Wild

We have our own little nature preserve here, and have all been enraptured by our wildlife. We have seen tons of animals and evidence of animals unseen!

This morning, Peanut was helping me put the drying rack out in our side yard and we found a turtle in the stairwell! Since she is fascinated by reptiles for whatever reason, we stayed to watch Mr. T try to climb up the step. He stretched his neck and all of his legs s far as he could and worked to pull himself up. A few minutes later he was up one step. Whew! We checked on him again when we came back from the mornings adventures and he was back down at the bottom buried under the leaves. Honey moved Mr. T to the shade and Peanut and dad watched as he crawled away out if the sun. I tried to get a photo for you but he scurried off and was hard to find later on when I had a minute to put down the baby and grab the camera.

Since I missed this little guy (and I have missed several others - including a huge toad, tons of rabbits and bats, and a woodchuck that our crazy dog cornered), I thought I'd share some of the ones that did not get away...

Some robins built a nest in the pine tree right by our front door. These pictures are of the chicks when they were almost full grown and ready to leave the nest - I thought we were pushing it putting a flash into the nest with barely alive fuzz balls, so you don't get to see those - but they were so tiny when they first hatched! We got to see the eggs and the chicks as they grew. Peanut loved this and had to look in the nest every time we came in or out. I'm sure this factored heavily into how fast these guys learned to fly!

We also saw a red headed woodpecker and his mate one day on our tree out back by the bird feeder. It's not a great shot, but he was beautiful! He is the one on the front of the tree and his little lady is to his left.

A deer came to sit under our tree (that tree gets an awful lot of action!) one day when it was raining. He came by, spent some time giving himself a bath, and then laid down for a few hours. It was the middle of the day and he was completely nonplussed about us hanging around nearby.

All of this nature lends itself to exploring! Tomorrow we will see if we can find our little turtle friend again, but maybe we will meet someone new...