It's spring, and that means it's time for babies! Starting from at least last Friday, the mom Eastern Phoebe who made her nest on the back of our house has been incubating eggs. I snuck around the corner of the house to take this picture, but we've been careful to give her plenty of space:
I love how flat she stays, with her eye just barely peeking over the top of the nest. According to allaboutbirds.org, Eastern Phoebes incubate eggs for 15-16 days. So in just over a week, we might have some baby birds as next-door neighbors....
This female Eastern Bluebird has been hanging around our yard with her flashier mate recently. I wonder if they're working on a nest in a neighbor's yard:
What a pretty lady:
Our trail camera picked up an interesting scene last Friday night. I've never seen a White-tailed Deer lying down before. Am I crazy, or does this doe look a little pregnant? She's certainly rounder than the scraggly deer who walked by the camera just before her:
While so many other animals are just starting to make babies, Fox Squirrels give birth in late winter (March or earlier), so their families are pretty well grown by now. On Sunday, I looked up at a tree in our woods to see a Fox Squirrel face looking back at me; and then a second squirrel poked its head out of the same cavity:
Fox Squirrel babies! OK, they're pretty big babies, but they're still adorable:
I wonder if their mom is one of the two female Fox Squirrels who regularly come to the house to pick up bird seeds. Aw, snuggly babies:
There were probably more than two squirrels in that cavity, because little faces kept pushing out of the hole and then going back in again. I took this video of the Fox Squirrel family from a distance, so it'll be easiest to see the babies if you watch it in full-screen mode:
I wish all these families the best of luck, whether they're just starting out or almost all grown. It's going to be a busy summer around here; and a lot of the breeding birds haven't even returned yet!
It took about seven months, but a clever Fox Squirrel has finally figured out how to get to the seeds in one of our window feeders. We call her "Tufty" because of the strange tuft of fur on her left ear. She's taken to climbing up the screen door near the feeder:
(Yes, I'm watching you!)
From there, if she holds onto the screen with her hind feet, she can just barely reach out and latch her front feet onto the feeder:
Fox Squirrels are pretty darn big, and she's already knocked this feeder onto the ground many times. If she can't get enough mouthfuls of seeds with the stretch-and-velcro method, she'll unstick her hind feet and try to climb up into the feeder. Sometimes this actually works, and she just barely fits herself in there to chow down:
Mmm, seeds!
Other times the feeder is too unstable to hold her weight, and she ends up swinging to the side with seeds spilling out onto her head:
Tufty!
We're happy to clean up after her, inventive creature that she is. At least it's just the one squirrel at just the one feeder! (So far.)
Having snow on the ground is awesome, not least because it lets me see the trails of all the animals that cross our yard. We get a lot of deer traffic here, as it turns out. About a week ago I followed some deer tracks to a spot at the edge of the woods where the tracks converged with a bunch of other trails; a small tree in this area was even missing some strips of bark, possibly from a male deer's antler-rubbing. I guess this is a deer highway! I relocated my trail camera to watch this spot (I think I've finally figured out the best way to set up this device), and indeed, the deer definitely pass this way:
How nice of these creatures to pause exactly in front of the camera to have their portraits taken! :) The lady above had her mouth open in all three of her pictures; I'm not sure whether she's chewing or panting, but why would a deer be panting in the middle of winter? And is this next deer (who was traveling just behind the first) a young male, with those bumps on his head?
The camera has a night mode, too, which is very cool (and has something to do with infrared light). Ooo, spooky deer:
The camera has picked up a couple of other creatures passing by this spot as well. I'm happy to discover that the camera can sense things as small as a Fox Squirrel digging in the leaves:
And I can't say for sure the identity of this mysterious canine visitor, but it's definitely something I haven't seen here with my own eyes yet. Fox is a possibility, but so is neighboring dog, and I've seen some rather large dog-like prints in this area in recent days:
Hooray for cool and mysterious sightings aided by technology!
I visited Sheldon Marsh State Nature Preserve this afternoon to see what kinds of creatures hang out in these marshes and woods next to Lake Erie during the winter. The marshes were all iced over and quiet:
Quiet, that is, except for the loud splashes I kept hearing as I walked by this part of the marsh. I stood around for a while, and it turned out that the creatures who made the mounds in the above picture were popping in and out of holes in the ice. Hello, Muskrat!
These guys came out of the water several times, but they mostly stayed hidden in the cattails, so usually I only knew they were there because of some mysteriously waving reeds and then a splash as they flopped back into the water. I only got brief glimpses of their whole bodies. Look at those weirdo feet:
The Muskrats weren't the only mammals living in the icy marsh, either. At one point, I looked down at the big rocks piled at the edge of the water, and a little American Mink face was staring back at me! I missed that picture because the creature dashed off too quickly (alas), but another mink (or the same one) showed up a little later on the ice:
How can a creature be so cute and so fierce-looking at the same time? Right after I took this picture, the mink dove into the water and emerged a second or so later with a little fish in its mouth. Those are some pretty impressive hunting skills. Apparently mink eat muskrats (even though they're about the same size), so this seems like a pretty risky living situation for the muskrats! It was definitely cool to get to see these reclusive animals at their icy home.
There are tons of Fox Squirrels in this park; I saw them basically everywhere I turned. Fox Squirrels are such handsome creatures:
A fuzzy Fox Squirrel next to fuzzy Poison Ivy vines:
Somebody's almost certainly been feeding the Fox Squirrels at this park. This lovely girl walked right up to me and touched my boot as I made my way down the path:
She seemed confused when I kept walking without giving her anything. (I'm sorry! Don't look at me like that!)
This Red-tailed Hawk, for its part, was doing its best to keep the Fox Squirrel population in check:
While a second Red-tailed Hawk watched on from a neighboring tree:
I so rarely get to see adult Red-tailed Hawks from behind. Those rusty red feathers really are beautiful, and I love the pattern on this creature's back:
I'm so glad such wonderful surprises are out there, even the middle of winter.
The scenery around our yard is particularly stark right now, and things get even bleaker when it rains. This lovely Fox Squirrel was huddled in a tree outside our window on a recent gray afternoon:
How nice it must be to have a fluffy tail to use as an umbrella/blanket in the rain:
Even if we no longer
have colorful autumn leaves on the trees, at least our neighborhood Fox
Squirrels can still brighten things up!
Yesterday was sunny and gorgeous and not all that cold, so I headed out for my first dedicated woods walk in a public park since moving to Ohio. (It sounds crazy, I know, but I've been so impressed with the nature in our own yard that I haven't really felt the need to explore other places.) I've been very curious about this whole Great Lake thing, so I drove up to Sheldon Marsh Nature Preserve, which is right on the shore of Lake Erie. For such a small park (there was only a mile or so of trails) this place had a whole lot of things going for it, including really lovely woods, fields, marshes, and beaches, and wildlife all over the place.
A Red-tailed Hawk was soaring over the small field near the entrance right when I arrived:
At the edge of the lake, an even bigger raptor was keeping watch:
I'm fairly certain this is the closest I've been to a wild Bald Eagle. An impressive bird indeed:
Wow, what a huge beak. I wouldn't want to be a smaller creature in this bird's sights:
Ready for launch (the tree's branches got in the way of my pictures of the takeoff):
The path through the forest featured lots of small mammal activity, even with all the people walking by. Fox Squirrels buried nuts next to the path and waved their fancy red tails:
We have regular old Gray Squirrels around here too, but I see Fox Squirrels much more often -- a first for me, since I've never lived in a place with Fox Squirrels before. I definitely admire their orange bellies and tails.
This Eastern Chipmunk was keeping an eye on me, but it was much more interested in the second Eastern Chipmunk a few feet away (a grand chase began soon after I took this picture):
I was surprised and happy to see several Painted Turtles basking in one of the ponds, even though it's getting quite late in the year:
We have a different subspecies of Painted Turtle out here than we had in Connecticut (Midland vs. Eastern Painted Turtles), but I still recognize these guys as familiar friends. I love the extreme balancing act of the turtle on the far left of this picture.
I was just a footstep away from this little Brown Snake before I noticed it. It's a good thing twigs aren't usually so curvy! I took this picture then urged the little fellow off the path and out of the way of dangerous feet:
I got to meet a new (for me) bird on this visit, too. Rusty Blackbirds have been declining dramatically in numbers in recent decades and they're listed as "vulnerable" by the IUCN. A couple of these handsome fellows were hanging out with some Red-winged Blackbirds and they stopped only briefly for a picture before heading off to forage in the swampy woods:
A bunch of different ducks were hanging out in the marsh, and I was super happy to meet a pair of Wood Ducks close to the path. They were foraging behind a screen of bushes, which made picture-taking rather difficult, but it also helped them feel safe despite the person with the camera nearby. Wood Ducks are -- I think -- the most beautiful of ducks. The female was lovely (with duckweed on her bill, so cute), and I love the faint sheen of iridescent purple in her hair:
And of course the male was resplendent:
I love the way he looks against the reflected fall trees:
And boy do I wish this next picture was entirely in focus! I had no idea his wings would be so colorful as well:
As I was leaving, I met the most personable (or perhaps most tired/hungry) White-throated Sparrow ever:
This little bird kept hopping along the path I was taking, basically right next to me. It would startle up every few seconds while I walked, but then it would come back and continue foraging on my path, only a few feet away. So I did what I used to do with shorebirds in Connecticut: I walked a little ways ahead of the bird and then crouched down and let it keep foraging and work its way toward me. I've never had a sparrow come so close!
The food on this path must have been really good; this bird found a morsel every few steps:
It's nice to get a sparrow's-eye view of the woods every once in a while:
So Sheldon Marsh turned out to be a lovely place, with lots of awesome creatures. I'm sure I'll make my way back here at some point!
