nor frozen. The poor thing hadn't been dead long. It pains me to think that she have been lying there, still alive but suffering, as I did my grocery shopping.

I looked long and hard for evidence of breathing, or any twitch in that eye. I wanted to be sure that she was beyond suffering.




The paws are massive compared to the fisher's body, giving it a formidable bear-like appearance - and they are tipped with a cat's nasty curved claws. Size-wise, the feet are unmistakably larger than a cat's, but smaller than that of a coyote. Now that I have seen them, I'll be able to more correctly identify the prints in my yard.



A hundred years ago fishers were hunted to near extinction in their southern ranges due to demand for their furs - particularly in New England. And I can see why. Her fur looked fantastically warm, and begged to be touched.

If nothing else, I learned a bit about these beautiful animals while researching this post. Fisher cats prefer old-growth forests, particularly when there are rotting logs about. I can't provide the former, but we do have an excess of logs left over from the oak tree. I'll have Chris put them out in the woods to make our landscape a more suitable habitat.

Rest in peace beautiful creature.

Reptile Show on Halloween!

Wooooot! I just learned that Marla Issac will be giving a reptile show on Halloween! If you live in my area, I can't say enough amazing things about this woman. Go see her show. Take your kids and cameras! We'll see you there.

Getting Ready

In preparation for the tree coming down, it made sense to mow part of the backyard meadow. We will need the space to store the massive quantity branches, wood, and mulch. The arborists could haul it off for us, but what's the point? We're always needing supplies for this project or that. We will be making some unusual requests of the cutting team when they do the deed.

I had already forgotten how noisy and stinky gas-powered mowers are. Grasshoppers fled the mower in droves. This isn't the ideal time of year to be mowing, since so many species are still living among the plants, but the tree needs to come down in a hurry.




Oops! What's that? Chris is chasing something.




More evidence that my overgrown lawn provides animal habitat!




Gabe had a serious look on his face, but he was fascinated by the snake. (And don't worry: we were sure to wash his hands afterwards, since reptiles can be carriers of salmonella.)

Eastern Milk Snake

This little fellow surprised me when I saw him curled up on the floor of our garage. I've only seen common garter snakes so far, so to see such a brilliantly colored little snake was shocking. We didn't know what he was at first so were very careful with handling him, but once I identified him as an Eastern Milk Snake I became a little more bold.

His patterning reminds me of a coral snake, and while it looks threatening they are actually harmless beneficial predators.

This little guy was deposited in some high brush on the edge of the garden, and managed to slip out of view in just a few moments after I put him down.

How much milkweed can a woodchuck chuck?

This was what the garden looked like in the middle of the recent drought. The bee-balm, creeping thyme, and native grasses held it all together.




But the down-side of a wildlife garden is that, well, it attracts wildlife!





Something is going to be eaten. This fellow is fat from eating my plants.





Milkweed? Seriously??





I had thought the damage to the milkweed tops was due to insects, or maybe a deer with an iron stomach.




The woodchuck bends the whole plant over to graze the top.





I watched him do the same to the bee-balm, but instead of eating the tops, he ate the leaves from the bottom of each stalk. And here I though they just shed their lower leaves naturally!





Nom nom nom nom.

I can't believe that any mammal can stomach milkweed. But he obviously prefers it, because these same plants keep getting eaten.

I call this a successful ecosystem garden.





Yup, I see you.

Killdeer?

When my company relocates to a new building, I won't miss the ugly parking lots. But I will miss the birds.




These, I believe, are killdeer, a type of shore bird who can often be seen quite far from shore.

A pair of them are raising three fuzzy offspring right in the grass at the edge of the parking lot.

Mama likes to sit on her brood right on the sidewalk while daddy strolls the asphault and lawn.

Did I say bear?

I meant bears, plural! Another black bear was sighted in the town of Hopedale, just a bit too far away for it to have been the same bear. Also, a mother and two cubs were spotted last week in Blackstone.

People are being advised to take down birdfeeders and make sure "trash is covered", but I find the second suggestion to be laughable. *Do* make noise if you see a bear. They are shy of humans and want to know you are there so that they can avoid you. If you spot a bear, call the police, or the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife at 508-389-6300.

Hell yes! Bears!

Bears!

We have black bears in our area! The Milford Daily News reports that a black bear ate from a bird feeder in the next town over. We live very near the edge of Bellingham, in fact.

And I thought it was cool when a coyote trotted through our yard last December!

Mouse at the Gate

After a ton of work, the veggie garden is really starting to take shape: I've got about two-thirds of it planted at this point. If the weather is good this weekend I hope to finish off most of what remains. One of the highlights, however, had to do with moving the boards out of the pile by the gate and into the garden. While doing so I scared a mouse out from its hiding place and up the garden gate.

I have no idea what that little mouse was thinking, but it stayed at the top of the gate for about an hour before I finally gently forced it off and back into hiding. He let me show him off to all sorts of people who were visiting for our garage sale, and he let me take some great pictures.

This one is my favorite. The way the sun made him seem to glow just worked out great.

Just a moment later clouds moved over the sun and made for much more diffuse lighting.

The ears and whiskers were crazy.

Now as a person who has trapped and killed a number of mice in the house it seems quite odd to let this little guy off scott free, but I figure if the hawks are lucky he'll make a nice meal. With the way he stayed out in the open I expect that day is not far away.

Critters in the Yard

The frogs have returned to our little pool of standing water. I love the location since it has a rock large enough for me to lay down on right at its edge. This lets me take up residence and wait for the frogs to surface after they jump in when I get into place. This frog eye photo is of a frog about the size of my thumb from about five inches away. I love frog eyeballs and their little flecks of gold.

Here's the same frog from the photo above from further away as I was slowly creeping the camera closer. Sorry buddy, but that leaf isn't hiding you.

This is a different frog that didn't stay still long enough for me to get extra close. I think he felt particularly exposed and decided to head for deeper water. I love how the bubbles cling to them.

I found a garter snake near the house and Michelle captured it for re-location to the asparagus patch. The asparagus patch is chock full of slugs which loved eating the asparagus under its layer of leaf mulch. Mental note for next year, pull back the leaf mulch in the spring. Now that we've pushed the mulch away from the asparagus it isn't being attacked by the slugs, and hopefully this little guy chowed down on a couple too.

We have a lot of snakes in our yard, though more often than not I hear them rather than see them. We have lots of snake habitat that Michelle has created, and being good snake habitat they can retreat into it and go unseen. You can still hear them slide away as you approach though. Now if only they would eat more slugs!