AND Let's Talk About The Wildlife...

When we first saw our home, it was winter, and it was covered with snow.

Then we started working on it in (what was up here) very early spring, and I noticed the woods were absolutely quiet- no animal sounds.

As time went on, we started to hear birds, etc..... and there I had hope that there would be wildlife.

After we moved in, we put out birdfeeders with food- unfortunately, the birds never got to it. We started getting visitors... first chipmunks, and black squirrels, then gray squirrels, then..... this visitor:

A very canny raccoon indeed- she quickly figured out how to dump ALL the birdseed onto the ground, and then the party of critters began.

We gave up on the birdfeeders, and just scattered seed/corn/etc for all visitors. Over the days, we had the squirrel/chipmunk contingent, wild turkey, Missy Raccoon, 2 porcupines, deer, a hawk (more interested in the chipmunks than the seed), and other critters? in the dead of night. It's been a lot of fun watching them.

Today, we got an awesome treat- Missy Raccoon stopped by with her 4 babies. The photos are terrible (taken through a door), but the babies were precious.

That's the mammal category. Here's a cute photo of a little frog in the garden:

And of course, let's not forget the insect world. This year has been a record outbreak of tent/gypsy/canopy caterpillars. We've had thousands of the latter crawling around- they start out in the tops of tall trees, and will soon become white butterflies/moths. It's been pretty creepy.

And the latest are the dragonfly hordes. They are harmless, and avoid humans, and actually not too pesty, but there are literally hundreds flying around...

Last of all, this was not on our property, but here's a photo of a pileated woodpecker- they are big suckers! They are in our area, and we hear them knocking on the trees. This was one we saw alongside a road when taking a drive: