Spotted Again

You might remember the last fawn sighting I posted about… Since then, I’ve had several opportunities to see them around my place, but often when my camera was not at hand.

A few days ago, while driving home, we saw a mother and her youngster on the side of the road and stopped to let them cross. I was so engrossed in watching that I didn’t think to try and take a few photos until they were almost out-of-view. I love the backdrop of field and trees, but the fawn itself is little more than a brown pair of ears visible above the grass line….

Today, I headed out for a very brief walk as the sun was setting. It was unpleasantly warm and I was immediately distracted by the unwanted attention of various “bitey flies”. (Yup, that’s my highly scientific term for any number of fly species that make their living extracting blood from the local mammals… including myself, sadly.) Perhaps if I had been less distracted, I would have noticed the big dark eyes staring at me from a short distance away and approached more slowly. I stopped in my tracks and even backed up a few feet… sometimes this is enough to put our resident deer at ease and they will just go back to what they were doing. But the mother deer munching on Toyon in front of me had two fawns with her and I think she thought better of sticking around. They started to disappear into the dense brush. I simply watched them go. Despite my desire to take wonderful photos, I try never to chase after animals. I have no desire to alarm or frighten them — even if it means that I miss the shot. After a few minutes, I wandered past the area they had been and looked up into the foliage on the hill rising before me. At first I didn’t see anything, but I heard a bit of crashing as one of the fawn dashed to keep up with its mother. I managed to take a few images, though the second fawn never came back into view…

As I was taking the above photo, the flies began to descend on me in the most merciless of ways. I already felt a bit wilted from the heat and I hadn’t even walked up the hill yet. Still, when you can come home with memories like these, it’s hard not to smile.

Second Chance

Around the same time as yesterday, in just about the same place… guess who I spotted again?

Hah… “spotted again”… that’s funny! This little one certainly is spotted and terribly cute.

This time, I managed to get to my camera in time to grab a few shots. The resolution is not fantastic because I had to shoot at a pretty steep angle through the glass of our kitchen window, which always causes some unfortunate distortion. But, these images are all about capturing and preserving my memories of this lovely creature. Mission accomplished!

First Fawn!!

This morning, I had the blinds in my bedroom open while I was working away at my computer. I registered a bit of movement and looked up in time to see a bunch of spots, two pair of wobbly legs, big ears and dark eyes staring back at me. This is the first Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus) fawn I’ve seen this season and it made my heart smile!! I wasn’t fast enough getting to my camera to snap any pics before the skiddish youngster trotted out of view, but here’s an honorary pic from the archives to celebrate the occasion. (I love the expression of the foreground fawn in this photo and the whimsical out-of-focus background that the tail-end of its twin sibling provides.)

Skunk!!!

Sadly, I’m still feeling sick… but, it was definitely necessary for me to get outside for a little while today. My husband (who’s also been a bit sick) was kind enough to join me on a mellow walk down to the creek and back. We checked up on the newts… listened to the birds calling… I occasionally stopped from time to time to peer at some small beetle or spider. Then, I saw a flash of movement in the creek bed, several feet below the height of the road we were walking on. A somewhat alarmed looking skunk hurried up the embankment on the opposite side of the creek and crashed into the dense foliage. We watched it until it went out of view and then I babbled on about what a wonderful sighting we’d just had. You see, though we’ve lived here in the canyon for seven years and have had a few skunk sightings here and there, mostly we are aware of their regular presence solely by the lingering odor that often wafts through the air. The few times that we have seen them, it’s always been while driving on the road (usually at night) and then we only a get a few seconds to observe them before they slink off out of sight. This was by far the best opportunity we’d had to really watch one of these lovely creatures! We were about to move on, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw another one emerge from the foliage a little distance behind where the last one had disappeared. Perhaps because we had not startled this one, it was more nonchalant and we quietly watched it forage and dig around for a much longer time before it too finally disappeared from view. It was near sundown and far too dark and shady by the creek for there to be much hope of good photographs, but I did take several video clips and I thought I’d share a few still images from that footage, just so that you all can share in the experience… even if it’s just a bit of blurry black & white. (*grin*)

Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis)

I think the fact that we live on such a large and undeveloped tract of land actually prohibits how much we get to see these guys… But, I know that skunks are often common visitors in many people’s backyards. Skunk stories, anyone??

Layin’ Low

As I lay in bed with a sore throat, aches, pains and a nasty headache, I feel all the more grateful for the beautiful days I spent outside last week… Blech! I do NOT handle being sick well. I’m trying to be good to myself though and give my body the time it needs to rest and repair. Here’s a few pics of the local critters taking a break too… *grin*

Squirrel Stare Down

Western Gray Squirrel (Sciurus griseus)
The other day, before I even got to the steps and discovered the rattlesnake, I stopped to take this picture. There are at least two tree squirrels that live just around our cabin and it’s typical when we’re exiting the front door for them to scamper half way up a tree and then stop to stare at us with dark, unblinking eyes and a wary posture that says — I can run up this trunk faster than you… but I won’t, unless I have to. The look of this particular one just made me want to bust out laughing! That hairline on its head where a new coat of fur is growing in conjures up images of TV sitcom stars from my youth. At first I thought of Squiggy from “Laverne & Shirley”, but then I decided that Eddie Munster was probably a closer match. HA HA!

Seen anything in nature that’s made you smile recently?