JCC [Animals] What wildlife visited my yard today

I'd be annoyed too, if I was missing a leg.

 

I settle for black, red, gray, and mixed color squirrels, plus the wandering felines on the prowl.

My mother, however, has a 4-point buck, 2-5 other deer, the occasional opossum, grey foxes (this year--not normally), racoons (not this year, but normally--seems the foxes and racoons traded positions), gophers enjoying her lawns, crows, herons, egrets (so much for the outdoor fish pond), sometimes skunks (they're cute, not smelly), hummingbirds and the neighbors' cats.
Serves her right for having a 12' diameter catnip patch.

2 years ago she had a neat paper-wasp nest on the garage. Not a fan of wasps (we get lots of yellow-jackets), but these were neat.

 

I'd love to see a Red Squirrel, they are beautiful. Alas, we do not get them in England much anymore, certainly not in the South (stupid Greys). Hopefully they will return in the future, they are so much nicer than the Grey.

 

What about the hybrids? Red/Gray mixes?
Never saw or heard of black squirrels until I came to San Jose.

 

Right now there are three Blue Tits, one male Greenfinch, two male Blackbirds, and one House Sparrow on or around my bird feeders. A moment ago there were a couple of Robins, but they've gone.

 

I've never seen a red one either - just the grey ones.

 

I've seen Reds, but only up North.

 

My son Henry with a Katydid.

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v194/jaepee/IMG_2136-1.jpg]

 

That would probably scare the crap out of me if it landed on me. We get grasshoppers here and occasionally one hops on me but they are smaller than that.

 

How about a purple squirrel?

 

I didn't get a pic unfortunately, but I did see a coyote while riding my horse today!

 

Here are some pics of the deer and fawn that visited the yard today.







The dog gets so excited when animals come to visit the backyard.

 

So I was sitting in my den (ground floor) looking at the boards and I heard this screeching noise I hadn't heard before. I went into the bedroom and looked out one of the open windows and this was sitting on the path right below the bedroom window. You can hear an audio file of what I heard here. I found wood pigeon feathers in the front garden near a feeder on Sunday morning and I thought a fox had gotten it as they are pretty big birds. However, I have a new candidate now. I looked down and looked at it, it looked at me, and flew off when I said 'hello there'. Definitely a juvenile one as the adults have more grey. The image linked first looks identical to what I saw.

 

This Wood Pigeon / Kereru. Lovely forest dwelling birds.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_pigeon

 

That's a nicer-looking bird than the Common Wood Pigeon, which is a different genus, according to Wikipedia. I get a whole bunch of the common ones at my feeders.

 

We moved house a month ago, only 3km from our last place, but being on an orchard means we have a few different types of bird around (as well as the old favourites as we're still on the outskirts of a huge native forest)... and some other critters.



Tui (native honeyeater songbird)


Pheasant (introduced)


Kingfisher (native)


Wood pigeon (see previous post of mine)


Rabbits (introduced pest)


Lambs (introduced, not wild)


Stoat (introduced extremely damaging pest (to our native birds), this one taken out by one of our cats)


Fantail (small native, insect eater)

 

We have/had something similar to a stoat, a "marten" living behind the shed in our yard. They have quite the appetite for plastic and rubber, and it got under the hood of our car last year and went wild, caused close to €1000 in damage. Luckyily we have insurance.

Good job by your cats!

 

Same genus as the stoat, yeah - mustelids (also includes ferrets and weasels, both of which were also introduced here to try and control the rabbits, but shockingly they preferred the much easier to catch docile birdlife). The cat (we have 3) that we presume killed that stoat pictured has walked back the 3km to our old house hand has so far eluded capture - little twit.

 

Hey! S/he brought you a gift of tasty stoat. I'd be so proud of my goldfish if he did that.

 

Not if he swam off 3km away and won't come home!

 

I ****ing love this thread.

 

Clearly the the drugs speaking.

 

Damn, dude.. pretty harsh.