I guess this isn’t IN nature, but it does involve a critter.
My husband has to check under the hoods of our cars weekly because last year we had a terrible time with mice building nests in our cars. We tried all kinds of different things - Bounce sheets stuffed everywhere in the cars, peppermint oil in the garage, and the last one we tried was grated Irish Spring in the corners of the garage and under shelves. Apparently mice, rabbits and deer do not like the fresh smell of an Irish spring. So yesterday my husband checked the cars. He came in laughing and said - guess what I found under your hood? Pieces of Irish Spring!!
I’m trying to figure out how the squirrels get walnuts into the air filter box of my truck. There are no obvious holes big enough for a walnut to get in, let alone a squirrel. Last oil change, the guys said they pulled a gallon of walnuts out of there (and very politely left a few on my dashboard). Just yesterday, I opened it up and found about 2 dozen in there.
Pretty much a trifecta of boring local wildlife, but in kinda impressive ways.
Walking the dog this a.m., we saw a red fox ahead of us. It sorta concerned us that it was not more skittish as we approached, and at one point seemed as tho it was going to come towards us, but when we got within approx 50’ away, it slowly strolled away. Red foxes are incredibly beautiful beasts.
Biking, we saw several whitetail deer. Like Kron says, no biggie. But one large doe was standing right next to the path such that if I swerved to the other side of the path I coulda bopped it on the nose. We saw only does and yearlings, so we figured rut was over. Then, near the end, we saw a very large buck w/ an impressive rack. Maybe 20’ from the path, and definitely giving us the evil eye. As we passed, we saw his side was all torn up - I imagine by another buck. Didn’t want to give him a chance to feel threatened by us!
Then a great blue heron flew overhead. Again, about as common as pigeons. But this one flew maybe 10’ over our heads. Up close, those things look positively prehistoric!
Dinsdale, I’ve seen some white-tailed deer close up recently. It’s amazing just how long that tail is! And I don’t know what the evolutionary advantage is…half the time I wouldn’t even notice those deer if they weren’t waving the big white flag on their butts.
I should probably look it up, but my understand is that it signals other deer as they flee danger. So helps the “herd” more than any individual. Or maybe it helps the young deer follow it’s mother.
Oh, forgot I saw a Red-tailed Hawk with Avian Keratin Disorder last week. Apparently still able to hunt and feed itself, as I ran into someone today who saw it eating a catch. It looked a bit scraggly to me (may have trouble grooming), but still alert and flying fine when I saw it:
I was intrigued by this so I did a Google search and this was one of the first things to come up:
The comments mention other folks finding pine cones (a LOT of them) and dog kibble. Who knew? I’m annoyed when the squirrels dig up the plants in my planters to hide stuff …
I had a very exciting story to tell this weekend. I was up at our cabin in the Cascade mountains (fairly remote but in the vicinity of Snoqualmie Pass) and had just gone outside for the final time with our 20 pound older dog in the pitch dark. We’d been outside for a minute or two when I heard a loud growl. It chilled me as I didn’t have my night vision yet and I’d seen lots of coyote prints in the general area in the snow on a hike earlier in the day. So I recalled our dog and went inside ASAP. But when I was describing it, I said it just wasn’t really dog-like (the dog just didn’t respond to it at all, but he’s not a hunter) and it wasn’t menacing growly-like, but as I replayed it in my mind, I also couldn’t really place a distance to it. So hiking (snowshoeing) out from the cabin the next morning, we found these prints about a quarter to half-mile from our cabin crossing the trail and that morning’s snow. It had been following rabbit tracks for a bit at least.
My friend and I walk a trail in the woods every morning at 6am. It’s still dark at that time so we wear headlamps. This morning as we were walking and gabbing I suddenly noticed some kind of light flashing above us. The first thing I thought of was ambulance or police lights flashing. We both looked up and saw a bright orange/white/green light swoop across the sky in an arc. It was low and close not like a shooting star you see as a tiny speck high in the sky. It was almost like a bottle rocket only really big with no sound. It trailed for maybe 3-4 seconds and then just disappeared. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.
It was very bright. Like I said, before I looked up, I thought it was flashing lights from an ambulance or police car…if they had been right next to us! It lit up the whole sky.
Yesterday, I saw a downy woodpecker for the 1st time at my suet feeder. Now that I got used to the hairy woodpeckers (which looked gargantuan at first) these guys seem so TINY now!
I know there’s a difference in bill shape, but (other than size) they look identical to my untrained eyes.
A heron perched in a tree. Yeah, that’s what they do, I know; and I’ve seen them in trees before, many times. But this time it was only twenty or thirty meters away - huge and majestic. That 20-odd meters was pond, so I guess it wasn’t too perturbed by me (and others) being relatively close.
Last winter one landed and perched on the handrail of a bridge by my allotment/community garden - that time I was maybe 5 meters away. It’s a funny thing, but when they’re up off the ground - on a rail, in a tree - they look much bigger than when they’re standing on the ground.
