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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Wild Life

Spotted along Joe's Run as I was driving home the other evening:

6 deer
4 geese
1 great blue heron
1 chipmunk
3 squirrels
2 courting cardinals
1 beaver

And at the house:
2 crazy black labs
1 crazy old man

17 comments:

  1. Hello Granny Sue
    Greetings from Mabel Kaplan, Western Australia (also of Storytell): Lovely stuff here. I looked out the back door this morning and saw:
    a family of honey eaters nesting;
    one gecko sunning him/herself on the shade cloth over the pergola; and,
    one wicked husband feeding three stray black cats.
    I'll call again!
    You can also find me:
    http://belka37.blogspot.com

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  2. how lovely!

    we have the foals of the donkeys and ponies being born right now and we have a blue tit nesting in the box beside our bedroom window! to say nothing of the 13 different spiecies of birds visiting our garden (yes i have even counted!)

    oh and yesterday i washed the little curtain out of our camper and hung them on the line :)

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  3. Believe it or not, South Park (a neighborhood in Morgantown where I live) has a small herd of white tail deer. There is always one or two nearby the house. Also, Franklin loves to chase the songbirds in the yard (he's the cat). He never catches them, though - I have him on a leash. There's also a huge flock of ravens that nest near the giant old oak in the backyard. Oh, and a groundhog that lives under the neighbor's porch.

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  4. Hi Mabel! Lovely to see you here--and your wildlife is definitely a little different than our local variety :-) I'll be by to visit your blog soon.

    Laoi, it must be lovely to have foals nearby. Our neighbor has horses but so far I've not seen any baby ones. Lots of cattle along our road, though, and goats. Many goats, which for some reason hve become suddenly popular.

    Jason, I'm astonished at Franklin! Surely he's too much of a gentleman to go after birds! Love the groundhog--you'll have to catch him on camera sometime.
    Apparently we also have a resident skunk somewhere, because the dogs are redolent again.

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  6. We've been seeing our covey of quail lately as well as pheasant cocks and hens.
    Since we had rain last night, you can here frogs this morning. I'm hoping we'll have some close to the house for the kids to catch.
    We have to be sure and put the cat food up--the skunks love it.

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  7. What type of squirrels did you see? Red, Fox, Gray, Flying (Northern or Southern), DelMarVa, etc???? Perhaps a Grizzled Indian Squirrel?

    And was the crazy old man a subspecies? He seems to be specialized to that one specific area in Jackson County, but how could Larry be classified under the Linnaeus system? Binomial nomenclature gone terribly wrong.

    And a skunk? What kind? Male or Female? What age?

    Inquiring mind here.

    ps...Shirley and I play this game whenever we smell a skunk, we determine if its sex and age. Yes it is possible! But you've gotta sniff really deep! Shirley *loves* that game!!!lol.

    pss...I'll shut up now...I can hear you saying, "Matthew, you are such a geek!".

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  8. Sorry for the typo--that should say "hear frogs."

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  9. I wish you would have been here the other day because I saw a beautiful bird and I know you would have known what it was. I had never seen one like this before here and there were 2 - a mating pair.

    Both were the size of a sparrow. The male was a dusty blue color from the top of his head down to his tale. From his beak down his belly he was a redish brown. The female looked almost the same but instead of a dusty blue down the back, she was a gray color.

    I really need to learn the different birds besides the obvious ones. But if I can figure out what they were, I'll put feed out to attract them.

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  10. OK Matthew:

    The squirrels were a fox squirrel and two gray--sex unknown but from the behavior of the gray ones, I'd venture a guess they were one male and one female; of course, that's conjecture only!

    As for the old man, he's a homo crazien Olcottus ex-hirsutus (at least on top of the head). Subspecies shortus roundus hilarious.

    The skunk is an unknown, his/her odor having been corrupted by dog.
    My guess is older since he can strike quietly without warning, leaving only his memory behind. (or only the memory of his behind behind)

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  11. Jaime, what you saw was a pair of eastern bluebirds. They are so lovely, great bugcatchers. They have a nice song and like to live in hollow fenceposts, birdhouses, etc. Usually you see them in more open areas, since they tend to be mesdowland birds rather than woodland birds. They almost left WV for many years but have made a great comback in the past 20 years.

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  12. That is awesome. I knew you'd know. Thanks.

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  13. Wow! All I saw was a crow who waited while I got out my camera, switched it on, aimed, focused...and then the [!!] flew away. And I saw a smashed badger on the side of the road (we have a lot of those).

    I laughed at "crazy old man"!!

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  14. a smashed badger? that is something to contemplate. It reminds me of seeing the smashed armadillos in the south. Commonplace for them, but I had to stop the car and get out to look. What a strange thing.

    But a badger has a level of coolness an armadillo does not 9in my opinion, anyway).

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  15. I liked the crazy old man part, I have one of those too. But don't tell him I said that, I'll deny it.

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  16. I hear you, Janet--I think they are the same rare species!

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