feeding time

A furry visitor

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This big bugger is why we don’t have hanging bird feeders anymore.

After this picture was taken, a skunk joined it for a while. As I write this, the skunk it still there.

This looks like the big racoon I saw a few nights ago, when I came out to see what critters were snarling out the window. A big racoon made like it was going at me, then backed off, a couple of times, while a much smaller one was at the seeds.

With the storms and winds we’ve been having, we’re not seeing a lot of birds at the feeding station right now. Even the open ground where the seeds are gets filled with water enough to wash the seeds up against the grass.

I’m not seeing the groundhogs very often anymore, either. I think their dens are flooded out, and they’ve moved on. There was the one that dug a den under the mock orange against the house I was seeing more often. I’ve been pushing the dirt back into the hole regularly, and I think I’ve finally won the battle. It hasn’t been re-dug for a few days. Hopefully, that means our garden is safer from them this year!

The Re-Farmer

Signs in the snow

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While they don’t come around when we’re around to see them, there are plenty of signs that the deer are coming to the feeding station.

The snow was absolutely trampled this morning! You can see it all the way back to the corner of the spruce grove, before the tracks start splitting up into smaller trails.

Here, you can see their trail coming from inside the spruce grove. More tracks go through the gate and towards the barn.

We may not be able to leave much feed out – and the birds eat a lot of what we do leave out – but at least they know they can come here for a winter snack!

The suet we have right now seems to be a bust, though. When I bought it, the Walmart I found them in was out of stock except for packs with 3 different “flavours”. All mixes of seeds, nuts and fruit. Usually, the only ones I can find locally are basic seed mixes, or special mixes for specific birds. The brand is the same, though.

The individual packs were not labelled, so I don’t know which is which. The first one I put up was, as far as I could tell, completely ignored. Usually, the chickadees and nuthatches are all over it! After several weeks of it looking completely un-pecked at, I decided to put a different one in. I put the first one in the snow in the bird bath (which I am not trying to keep with water this winter; it is just too damaged for that, and I’m amazed it actually lasted another summer!).

Since then, I’ve seen Blue Jays on the bird bath, pecking away at that piece of suit, but none on the hanging feeder!

I’m thinking the larger birds don’t like the little feeder basket as something to land on, and the little birds don’t like these mixes, so they’re not bothering. Not with delicious black oil seeds for them to eat, instead! :-)

The Re-Farmer

Can you tell?

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Yesterday morning, when I went outside to feed the critters and do my rounds, it had already been snowing for quite some time. I had to brush several inches of snow off the platform bird feeder, but the deer feed just got put on the ground in the usual places.

Of course, it got completely buried.

By this morning, when I went to put more feed out, I found this.

Can you tell the deer were here? :-D

That is all deer tracks, except for my foot path closer to the house, and you can see where they dug into the snow to reach the feed (where you can see I’ve placed more feed).

There were a lot of fresh tracks under the overhanging branches of the spruces, as well as by the apple trees, and paths from where they jump the fences to get into our yard.

It looks like we got a lot more visitors than our usual group of 3, plus the loan buck! Either that, or they just came back more often.

The Re-Farmer

Critter of the Day: what a crowd!

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A couple more bird pictures from February.

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Some days, we would get huge crowds of birds, all at once. They’d fly in and out, en masse.

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When I was taking these, it was all redpolls and pine grosbeaks. There were so many, they seemed to have driven away the chickadees and blue jays. For a while, at least.

Critter(s) of the Day: what a crowd!

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Another photo from January.

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Just a small area showing the mass of redpolls we get at times. Sometimes there will be pine grosbeaks, chickadees and blue jays with them, but none in such crowds!

Critter of the Day: coming closer

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It’s always funny to see the deer and cats interacting.

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There is also a cat on the bird feeder that the deer is looking at.

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Meanwhile, Slick is keeping his paws warm by sitting on a pile of feed.

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Eventually, the deer wanted the feed he was sitting on, which was a bit more than he would tolerate! :-D

Makin’ faces

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It’s remarkable how quickly the animals respond to the colder temperatures.

These photos were taken near the end of November.

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In less than 2 weeks, their fur is already much thicker, making the deer look all fluffy and puffy!

A Deer Returns!

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Note: I’m trying something different with my photos this time.  We’re close to our storage limit on our free WordPress account. I don’t want to reduce the number of photos we post, and we’re not in a position to upgrade yet, so we now have a Flickr account and I am going to try embedding the images.  Please let us know in the comments, if you are having any problems with the images loading, etc.  Thanks!

My darling husband has taken on the morning feeding of the critters.  With the bird feeder, this includes scattering seed on the ground for those birds that prefer feeding that way, and for any deer that happen by.  We’ve seen the odd deer, but they haven’t really hung around.

Well, this morning, one did!!!

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He’s a young one, and I’m sure he is one of the little ones that visited us in the winter.  There’s something about that swoopy snout that I recognize.

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Just look at those little antlers! :-D

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Getting the photos was a bit of a challenge for two reasons.  One, we keep the telephoto lens on the camera (for those new to this blog, we keep a Nikon D80 on a tripod in our living room window permanently, to photograph the wildlife out our living room window).  The deer was almost too close to the house for the lens!

He looks like he’s laughing at us, in this next one!

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The other challenge is reflections on the window from inside.  At the time I was taking these photos, I had to contend with reflections of my avocado on the glass.  :-D

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If it seems like he’s looking at something specific in some of these photos, that’s because he is …

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Sometimes, it was us in the window.

Most of the time, it was…

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… Doom Guy!

I wasn’t able to get a photo of it, but at one point, they were nose to nose!  So adorable!!

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He was quite attentive to all the noises around him, but not at all skittish.  Which is good, because it’s warming up today, and after all the snow yesterday, it’s falling off the trees with clumps.  We are hearing “phwomph” noises all over.

Also; avocado tree reflections. :-D

Then we got another curious kitten!

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In this photo, the deer had moved to the far side of the bird feeder, and The Outsider was on this side, watching him, while Doom Guy was on the other side of the feeder base, though he had left by the time this photo was taken.

I’m so happy to see deer back again!

I also managed to get some really fantastic pictures of The Outsider after the deer left.  Those will get their own post, next. :-D

The Re-Farmer

Bribery will get you everywhere

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We have had little success in getting the kittens more comfortable with us, though we have been able to touch the odd one.

This evening, we resorted to outright bribery.

Wet cat food.

It worked.  Kinda.

Beep Beep and her kittens were out, and we started off with a can of paté.  They quickly finished it off.

So I brought out a second can of chunks in gravy cat food.

I even found a broiler pan in the old garden shed to put the food on.

Why there was a broiler pan in the garden shed, I have no idea.  But I will leave it there to put the cat kibble on, instead of in the dirt, until the kittens start regularly coming around the other side of the house to the food bowls there.

My daughter was able to pet BOTH of Beep Beep’s babies!

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Once their bellies were full enough, they were no longer willing to let my daughter pet them.  The tuxedo is a little more willing, but it will step back and hiss when touched.  The tabby just runs off.

They are getting so big. :-D

We won’t be able to keep this up, since canned cat food is so much more expensive, but I hope we’ll eventually get them associating us humans with good things, and that they will become more socialized.

The Re-Farmer