Debbie's Garden: Animals

We know we have plenty of rabbits, but we only see up to two at a time. They love eating our lilies, clematis stems, asters, and crocus, so we plant as many as possible so they can't possibly eat them all. We've also tried garlic sticks around some plants to keep the bunnies at bay, but we're not convinced they worked. With rabbits this cute, though, we don't mind.
Of course, adult bunnies means that there must be baby bunnies around. This little guy is one of the reasons our asters are just little green stubs in the ground instead of nice shrubs. They're not plants; they're part of the 24-hour all-you-can-eat Bundlings buffet.
A pair of mallards visited our yard several times a day in spring 2005. The male got scraped up pretty badly on his chest in April 2005, which made it easier to verify that it was the same pair visiting each day. After a while, they were used to us enough that they would tolerate us sitting on our patio while they feasted on the birdseed under our feeders. We were happy to see them return in April 2006.
They used the neighbor's open lawn as their landing and takeoff runway. We stopped seeing them by late June 2005, so they must have gotten busy raising a family somewhere near water.
We've never seen more than one squirrel at a time, so we refer to all squirrels in our yard as "The Squirrel." He's a feisty little guy who took very little time to master climbing the shepherd hooks that support our bird houses. We don't mind feeding him because he's so cute. Wouldn't you agree?
He's a mighty leaper, as shown here leaping from our old crabapple to our garage.
We love our chipmunks, but they are so little, so fast, and so shy about being photographed that it is hard to get close photos of them.
That is, until June 2005, when we carefully followed this guy into the tree he was hiding in. He spends a lot of time around us, so he didn't seem very scared of us.
Since putting up nyjer seed socks and birdfeeders in 2004, we have a steady stream of goldfinches visiting our yard all year. They lose their bright coloring in the winter, so they're harder to spot, but they still visit every day.
We have several pairs of cardinals who live around our yard all year. Here, a female cardinal enjoys the bird seed ornament we hung in winter 2004.
We see cardinals most often as pairs, but if they are alone, it is more likely to be the male cardinals.
Although we see hummingbirds more often, they are so tiny that it's hard to get photos of them, too. But we try, anyway. This little guy sampled every one of our Tiny Tot gladiolus blossoms ...
... even though we were sitting only a few feet away.
On very rare occasions, we see blue jays. Because they are very skittish, we can only photograph them through a window at a distance.
Ditto for our woodpeckers. Rarely seen; impossible to photograph.
The same goes for the hawks who lives in this area, but our photos have been improving somewhat. It is a common sight to see them circling fields and parks around here, but rare to see one in our backyard. We do see the occasional spray of feathers after one has feasted upon a visitor to the Bundlings bird food buffet.
Butterflies, on the other hand, are more cooperative. Here's one on our weeping cherry just as it was starting to bloom.
Here's one enjoying our Thyra Viking aster in the fall.
Here's a tiger swallow butterfly on our May Night salvia plant in the spring.
This butterfly was hiding from me on a tomato plant, waiting his turn to go back to the cosmos blooms.
This bumblebee loves Lantana Irene just as much as the butterflies do.
Finally, we give you a slideshow of the development of baby chickadees in spring 2005. We discovered quite by accident that the top came off of our decorative birdhouse-on-a-pole. A pair of chickadees had chosen it to build a nest, and one day Tom discovered five tiny eggs in it. I couldn't resist following their progress, so every couple of days when the parents were off on their endless crusade to find food, I would slip the top off, take a quick photo, and replace the top. I estimate that the babies are two days old in this shot.
Here they are four days later, which makes them approximately six days old.
At eight days old, they are adorable and fuzzy.
At ten days, they have their chickadee coloring.
At twelve days old, their feathers are nearly completely filled in and they look like miniature adults. This was our last photo of them, because two days later, the nest was empty. Click here to read all about the nest of baby robins we had in 2002.

Copyright © Deborah Schilling/Thomas Bundy