THE COYOTE AND THE DEER

"Look! The deer are back, but only five of them this morning", I said to Linda.  Yesterday we had a herd pass by the pond, about 8:30 in the morning.  Eight of them passed by (does & yearlings), two stopping at our landing to get a drink, and then a few minutes later four more came along the pond!  In this group there were two young fawn who were definitely too small for last year's batch but seemed too big to be this year's; I think they had spots, so some doe must have been early to drop this year!  (MassAudubon says that deer drop in May or June, another source, DeerFriendly.com, says end of March and April for Massachusetts. Either way, this is VERY early!)

Deer passing along pond - 12 all together

Back to THIS morning.  About 6:40 AM (20 minutes after sunrise), there was a group of 5 deer down by the pond.  My movements in the house caused them to all look up the hill at us.  We turned off the light and watched.  Shortly, the tails went up and they RAN west along the pond.  We were wondering what spooked them, when I saw a coyote come loping along from the east!  Ah-HA!  The deer were too fast for the coyote and shortly, it doubled back the check out the landing to see if perhaps a doe had stashed her fawn there to hide.  No breakfast yet... so he loped off up the hill past the house next door.

The deep snow is hard on the deer, both for foraging and also because they sink so deeply into it, while the coyotes can mostly run on top.  I went down to the pond to look at tracks and found that mostly the deer tracks were fairly shallow, but every once in a while there would be one that had sunk in five or six inches.  You know how difficult it is for us humans to be walking along on the crust and suddenly it gives way -- imagine if your life was on the line!  Not surprisingly, I didn't find any distinguishable canine footprints.

Deer prints: medium size, there were some larger and some smaller

OTHER SIGHTINGS IN OUR YARD...

We have been seeing the Pileated Woodpecker frequently.  We have many dead trees or branches in our little stand of woods, so the Pileated is happy to remove some of the carpenter ants from the neighborhood for us!  I have only seen a male.

Our Bluebirds are still here chomping down the mealworms we put out for them.

I saw a Red-tailed Hawk overhead yesterday.

We have had several FAT coons under the feeder.

Our local Eastern Screech Owl is frequently spotted sunning in its hole in the tree.
 
No sighting of the Fisher this week.