Silly Animals, Stately Birds

Saturday Critters / The Bird D'Pot

Since I posted multiple photos from Shenandoah National Park yesterday, I thought I should share these three shots from there too. The deer looks surprised that I interrupted dinner.

I was pleased to get close to a wild turkey but it turned its head away before rushing into the forest.

The rest of today's pictures are from my back yard, beginning with a silly squirrel.

I'm still filling the finch feeder. Usually I stop feeding birds in April because bears wander around hungry in the spring. I've had a couple of feeders crushed by a bear in the past. But I'm hopeful that bears are not attracted to black thistle seed like they are to sunflower seed. Thistle seed does not smell good, in my opinion. Goldfinches like it, though.

We've watched a pair of Canada geese with their lone gosling as he's grown over the past few weeks. Today I saw a second single-gosling Canada goose family at the same time as this one which surprised me. Usually Canada geese have multiple goslings, so why do two pairs here have only one? Perhaps there's an egg-stealing predator around. 

There is also a family of hybrid graylag geese that visit our yard and they have five goslings.