The Wild Life

I realized that I had some photos of the wild life that live in and move through our property. My husband has been telling me that we had a turtle that lives in our woods. He had seen it twice when it came out to eat some mushrooms that were growing after a rain. Last Sunday when I was on my way back from visiting my friend Peggy, he called me and said the turtle had been up close to the house eating. He caught the turtle and put it in a pool we had out front for the dogs to play in it. Of course he did empty it first. The photos below show our friend the turtle.

I do not know what kind of turtle this is, but he was glad when I released him. I gave him some lettuce which he ate before heading back into the woods.

This photo I had taken right after I started my summer vacation in June. This is a baby hawk that flopped into the top of one of our pine trees. He was learning how to fly and was not a happy camper. He screamed for his parents who were circling over head trying to get him to come to them. He must have sat there for 20 minutes before he tried to fly again. He landed on the roof of a house down the road from us and hopped around calling for his parents. We see him now and then and he did learn how to fly very well.

Here is one of my does. It is hard to get good photos of them. Even though they will let us sit on the deck and watch them eat the corn we put out for them, a sudden move as in to take a picture sometimes spooks them. I really wanted to get some photos of the babies this year, but so far, no luck on that.

We feed the deer a mixture of deer chow and corn. We also have a mineral block that they lick on.

They will even eat the sunflower seeds that we put out on the ground for the squirrels. And they like to eat the grasses that grow up from the bird seed that falls on the ground from the bird feeders.

Here are my Monarch caterpillars eating the butterfly weed I had planted for the butterflies. I love the color of these guys. We must have had over 25 caterpillars eating the butterfly weed before they cocooned themselves.

I really enjoy the woodpeckers that show up to eat the sunflower seeds.

Here is one on the ground picking up some sunflower seeds that fell from the bird feeder

After getting a seed she flew up to this broken branch.

And finally I caught a humming bird eating at my humming bird feeder.

It is so much fun watching all the animals. I need to get a good camera with a telephoto lens, I just might then be able to catch photos of the baby deer!