Ponder this:

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Creature sightings 4/10-4/17

A red-tailed hawk sliding down from the sky to my right, grasping a vole on the roadside bank, then turning and rising. I could see the vole clutched in the hawk's talons.


A glossy plump woodchuck jiggling all his round parts across the road.


A porcupine licking at some salty thing in the road. Obsessed with salt, they will tear apart storage shed walls to get at dried sweat on tool handles. He ignored the car's noise and headlights. I blew the horn and his body went whup! in shock, then he turned and waddled off to the ditch leaving his damp pawprints on the dirt.


The bald eagles are flying.  Everywhere.
  


A small cottontail galloping from one side of the road to the other.
And, of course, gray squirrels galore and one tiny red squirrel.

6 comments:

Fran Hill said...

I didn't know that about porcupines and salt!

Great eagle picture.

Barb said...

It's spring at your house, June! The animals are stirring. Last week, when I was in Breckenridge, I saw one of the resident Red Foxes cross my property. He seemed to be on a mission. Suddenly, he jumped behind a tree and appeared on the other side clutching a small furry creature. When I stepped out on the deck to watch, he gazed at me for an instant before slowly moving on with his lunch. Have a good weekend!

Friko said...

that's a lot of wild animals. we have nothing like that.
I never see anything other than dead badgers and foxes, stupid pheasants tripping across the road and grey squirrels on the bird feeder.
To my great disgust we now have two jackdaw nests in the beech tree. They squawk and caw all day long.
The hedgehogs have either not come out of hibernation in the garden yet, or they've all died in the harsh winter.

Von said...

Whow!!!Busy times!Thanks for that fascinating info on porcupines!

Wanda..... said...

Spring has sprung all over it seems.

Rusty said...

Last night was very quiet around the retreat. No raccoons, no skunk(s) - no nothing. Too quiet for me. As for porcupines - I have only seen one and that was many years ago in the Laurentians. That little critter 'rattled' up the nearest tree where he could observe me as the tree swayed back and forth under his weight. Oddly enough probably the only animal we never saw there was the raccoon. ATB! Rusty