Wildlife in Your Life

Littlek--

Robin?

I don't think so. Pretty sure it was a european starling.

intrepid lilk. leaving no stone unturned no height unscaled. Up to the minute reporting at its finest.

An unmissable episode.

Littlek--

That wasn't a hawk. That was an environmental purist.

Wow, Dadpad, I felt the wind blow back my hair when you said that!

Noddy, yeah, no kidding. They may be an invasive non-native, but they make a pretty noise when they bunch up together in the trees near my house.

Perhaps they are reciting Shakespeare? Starlings were imported and released in Central Park along with pairs of every other bird the bard mentioned.

Really! Is that how they all got here?

I'm pretty sure the hawk was a sharp-shinned hawk:

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/European_Starling.html

Curlews are very restless on the campus this morning.....

at 6:00 in the morning last fall I looked out my front window...I had an 8 point buck in my front yard. Amazing...got the boys up to see and before I could get my husband it had run off...probably because of all the squeals he heard coming from the house.

We have a lake right down the street and the Canadian geese come and hang out here all winter - sometimes all summer too. Swans as well. Also copperheads...not so good.

we live near a state park reserve so we get some wanderers at times.

We have seen foxes in the back yard and I have possums in the front. One that frequents my front porch and jumps from it to my dogwoods to sleep. And I have TONS of chipmunks. Cute..but they are a pain in the @$$. I have a cat though. :wink:

saw a wild turkey while jogging past St. John's Seminary this afternoon.
first one i've seen in the neighborhood...

We just fed the swans at the lake...we were skipping rocks and they came up to us like they expected something. I went back and got some stale bread I had. The boys loved it....one of them almost got G-baby though - tried to pluck it out of his hand....scared him a bit I think.

I saw a wild turkey walking down the sidewalk on Mt Auburn near where Brookline meets Watertown. Near the Mahoney's.

Today I saw an owl. We were walking in Forest Hills cemetery and I had found a mother-load of owl pellets under a tall pine (where they tend to be found). We walked on and I looked up to see a huge, tufted owl (great horned owl, I think). Not sure what kind, it was just silhouetted (that <-- is one weird word).

this is he/she/it, the owl. It was as big as a severed horse head. Or an intact horse head, but without the rest of the horse.
It flew away, majestically so. The owl, not the horse head.

Yeah, cuz a flying severed horse head would be creepy.

We have a neighborhood racoon. It seems to be holed up in a sugar maple outside my window. Last night I saw it with it's head, paws and shoulders out of the trunk hole and started talking to it. It looked at me, interested and not terribly scared (nervous, though). I watched for a while and then I saw what I think was a much smaller head stick out not nearly as far. I think there are babies. But, it was late and I was half asleep. Will watch tonight as well.

Do not feed wildlife unless you want them to return and are capable of dealing with their aggression. You encourage the behaviour, and the only solution when it becomes a problem is lethal.

Don't blame me. I'll be happy to eat the damn game.

The raccoon who's taken up in the tree outside the window has two kits. She brought them out for seemed like the first time tonight. She came out, and went in two or three times while they watched. She called to them from the outside of the tree-den and they eventually joined her. They were reluctant and went back into the trunk once before joining her. She climbed around the trunk and half way down to a chain link fnece. The kits had to navigate the 6-8 inch gap between the fence and tree and were not happy about it. They were chittering and squealing. They were hard to see at this point, but it looked like mom had to grab each of them by the scruff to get them where she wanted them. They continued out of sight. It was quite cute. She's a good mama.

We're trying to figure out how to avoid having nesting raccoons in that tree next year. As entertaining as she thinks they are, the landlady wants to fill it the tree hole. But she wants to be sure that there's no one home when she does.

They've been gone since around 9:45 pm. They have stayed in a small area between two buildings (apartment and condo). I can see down this 'alley' and more importantly listen down it. They're not going far.