Charlie’s Critter Report

Hi, it's me, your friendly neighborhood beagle.

Sometimes we sit on the back deck. Look what I saw from there.  It stayed in the shadows. Mom calls it a groundhog. She doesn’t like it because it makes holes under the house, and eats plants in the garden.  

Sometimes Mom plays on the computer. She told it to draw a royal-looking dog. I can tell it’s not real because it has extra ears and toes. 

Yesterday we took my friend Sadie and her mom to the state park. We saw a deer, but my mom didn’t take pictures because it was far away. It looked like this one though.

I saw a dog who was driving a car, I think. Mom won't let me drive.

On Friday, Lynn brought some people over and they worked on the window and made a lot of noise. I made noise back at them. We don’t have pictures of that either. Mom had her hands over her ears.

We do have a picture of me with one of my critter toys in our car. I guess that’s enough for now.

Photo of the Year 2022

City Daily Photo has a theme for the first of each month, and the theme for January 1st is always Photo of the Year. It isn’t easy choosing one so I made digital copies of images I thought were worthy and then clicked through them several times. I decided on this river scene because it is intriguing, the golden light is pretty, and the location is the Shenandoah River, which is one focus of my blog.

I’ll show you the runners up in collage form to save space.

The young woman is showing her child an exhibit of photos of endangered animals. The icy tree is a recent shot that I took while walking my dog.

A dramatic sky will often prompt me to take a picture.

The Love sign and the small garden are both at Seven Bends State Park. I work with a group that supports the park and I logged 101 volunteer hours in 2022. The park is still being developed but it is open for hiking, fishing, canoeing, and picnicking. There is a great play area for children near the Hollingsworth Road entrance.

The final four images show a hawk, Charlie and me, a unicorn, and a deer. Looking at these reminds me that I saw some wonderful things in the past year. 

Critters Sweet and Troublesome

Happy Easter!

Spring is in the air and the bears are about. I looked out this morning and saw this bird feeder tipped over. Two feeders that had been on poles were now on the ground, broken open. A suet cake was also on the ground. I guess Mr. Bear did not like it because it was the kind that was seasoned with red pepper to deter squirrels. 

Frank checked our garbage can. It was open and trash was strewn about. A can of pressurized whipped cream was crushed and punctured. I hope Mr. Bear enjoyed it. But I also hope he does not come back! 

I was able to put the brass suet holder back together. It's pretty sturdy! 

The bear also bent one of the metal feeder poles rather badly. I don't know if we can fix it. I also don't know if we can fix the green-roofed suet feeder. It's pretty bent up.

April is the end of bird-feeding season here. I usually stop in mid-April because of bears. It's only a little early, and I had already taken down most of the seed feeders. They needed cleaning and I didn't see the point in filling them up again, knowing that they draw bears.

A neighbor reported today that two bears entered his porch last night and broke into a can of bird seed. 

Bears don't really hibernate here but they den up during cold weather and feed close to home on mild days. In spring they do a walkabout, looking for suitable places to fatten up during warm weather. 

The graylag geese that bit me the other day continue to act mean. I don't know where their nest is and I'm not about to go looking for it! I'm afraid to even go to the mailbox without carrying a broom or something to fend off their nipping. 

They even threatened Frank when he was picking up the trash that the bear had scattered! He squirted them (lightly) with the garden hose and they backed off. A goose can be fearsome even when it doesn't bite. They stretch their neck and hiss, staring at the target which is your legs. No wonder people call them cobra chickens!

On a lighter note, we saw dozens of deer when we drove along Skyline Drive on Thursday. I posted some scenic shots yesterday. Here's a deer. 

Birds in a Shelter, Deer in Fields.

This afternoon I made a brief stop at a garden shop which was in a quonset-style structure. There were birds flying around freely and sometimes they rested on the rafters.

On the way home I drove through Blandy and saw deer in the distance. A little later I saw one in a field.

Shortly after that I saw a hawk perched on a pole but he took flight and I only got one quick picture of him before he disappeared from sight.
 

 Sharing with I'd Rather B Birdin'

 and Saturday Critters.

Thrashing About or Staying Still.

I saw this bird digging a hole in a sandy spot and stirring up dust in my yard.

Sometimes birds like to take "dust baths." I believe this one is an immature brown thrasher.

I'd Rather Be Birdin' / Saturday's Critters

Yesterday I posted some pictures from Capon Springs. Here's a small rabbit statuette that was in their garden.

Not far from there I saw this peacock sculpture at a driveway entrance.

Back in the world of living creatures, I spotted a deer near the Big Meadows picnic area in Shenandoah National Park. I think it had bedded down and didn't feel like getting up just because a car stopped. I took the picture through an open window.

The final picture is also from Shenandoah National Park. I had stopped at an overlook and heard a bird cawing. I tried to spot it through my zoom lens and saw a crow take flight.

Garden Week is Coming Up.

Willy Nilly Friday

1. It's time for Historic Garden Week in Virginia! It looks like the rain will be gone tomorrow so I plan to visit some homes and gardens.

Unfortunately Frank will not be able to tour them this year because the surgeon gave him strict orders to stay off his feet for another month. He can't risk tearing his achilles tendon again. He's feeling a little stronger but that doesn't help much since he isn't allowed to walk yet.

Sharing with Floral Friday and Friday Bliss.

2. This swinging bridge near Strasburg is still needed when the Shenandoah River floods. Residents who normally cross the Deer Rapids low water bridge by vehicle cannot do so when the water is high, so they have to reach their homes by walking over this high bridge. I would not want to do this during a storm, though!

I converted this to black and white to empathize the composition.

3. For Weekend Reflections, a look at some mallards on a pond.

4. I noticed new signs at Martins Supermarket. "Shopping carts will lock if taken beyond the parking lot perimeter." I assume they are using technology similar to an invisible fence (for dogs).

5. We had rain and wind today. After the rain let up, I went out to run a few errands. I checked out the clouds from Skyline Drive. The first overlook is only a couple miles from Front Royal.

Skywatch Friday.

Shooting Pictures without Film

Okay, my camera doesn't use film; it uses memory cards. Somehow last weekend I either forgot to insert the card or it fell back out. I lost two days of pictures! Yes, toward the end of the second day I noticed a little red warning through the viewfinder but I couldn't read it so I didn't realize the card was missing until I tried to remove it to transfer the images to my computer. Oops!

This Sony camera does not have built-in memory like my Nikon. Some of the pictures I lost were of little consequence: flowers in a nice garden (I have others),  a deer (I have hundreds of deer pictures). Other pictures I wish I had: Lynn in the arboretum at JMU (although I think she was frowning at me) and three baby birds (possibly grackles) that had fallen from a nest at Birdsong Garden. (We did notify our hostess and she said she would keep an eye on them.) Then there was a great shot that I missed and now I'm glad I missed it: a young bear that we saw crossing Skyline Drive. By the time I stopped the car he scrambled into the woods. If I had shot pictures of him, I'd be really unhappy about losing them!

Well, I have some other pictures to share today with Saturday Critters and I'd Rather B Birdin', starting with these ducklings and their mom.

The robin's nest was on a sill in someone else's house. The parent was nearby and the little ones had recently hatched.

The next three pictures show goslings. They are with their parents plus an extra goose, whom I call Auntie. Geese often group together to keep babies safe.

Last but not least, here's my baby! He looks a bit forlorn because I stepped down into the yard to take pictures and left him on the deck.

Flash is doing okay considering his age and ailments. Getting his medicine into him is a test of wills. He sleeps most of the day and only shows energy first thing in the morning and later after 5 PM. Then he follows me around for a while, eats, drinks, and hangs out with us. Eventually he gets tired and goes into his crate to go to sleep.

A Deer, A Toad, and Two Little Birds

In Shenandoah National Park.

A Toad in my Driveway.

According to Froglife, "Frogs have smooth, moist skin and long, stripy legs and are likely to be found in damp habitats in the garden. Toads have warty skin, golden eyes and prefer to crawl rather than hop; if threatened a toad can puff itself up to appear bigger. Toads can tolerate drier habitats than frogs and spend less time in water."

I think these are house finches.

Frank the Farmer (Not)

We planted a small plot of vegetables this spring. Frank was happy to harvest two ears of corn out of it. Let's see, what else did we get?

Well, we got a handful of lettuce. Then the weather turned hot and the rest of the lettuce turned too bitter to eat! Recently I picked a nice yellow squash and there are a few more coming along. And there are a few grapes on the vines he planted last year, although a vine near the pool has died, probably from too much water.

Our only real success was the potatoes. We dug up enough to fill a large bowl.

No doubt we lost money on the garden. This has happened to me before. In fact, it's usually the case, but I hoped it would be different here because we don't have the deer problem that we had at Bryce.

However, we do have weeds, heat, ground hogs, and rabbits.

Battling Critters

Our current struggle with mice began with the discovery of a little hole in a bag of dog food, followed by other little holes in other bags. These were bags made of plastic so thick that I did not think a mouse would chew through it, but they did.

We set out mousetraps and purchased canisters and heavy-duty plastic boxes for vulnerable foods, plus mouse-proof containers for bird seed and dog food. (Oh, that reminds me: I should buy one for grass seed. I had a half-full bag of grass seed that got devoured!)

I did not keep track of what this incident cost us, but between the loss in groceries and the cost of storage containers, we spent well over a hundred dollars, not including the cost of mouse traps.

One mouse was caught immediately in a Nooski Mouse Trap that Amazon had sent me to review. Two mice eluded various traps for several weeks and finally got hungry enough to enter a couple of baited Mice Cubes, which are plastic boxes that do not kill them and are thus "humane." (I use quotes here because I then had to release the poor creatures in the cold snow, where they probably froze if they did not become a quick snack for a cat or hawk.)

All this got me to thinking about how animals are competitors with humans for food. Household vermin are what I'm dealing with now, but in the past I've had garden plants destroyed by deer, turtles, rabbits... and I'm not even a serious vegetable gardener! People who grow large gardens have to deal with ground hogs and all sorts of critters.

Fences keep some animals out, but small animals burrow under them and birds and squirrels aren't deterred by them. A man who sells fruit and nut trees told me that he allows someone to hunt in his orchard in order to protect his livelihood. Those of us who enjoy looking at deer and squirrels are uncomfortable with the idea of killing them, but if you read the facts about deer in Virginia you realize it can be necessary. Many gardeners let their dogs chase deer out of their yards, which works some of the time.

As someone who loves animals, I find our age-old struggles against them to be rather sad. But reality is not always the way we'd like it to be. We are still in competition with wild animals for food.

[Note: The above product links take you to Amazon, which issues me a credit if you buy something through one of my links.]

Brutal Facts of Life

After I posted the pictures of the garden club's tour of the Edible Landscaping nursery, I continued thinking about what our host told us about controlling deer and squirrels. Basically, they had to allow someone to hunt them! After all, the nursery raises fruit trees, berry bushes, and nut trees, all of which attract hungry animals.

Yes, there are many things you can try to keep animals out of an orchard or grove, and you may even succeed in keeping deer and bears out to some extent but I don't know any way to really keep squirrels away. And so, many people shoot them! Now I happen to think squirrels are cute and it saddens me to think of them being shot, but I can understand a farmer's need to protect his crops. There's irony here because many vegetarians depend on nuts for protein and probably don't realized that animals died in order that nut trees could grow and produce.

Of course, forests were cleared and animals dispossessed in order to grow grains and vegetables as well as fruits and nuts. We have always been in competition with animals for foods and the land needed to grow it. And even if you never eat a tasty morsel of meat, the fact that you must eat means that some animals must die. It's a jungle out there!