The Hills are Alive

A doe with last year's fawn. From what we saw she may still be letting her nurse
Look how fat she is!

These photos were all shot from the back porch door

And show the top of the heifer pasture hill, where everyone loves to party

Just Make Yourselves at Home

And I don't mean on my rosy red lips

Barking Fox

Check out the gratuitous grackle

The boy called last night at just about dusk. I went out on the front porch to talk to him and was much entertained by a brace of sleepy male ruby-throated hummingbirds, which kept perching on the flower basket hooks. They would sit there waving their heads back and forth and occasionally flipping their wings like kids bopping to the music.


I was wondering if maybe they had little birdie iPods tucked in their feathers and ear buds too small to see. Eventually they took off for wherever they spend the night, but they were fun while they stayed.


After the boy hung up to get some rest, I went in to hang up our phone then went back out there just to enjoy the night. It feels like summer now and smells like summer too.


The cat bird kids didn't want to go to bed and were giving the old folks a hard time. They made quite a din down there in the mulberry tree. Then spring bird number 35 rowed slowly across the sky, heading down to the river I guess, a great blue heron, just catching the last rays as the sun went down.


I sat until it was almost full dark, then suddenly heard the strangest sound from the field in front of me. I came in and checked out YouTube and sure enough, it was a fox barking.


To call the noise a fox makes a bark is to call Air Force one a mosquito. What a big, eerie sound for such a small mammal. You can hear one here in all its glory. I would kind of enjoy having the things around if it weren't for their plagitty infatuation with all things chicken.

Now I know

Seems last year's grey foxes have moved on.

How the fox ears look. From very close. Much too close. This week's Farm Side, should you choose to read it on Friday, deals with a visiting....or maybe permanent resident....red fox. He ate my yellow rooster, incidentally my favorite alarm clock, just the other day.

I had no more than finished the column and gone about other work when there he was again. Same place, next to the old horse trailer.

Different day.

He was gone as quickly as he appeared, but later when I went prowling with the camera, I heard the pea fowl alarming. They can only see outdoors through a window under the woodshed so I crept up there.

Quieter than I thought I could because I walked right up to the darned fox. Maybe six feet away.

He was snuggled down between Liz's bales of straw, staring at my poor beauties and making them honk. I raised the camera to take a shot (wishing that I had shells for my .22 and had brought that instead) but before I could click he was gone.

Bold bugger coming out in daylight like that.

Light as a puff of wind. Thistledown. Feather fluff. Air.

I am not pleased with him although I don't think he can get into the coop. No wonder the last old hen is being so careful when she comes out of wherever she is hiding.

Meanwhile, Nick, who was loose in the house, along with the cat, and who had come in for some bragging in the same column because of his general good behavior, had just cleaned the litter box for me.

What a lovely dog! I am all in favor of a working dog keeping busy but......damn, just damn

By the way, fox ears are fuzzy, black and gold, with little white spots to break up the outline.

Psycho Bunny

This is the bird chasing rabbit I wrote about in the Farm Side. The thing is bizarre, racing in circles, over and over again, chasing birds off the long lawn.

You can see that it is huge for a cotton tail, but it isn't a snowshoe, which is the only other rabbit found around here. These pics aren't great because it was real early in the morning when I got them and was still pretty dark.

Psycho bunny sure hates grackles....and loves to take victory laps around the mugho pine, kicking up its heels and shaking its furry ears.