Okay, so it’s after midnight, which mean’s these are technically critter visits of yesterday, but it’s not THAT far past midnight, so I’m still counting this as Saturday. 😀

We had several visits this morning by single deer.  The first one was out there before I had a chance to bring feed out.  We’d had a snowfall during the night, so any seed that was left was buried, but it was finding it, anyhow.

We got visited by at least two different deer today, possibly three.  Even looking at my photos, it was hard to tell.  In the photos, two of them look very much alike.  The third visit might have been the same deer that came first, back for more food.

Side by side, at least, you can tell the difference.

I love it when I accidentally catch interesting things, like that chickadee dive-bombing for the bird seed.

The deer on the left was the first one to show up today, and may have come back later, after the second one had had its fill.

The above photo is of the first one that visited today; the one that’s on the left of the comparison photos.

And this is the second one to visit; the one on the right of the comparison photos.

There are definite differences, but it’s really hard to see them without the advantage of photos to look at.  Out the window, unless they come together, or have distinctive markings like the darker patch one has on its chest, there just isn’t much to tell them apart at all.

I just had to include this photo, too…

It looks like she’s laughing!  Too cute. 😀

Of course, we also got visits from other critters.  There were the red squirrels a few times.  The chickadees are ever present, and the chipping sparrows dashed in and out in large, very active groups.  I didn’t see the nuthatches, but they might have come by while I wasn’t there to see them.  There was a blue jay, and the pine grosbeaks were back again.

I like how this photo of a grosbeak turned out.

They are such pretty birds.

We’ve been talking a bit about what we want to do in the area, once the snow is gone and the ground is thawed.  Definitely a bird feeder on a post, though the exact location will have to be worked out.  Closer to the window would be great, but somewhere it won’t block our view of any visiting deer.  There’s a dead tree just on the edge of the spruces that we’re thinking of cutting down, to reduce risk of it falling towards the house.  I’d like to leave a stump and put a platform of some kind on it, to hold seeds.  That would give a place for the squirrels to go, so they’d hopefully not be interested in a bird feeder closer to the house.

It feels good to be able to plan stuff like this.  We’ve never really been able to do that, before.  We’ve never lived anywhere that we could.  We can add that to the list of positive trade offs that come with this move.

The Re-Farmer