2024 What Interesting Wildlife Have You Spotted This Year?

[applestar]

Had to start a thread to post this

I LOVE keeping my eyes out for wildlife in my garden. Lots of regular visitors of all kinds, and then there are the rare and unusual

I’ve been meaning to post about the male Ruby-throated hummingbird I saw the other day — females and juveniles are frequent and daily visitors, but males with the metallic red gorgette are rare sight around here. I’m hoping for more frequent sightings and eventually nesting couples.

Monarch butterflies have been here occasionally, but nowhere near the numbers we used to get.

Eastern Tiger swallowtails are the biggest — languidly sweeping across the entire garden in no time at all. They are occasional but steady — I’m pretty sure they use the host trees on and behind my property, and the ones aI see are often freshly eclosed.

Frogs — my pond is full of tadpoles and the other day, what I thought was a bird dropping on pond-side flagstone turned out to be a tiny finger-tip sized dark brown frog.

Haven’t seen my snakes since spring — hopefully they are still around.

This morning while I was inside the Sunflower Hoophouse, a raucous fight erupted right outside between a house wren and a Carolina wren.

…OK NOW, just before coming back inside, a flash of white caught my eye as a bird swept in for a landing by the birdbath— it was almost entirely white with dark grey markings (…mentally struck off ‘magpie’ as not possible…) and a glimpse of a crest that my mind immediately ID’d as BLUEJAY. But as much as I could see of it — there was WAY too much white and NO BLUE, and too fully formed and sized to be a fledgling, although it could still be young enough to be just finishing with the adult feathers.

This was the best I could get with my old iPhone (I want to upgrade so bad!)

From what I’ve found online, they are rare — maybe 1% in the case of all white, no pigment. This one had the black bluejay markings in dark grey, just no blue feathers where you would expect them to be.

[webmaster]

I saw a Coopers Hawk circling in the spring. They're large, I think with a 4 to 5 foot wing span and have beautiful white wings with black marks.

But a couple weeks ago I stepped out the front door with my dog and a red tail hawk was swooping down past us with claws out, left to right, it saw us and pulled out of the dive and flew into the forest ahead of us. My dog didn't even bark, we were both astonished.

[digitS']

A Hoary Marmot Marmota caligata.

Instant panic. They aren't at all uncommon here and they have been a problem in my distant gardens but with downsizing, they could be a huge problem here.

Also, I have lived in this residential area for nearly 30 years and have never seen Marty Marmot within a mile of my home garden. This guy wasn't just nearby, he was next door on several occasions this Spring. There are several parks within a half mile but I know that the parks department will not tolerate them. We have Sharp-shinned Hawks daily but they would never be able to carry one off. The only thing I can think of as a site for his burrow would be the elementary school playground a half block away. I suspected that the grounds keepers would wait until Summer vacation to deal with them. May have been. Never saw him again after school was out. Summer Camp?

Last year, before we arrived in the distant garden for the season, several neighbors reported that a moose was out there. I have seen moose a mile from that garden. Deer tracks are not uncommon, marmots, mountain cottontail rabbits, raccoons, skunks, coyotes quite often. Eagles, ferruginous and redtail hawks, osprey – overhead. Great horned owls raised a family in the barn next door. Plenty of California quail live there along with flycatchers, pine siskins, song sparrows, junco, and goldfinch.

Steve

[applestar]

Yellow Rumped Warbler and a Junco were at the birdbath just now.

In this area, Juncos along with the Yellow-rumped Warblers and White Throated Sparrows arrive for the winter just as or after the Robins and Grackles depart.

So even though today is supposed to get up in the 80’s like yesterday, these birds have declared that the season has turned.

[applestar]

Yesterday when I went out to run an errand, I noticed some bits of white triangular stuff on the ground outside of the backyard gate. It was trash pickup day so my first thought was maybe styrofoam pieces got blown over from the street…. but they turned out to be the “picket points” of the PVC gate — almost all of them.

After puzzling it over, my conclusion was that a deer had tried to jump the scooped 4 ft at lowest point picket design gate, and scraped its belly on almost all the the triangular points. One of the two spring clips that held them in place had been broken from almost all and some of them lost the plastic tabs that the springs were attached to — the gate itself was intact and closed.

To confirm my theory, I looked around the rest of front yard along the fence and found a bunch of fresh deer poop; so they did come around the night before.

For the first time EVER (to my knowledge) a deer seems to have made its way into my backyard.

The ground was dried up and hard, but there were a couple of possible gauged hoof marks about 5~6 feet in. I think a deer jumped in, then the motion sensor flood lights activated and scared it, making it turn around and jump back over without clearing the gate completely as it had done initially. One of the gate points was missing, and I later found it way inside the backyard — maybe about 15 feet in. I’m thinking the deer kicked out when it got “bitten” by the gate and kicked at it to make it go flying.

Discussing with the neighbor on that side, she told me the creek beyond the woods behind our properties has dried up, and deer have been pushing in past their back border post-and-rail fence and drinking from her pond, eating her hostas and hydrangeas, etc….

I found a section of my border fence that had been destroyed by deadfall branches where deer might have made their way in, but it’s unlikely that they have been wandering around, approached the frog pond, or crossed my backyard to the front gate since there are many obstacles. (Besides, would they run TOWARDS the suddenly bright flood lights and run past them?)

[applestar]

Deer were in the backyard again.

A couple of nights ago, DD went outside to a garden bench near the back fence, and heard rustling sounds beyond the plum and crabapple trees beyond the swing set/club house.

She said she saw a “line of deer” on OUR side of the fence to the neighbors’ yard and backed away, ready to run back to the house. But they saw her at the same time, and she saw them rush past the shed and heard them scrambling around… then the wooded shrubbery and undergrowths rustling as they pushed past them.

When she told me, I told her I doubted they were on our side and she might have mistaken them even though they were on the other side of the picket fence, because the way for them to get past between the shed and the fence is closed off with a concrete reinforcing wire mesh “fence” (and a flimsier green wire fence to keep out groundHOGS, etc. smaller animals).

I went out to inspect and look yesterday, and it turned out she was correct!

The green wire fence was mangled on the ground and the CRW mesh was pushed over and down — to about 40~45° angle with a big BOWED bend in the middle part.

Obviously, the sounds she heard after they startled each other was them trying and eventually successfully and forcefully getting past the “fences”

But this begs the question HOW and WHICH WAY did they enter the backyard in the first place….

(I pulled up and straightened the two “fences” back in position and wedged them with extra sturdy supports to keep them upright, blocked a narrow gap beyond, between the last fence post and the dense shrubbery where they might have taken a wrong turn and came into our yard instead of proceeding past the gap in their fence to the neighbors side…. And tied a polyethylene bag (I always keep some in my gardening jeans pocket for picking up trash) to a branch at “head height” to hopefully deter them.

(I also positioned a motion-activated twin red LED nightlight that are set up to look like a pair of glowing eyes — this was in the Vegetable Garden area during the summer months and may have helped to scare away the raccoons).

So far the shed area hasn’t been messed with — I’m thinking they had literally tripped and gotten entangled in the wire fence and the CRW — maybe hurt themselves — so they may not come back that way at least.

Two scary encounters so far while trying to get away. Will they learn?

[Vanisle_BC]

Stellers Jay in the yard yesterday spreading its unbelievably blue wings. They hang around campsites here, very cheeky and will grab the food off your plate while you eat! Don't feed them near your home; they will noisily pester you forever.

[Vanisle_BC]

Applestar, what kind of deer do you have? Around her it's the 'fallow deer' - small but voracious and 'tame' to the point of arrogance even inside the yard - as in "what are YOU doing on MY property?" From 10 feet away they will stand & stare you down. On very rare occasions I believe they will attack with their hooves.

[PaulF]

All the same animals for the past twenty years. The wildlife camera has seen bobcats which I have seen in the distance but not in our yard. I hear about mountain lions in the area but no photos here. And we are still waiting for the Missouri River basin black bears supposed to be getting closer. Our wild country has all kinds of fauna on a regular basis and some new ones show up every once in a while.

[applestar]

DD saw the deer again a couple of nights ago— as she described — pushing between the swings and the jumping over the fence to the woods in the back. She could clearly see the white tail held high as it jumped the fence — so I think they’re “White Tailed Deer”? That’s how I’ve always heard they’re called.

Sooo… I got myself an early Christmas present — a trailcam

I set it up last night, pointing at the swingset and the fence, and was thrilled to see stills and videos of two deer … then a stray cat … and then a raccoon

DD’s are over the moon

[applestar]

A couple of screenshots

[applestar]

Aaarrrgh!

…Although not a disaster (yet, since I didn’t get the chance to fall-prune them like I should have), the branch-tips of some of the blueberries have been munched on….

[applestar]

I realize our enchantment with the trailcam might be humorous to those of you who have been using them for years, but we continue to “enjoy” … or at least appreciate … the images it’s been capturing.

Now that I’ve pin-pointed where along the back fence the deer have been hoping over, I took some trouble today to block the wide gap with some wire border fencing tied to each other and to the shrubbery and the fence toprail, and by positioning all those fallen long and big oak and other branches, wedged in the post rail holes as well as woven among the living shrubbery and vines to form another “rail” above the existing one.

I also had old bamboo poles which I positioned to create additional barriers.

None of these are sturdy enough to withstand deer crashing through, but I’m hoping the thicker branches as well as the white clothesline — and a couple of pie pans and empty plastic bottles hung at head-level — will present a visual “pause and notice that the way is now blocked” moment, and they might re-consider.

Nothing notable all day except squirrels on the swing set, and a bird on the picnic table, the stray cat….

There’s a paved exercise path that sends through the woods, about 15~20 feet beyond the fence line, and although mostly blocked by the undergrowths, the trailcam captured someone pushing a stroller on the path the other day.

If anyone has ideas or suggestions for me, this newbie would sure appreciate the help.

[imafan26]

I saw a sparrow eating the seeds off my Thai basil yesterday. Sparrows used to be very common but they have been replaced by other birds. Mainly the Java rice bird, bulbuls, and rose ringed parakeets (the latest pest species)

[applestar]

I feel like it wasn’t very long ago when I mentioned I haven’t seen opossums around here in a very long time …

…captured by the trailcam twice — around 6:30pm and 7pm — not sure if it was the same one or a 2nd one came through 30 minutes later…. Do you think it hang around for 1/2 hour, roaming around my backyard?