Moving the Cam

We’ve been getting pictures of the same deer and the same raccoons around here, so we decided to take one of our trail cams and try it out on some of the roads we walk on.  We picked spots where we see tracks of other animals.  Mainly deer, wolves and bobcats.  So far we’ve been happy with the pictures.
 

Night and day pictures of wolves.A bobcat and another wolf at a different spot.

And from yet another location, a small bear (not the best picture) and two different bucks.

Look at the strange set of antlers on this one.

At the cabin, it’s always nice to see the little doe and her fawns come by.  The dots are slowly fading away on little Spottie and Dottie.

And it wouldn’t be right to leave out the raccoon family.  They don’t have names, because I don’t like them and wish they’d find another place to hang out.

We may be onto something here

The other night Jim put the water jugs in the feeders again.  Mr. Coon came along, climbed the little tree, saw the jug and moved on.  

 

 

Lots of rain in the forecast this week, so we decided to come home for a few days, but we’ll be back by the end of the week.

Caught in the Act

No surprise in catching the raccoon in the feeder.  We didn’t know he used the faux tree to gain access, but we do now.  Notice the coffee cans in each feeder.

Now it’s on the ground, but it wasn’t enough to stop Mr. Coon from eating the sunflower seeds.

So now we have to decide if we want to leave the faux tree there for the birds or take it down to keep Mr. Coon from raiding the feeder.  Most likely it will stay.

Spring in the Northland – Part I

Even though there’s still snow on the ground and ice on the pond there’s been lots of action around here.  On Sunday morning we saw an eagle land on the ice and watched it try to grab something that was frozen in..  I took pictures from inside the cabin.  From past experience I know if I want a picture, take it now, don’t go outside because it just scares the birds or animals away.At the time I didn’t know what the eagle was trying to get, but now that the ice has melted some, we can see this is the head of a duck decoy we left out there last fall. 

Out on a drive on Sunday we saw this proud grouse strutting across the road.  And of course the deer come by here a couple times each day to see if there’s any corn or sunflowers for them to snack on.  This was from rainy Sunday.In the past we’ve seen an occasional otter swimming around in the pond.  This is the first year we’ve seen three of them and were able to watch them play around on the ice.  Otters know how to have fun and they seem to be goofing off most of the time…except if other critters are around.  These two were keeping an eye on me while I was keeping an eye on them. This one wasn’t happy to see a pair of great blue herons land on the ice near their open water. (Also taken from inside the cabin.  Herons have eyesight as good as eagles.)
Jim got this picture of the otters (we’re calling them “The Three Amigos”) and one of the three beavers.  We have the trail cam running and so far only deer and a raccoon have gotten their pictures taken.  Stay tuned, spring has just started up here.

It sure has gotten quite around here

Seems like it happened overnight.  The pretty song birds have stopped singing, the woodpeckers aren’t tapping on deadwood, no frogs croaking and we haven’t seen a bear, squirrel or beaver in weeks.  Every once in awhile we hear a Blue Jay scolding or the whip-poor-will, whip-poor-willing and the little hummingbirds are always right outside the windows doing their chirpy thing, but the rest of them have gone silent or disappeared. 

With the trail cams, we still see what’s lurking out there.  I’m not a big fan of raccoons, but this is one of the cutest pictures we’ve gotten of one of them.

Last night the big ol’ buck stopped by with the little buck we’re calling Junior.  Oh my gosh, he looks so tiny next to the big guy.  He must  think “when I grow up I want to look just like him”.  The buck really is a beauty.  Here he is with one of the many bunnies that hang around here.  This buck will make some hunter very happy this fall.  But maybe he’ll survive another year.  We couldn’t believe he survived last winter.

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Tomorrow we’re going home for a couple days .  I have a gallon of sugar water ready to  fill the hummingbird feeders and hope it will last them for 2-3 days.  Jim refills the big one everyday.   He’ll put out sunflower seeds for the birds and probably throw down a handful or two of corn for the little doe that comes by way too often.   It will be a quick trip home.  Pick up the mail, do laundry, mow the grass and then back on the road again.  We sure can’t complain about the kind of weather we’ve had up here lately.  So nice compare to the heat, humidity and storms so many of you are enduring.   You won’t hear one word of complaining out of me.

June 30 Visitors

The first visitor I saw was when I was walking on the path to the east of the cabin.  I’m heading one way and this big ol’ painted turtle was coming the other way.  I thought it was pretty cool that it was using the path too.  I think it was heading back to the pond.
 
Besides the birds, squirrels and chipmunks that are around here most of the day, we had a visit from a small bear last night.  While it was cleaning out the bird feeder, a deer came by to have a little evening snack.  She didn’t see the bear right away, but took off like a flash when it moved in her direction.  This blurry picture is taken from inside. 

The bear hung around until I decided it was time to scare it away.  But that was after we got a close up picture of it on the trail cam.
Here’s some of the other evening visitors.
 

And another visit  from the bear.  This was after he dug up an ant hill on our lawn.  Sheesh!  Jim had to scare him away and hopefully he’ll go out and find some blueberries, raspberries or other natural bear food out there in the big woods.