wildlife

Critter of the Day: I herd you!

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We’ve got a duo that visits regularly, and a trio – and sometimes, they all come at once!

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I don’t know what has their attention out there, but I do know that sometimes, they get the attention of people driving by on the road!  There isn’t much that can be seen through the lilac bushes along the fence, but it’s enough that I’ve seen people stop, turn around at the intersection, and slowly make their way back again, slowly.

Time like that, I think of the kinds of trees we’ll be planting as a windbreak all long the fence line.

We may be in the boonies, but sometimes it’s not boonies enough for me! :-D

Foxy Neighbour

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I wanted to share some images from a few days ago, when a fog rolled in, covering much of the prairies.

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Part of our spruce grove.

It resulted in some incredibly beautiful frost.

On the way home from town, my daughter tried to get some photos out the window.  At one point, I was able to come to a near stop for a while, as she took photos of an old church.  Which is when we spotted this guy.  He was right in front of us, then dashed off towards the church, where my daughter managed to take a few pictures.

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Our foxy neighbour!

What a big, bushy fellow he was!

Now I can’t go near that intersection, without looking for foxes! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Furry Visitors

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We had a couple of deer come visit us yesterday, and this time, we had some feed waiting for them. :-)

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They are just starting to get their thicker winter coats.

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This one has lost his antlers fairly recently.

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Mmmm.  Tasty!

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Butt kisser!

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I stick my tongue out at thee!!

I am so happy the deer are coming by more often again. I love catching photos of them with silly faces! :-D

The Re-Farmer

A lovely day

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Today is officially Thanksgiving, so I will happily say again, Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope my Canadian visitors had a wonderful holiday weekend, with lots of food and family – or a lovely, quiet, non-party weekend, like we did!

Since we did our celebrating yesterday, and today was a fairly pleasant day, we were able to get some work done outside.  The girls were able to rake up lots more leaves to layer on the flower garden by the Old Kitchen, which I’m pretty excited about.  Lots of lovely organic matter! :-D

We are going to have to stop keeping the sun room doors propped open overnight.  More turd bombs were discovered this morning, plus something chewed a hole in the bottom of the open back of cat kibble.  Most likely the skunk, we think.  We did end up still leaving the door open during the day.  Which makes looking out the bathroom window something to look forward to!

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I was called over to see this adorable pile of fluff, and while I was taking photos through the bathroom window screen, I started getting called to look out the living room window, to see a deer!

It was under the crab apple trees, looking for apples, and we did get some photos with the DSLR.  I will upload those tomorrow to see how they turned out.  Unfortunately, I did not manage to get a photo of the deer standing up on its hind legs, trying to reach the apples on the tree!

After a while, it slowly wandered away down the garden, and we couldn’t see it anymore.  However, when I went into the master bedroom, I found I was able to see it through the maple grove.  As I stood watching it, I suddenly saw a second one, going through the trees and heading towards the house!

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I was able to get a few photos through the screen of the west facing window.  This one was also going under the crab apple and plum trees, looking for fallen fruit.

So beautiful!

After the deer left, I went to work on the sun room.  Most of the kittens took off when I came in through the Old Kitchen.  Doom Guy, however, managed to dash in before I could close the door!

Good thing the inside door to the rest of the house was closed!

I started taking things out of the sun room so I could clean the floor.  In the process, I have come to the conclusion that the turd bombs are not from the cats, but from the skunk.

After I got the mess cleaned up, washed the floor and transferred the cat kibble from the bag with a hole into a bucket, I sat outside to clean my late father’s wheelchair with a disinfectant cleaner while the floor dried.

When I was able to start putting things back inside, I found the sun room occupied already.

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Doom Guy is such a cutie!  He even let me pick him up and sit for a while with him cuddled in my arms.

Later on, I found him back again – this time with company!

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Corvo is letting me come closer, but still won’t let me pet him.

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Adorable brothers!!!

After all was finished and we were settling in for the evening, I found out about a legendary raid – Mewtwo – in Pokemon Go that was happening in town.  My daughter and I have not been able to do one yet, so we decided to head into town and join the raid.

When I came out the door, I was immediately set upon by Doom Guy.  As I picked him up to cuddle, I saw we had company…

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He’s back!

(In fact, he’s back right now.  I can hear him under my office window, knocking the metal food bowls around, as I write this!)

Before we left he dashed into the sun room.

*sigh*

Well, it’s now closed up for the night, so hopefully, no more turd bombs!

The Re-Farmer

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

Birds and Buck

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I moved the bird feeder stand closer to the house last night.  Here are a couple of pictures I got this morning.  (click on the images to see the larger version)

This evening, while heading out to pick up my daughter from work, we saw a deer on the road, then another dashing across when we were almost home.

What I didn’t expect was to see one outside our window!  We got a visit from a young buck, and there was enough light out still that I was able to get a few shots.

When I first saw it, it was coming through the tall grass in the main garden.  It stayed and grazed by an apple tree, before making its way over towards the house.  Then it started enthusiastically eating some elm leaves!  It was here for only a short time when something startled it, mid chomp, and off it ran.

The deer are so much more brightly coloured, this time of year.  This guy is all legs! :-D

I am so happy to still be seeing them in the yard, and to actually get some pictures, too! :-D

The Re-Farmer

That was quick. Also, deer!

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Early this morning, I saw a pair of deer coming into the feeding area.  Unfortunately, because we haven’t had them coming by in the last while, I hadn’t put any feed out the night before, so there wasn’t much there for them.  Still, I got a few pictures, even through the reflections in the window. :-)

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They are both looking pretty rough around the edges!  I do think they’ve been here before.

Notice the little antler buds on the deer in the foreground? :-)

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The female has some nicks out of an ear, and it looks like some scarring on her snout, too.

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Aside from the missing patches of fur on the male that can be seen in the first photo, he’s looking pretty thin, too!

Just before I went to put more feed out tonight, I spotted a single deer through our bedroom window, making its way through the maple grove to the feeding area.  The noise of me going outside would have scared it off, though.  I hope it comes back later.  :-)

This morning, my husband’s hospital bed was supposed to be delivered between 10 and 11 pm.  So this morning, we dismantled our king size bed, which has been resting on a pair of queen box springs until we could get a proper bed frame again.  The mattress just got leaned on the wall at first, and the box springs went into the dining room at first.  Then I went out to feed the cats.

Beep Beep stood up to say hello! :-D

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Then, with the help of one of the girls, the box springs got moved outside, just to lean on a tree until they could be taken to the shed.

The outside cats were very curious about this!

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Well, hello, again, Beep Beep!

I had to head out at 11:30.  My mother registered her vehicle, effective this morning, so I drove her car out to meet my brother at her place, as a surprise.  I was going to accompany them for a medical appointment in the city, which was also a surprise.

It turns out my mother doesn’t like surprises.

Ah, well.

It was a long and draining day for all, but we got the information we needed, then took the time to explain it again to my mother on the way back.  My brother, sweetheart that he is, drove me home before driving the 1 1/2 hours back to his place.  It was a VERY long day for him!

While I was gone, much to my surprise, someone from the electric company came out to check the power lines!  I was told they’d have someone out within 2 weeks.  I wasn’t expecting someone the very next day! :-D  I will have to phone them again to find out what their assessment was, since not a lot of information was shared while the guy was here and my daughters were buy hauling box springs to the shed and cleaning up the yard.

As for the hospital bed, it did finally get delivered and set up, several hours later than expected. Once that was done, my daughters got the king size mattress out – I have no idea where we’re going to store that thing! – then set up the spare twin bed up for me.  I had had other plans for it – plans that can’t be done with the king size bed – but… oh, well.  Thankfully, the master bedroom is quite big, and there’s more than enough room.  I hope it works out better for my husband.  At least he won’t be losing his balance trying to get in and out of bed anymore, since he can adjust the height to exactly where he needs it.

All in all, I’m really happy about how quick things got followed through on, both for the bed, and with the electric company.

The Re-Farmer

So many deer!

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At the last half mile on the way home, I had to stop on the road to let some deer pass.

There was a group of five deer, though I did see the flash of tail of a 6th one, already on the other side of the fence.  After they had all jumped the fence, I drove forward, only to have to stop for another three!

I uploaded sets of photos on my Instagram, if you’d like to see more.

I might have to start bringing the DSLR with me when I do these trips; zooming in on my phone makes for some pretty terrible quality shots, but it’s better than nothing!

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I saw the first group crossing the road from some distance away, but when I got closer, they kept running along the shoulder of the road.  I’d drive a bit, stop, drive a bit, stop…  it seemed like they were looking for a better place to cross the ditch or something.  Eventually, they picked a spot and off they went.

I doubt I drove more than 100ft before I saw the second group of three.

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These had come out of the bush on the left, just like the earlier group, crossed the road, but that’s as far as they got.  As I crept closer, they stopped, then ran ahead for a while, then crossed back and headed for the trees they had come out of.

So many deers!

I wonder if the group of three were Mama and the twins?

Meanwhile, as I write this, Hungry Girl and Barbecue are outside our window, having a snack. :-)

The Re-Farmer