How many can you see?

Who on the spotlight of Buddy's Backyard today?

It's no secret that Buddy's Backyard is filled with critters, one of our biggest group of visitors are raccoons. YEP Raccoons and NO they don't go digging in the garbage > sometimes the recycling but don't ask me why the Kits are a curious bunch.

These Kits are not camera shy, they don't care for the hose, they love grapes and now Marshmallows. According to dad we have always had raccoons, and he had always feed them but then he kind of stop feeding them until a few years ago. Clearly one of the biggest complaints people have about Raccoon is them getting into their garbage.

We started feeding them to keep them out of other people garbage, that way they didn't have to go out to find food but instead come to Buddy's Backyard and always have food there waiting for them. So we been into our routine feeding for awhile but then we took notice of raccoons showing up much later at night looking for food, so we decided to start making a second batch of food for them.

Well as you know Kits have been born and mama raccoon teaches her kits where to go for food. We believe we have two sets of family and a couple adults from prior family. So one night while taking photo I couldn't believe how many I was seeing!

So take a guess by this photo on how many there are!!!

Sorry that this photo is a little dark, but this is taken at night

Think you got the right number???? Check again!

If you wonder if raccoon cleans their food? Yes they do! Not all the kits are doing that yet but most of them are.

Hope you enjoy today tidbits on Buddy's Backyard and remember be kind to nature.

A doe & her fawn

I know Buddy's backyard has full of critters and wildlife. One of the biggest things we get are deers, while it's been a long while since we been able to take pictures because the deers show up at night. Truth be told, we're not even sure how many deers we get.

Today one of our Does, who clearly has been here before while we been outside at the same time. Brought her fawn today. Her fawn still has spots but those spots will soon fade, we hadn't put out all the food yet but we were able to put some of the raccoon food out.

Enjoy!

Meet Gretchen

Hey everyone!!!

So guess what new visitor been coming around Buddy's backyard . . .

She's been coming around since mid-June, what descriptions can we say to hint on what Gretchen is.

She's large . . .

Has Feathers

Eats plants, bugs, insects . . .

Leaves one sets of tracks.

Have you figure it out yet????

GRETCHEN IS . . . . . 

A WILD TURKEY!

Copyrights: Buddy's Backyard

Copyrights: Buddy's Backyard

Copyrights: Buddy's Backyard

Gretchen has become a routine visitor nowadays, typically it's an morning and early evening routine. She'll come in the morning and depending on if anyone up, we see her but sometimes she come really early but we're always able to see her early evening.

There are some days she does come maybe three times, typically it's two but it could/and can be three to four times a day. There's almost never a day where we don't see her or know that she has come.

She loves to dig in what we call our leaf pile between our two large trees, and scowers for bugs that lives underneath all that mulch. That's usually how we can tell that she had been here in the morning when the leaf pile looks very disturb.

She did bring a friend at one point that we call Zelda, but she makes a very rare appearance.

If Gretchen continue to come when the weather and seasons start changing, we'll have to find a way to provide food for her during the cold season.

Where Am I?

I apologize for not doing any picture sharing lately, things been a little crazy with having a job and just trying to take fun photos of everyone in Buddy's backyard.

I can still say that we're still having a lot of activities just as well with pictures, but I've been working hard trying to submit photos to the Nature Conservatory photo contest and finding the right pictures that will blow the judges sock off.

On another note, I will be traveling in July to Oshkosh where there happens to be an Audubon's Birds of America exhibit. So I can't wait to see that!!! 

On birds related news, our orioles are starting to bring the babies to the feeders and just yesturday our Eastern Bluebird showed up again, it appears that he comes when there's lot of activity going on with the birdbath because that's how it been with the last few times of him and the female showing up.

Granted we haven't seen either of them since our big storm earlier this month but to see him again yesterday tells me that they have to be in the area somewhere and knows our backyard.

The Grackles are interfering with the Orioles feeders, they or just one of them likes to go up on the feeder and disrupt the orioles.

We've gotten pictures of downy feeding her baby so if I can find the pictures I'll share some as well other pictures.

Wild rabbits!!!! We are seeing so many!!! We got to have at least a dozen and babies too!

Well until I can get more things organize about how to run this blog better, we're keeping in tune with the backyard.

Orioles Behavior

Today, May 31st was the first that we seen our orioles do something right before our eyes. So we get crows in our backyard all the time, but this one crow that clearly came for food got an very unwelcome greetings from our male Baltimore Orioles.

They kept swooping down at the crow, and the crow wasn't really willing to leave but the males were persistent in making the crow leave. So the crow moves around from spot to spot in our backyard to the fence across the alley. But the orioles were not satisfied until it left the premises, so the crow decide to take off and the orioles came swooping down at it then chase it to where our lilacs and woodpile is.

After watching that whole thing happen, I quickly went to search up reasons why the orioles would do that because this is the first that we've seen them do it. From a couple things that I've read, the reason behind this attack is to protect their territory, their nest.

Now we just realizes that the boy from last year nesting, along with his mate had to have built their nest in one of our trees in our yard. We say this because we would always constantly hear them in those trees, so maybe they felt that the crow was invading their territory as well being a threat to their nest.

Rare Sighting!

So a few days ago, Buddy's Backyard had a very very rare sighting of a Eastern Bluebird. The humans of my household have live up in this area since 85' so this is a VERY VERY rare sighting.

Here's why mainly Eastern Bluebirds are not common where we live, Eastern Bluebirds tends to live in areas such as meadows and openings surrounded by trees that offer suitable nest holes. With the proliferation of nest boxes and bluebird trails, bluebirds are now a common sight along roads, field edges, golf courses, and other open areas.

Where I live is in the suburbs, while yes we have "some" small open fields with tall trees and a pond. It's not an area where Eastern Bluebird typically come to, for some reason this Male Eastern Bluebird stumbles across my very diverse backyard.

He drank some water and took a short bath and spent a little time in our backyard and then went on it way because we never saw it after that one sighting. BUT that doesn't mean it couldn't happen again! We'll just have to keep our eyes out and timing is everything, I'd just happen to have been taking some pictures of a Starling taking a bath and then sudden the Eastern Bluebird flew down to the birdbath.

I hope somewhere down the road that I'll venture out to take photos of Eastern Bluebird in their natural habitat as well other birds that Buddy's Backyard doesn't get. There's so many different variety of birds that I wished they all visited Buddy's Backyard (that's not inviting the hawk or other predators that would eat my birds and critters) 

Until next time my Blue friend, thank you for visiting my backyard.

Critters Spolight

 

Wild Rabbits

For Buddy, it's no secret that he has wild rabbits running around in his backyard. He would often keep watched from his porch and sometimes when we're out on his tiny walk.  

Little Baby Bunny

A great camouflage!

This is the bunny that happens to came out to eat clovers while talking with the neighbor

 Another interesting this about this rabbit, was that dad was talking to the neighbor and this rabbit decided that he was going to have his clovers while we were talking. That shows that this rabbit was comfortable enough to do what it wanted to do, while dad and our neighbor talked.

Look at those ears!

How many do you see?

This was another thing that was discussed, should we assume that these rabbits are from the same family? How does that dynamics work, when you think about it that most of these rabbits that lives in Buddy's Backyard are probably from the same parents or kits.

Is this a good pose?

 As a estimare of how many Rabbits Buddy's Backyard has, I would guess roughly around 5 or 6. Since we know there's one baby and there's at least four adults. 

There will be another Wild Rabbit Spotlight, I discovered just yesterday that one of our Wild Rabbit only uses three leg or only have a full set of three legs. It's tricky to really capture the bummed leg but it's in the front, but on the left side which is typically facing away from me.

Also for that second Wild Rabbit spotlight, I will talk a little bit more on rabbits, their life, habits, plus more. As far as attracting these animals, you'll most likely already have these in your yards. However the one thing I won't explain (for any critters) is how to eliminate them, our yard is a part of their home.