Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Whoops! Would You Believe FOUR?!!!


You would think three little bandits would be plenty, but a fourth baby/teenage raccoon has joined the others.  I don't know what is in our yard that's so attractive to them, but they spend hours every day under the pecan trees with their noses to the ground eating something.  I'm hoping it's grubs or other  pests in the worm stage and it would be perfect if they're taking care of all the Japanese beetle grubs as those are such pests!

This photo was taken with my new camera which arrived last Saturday.  I got tired of waiting for Nikon to bring out their latest camera so I bought a Canon Power Shot SX60 with a 65X zoom lens.  Wow!  What an improvement over what I can capture now than what my old camera could do.

As a matter of fact, most of the wildlife we see is in the fields behind the barn, about 200 yards or so from the house.  The kitchen window looks out in that direction and I often glimpse something there but it's usually too far for a decent photo.  Not with this camera!  It's also not supposed to do well in low light but I happened to see a turkey out back yesterday as I was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner and I got the following photo.





The color looks a bit weird but otherwise, the photo is very decent for low light and a subject that I could barely see with my naked eye.  And did you happen to see the 'happy surprise' in the lower left corner (click on the photo to enlarge it)?  Imagine how thrilled I was when I downloaded the photos to find not only the turkey, but 4 little turkey chicks with her!  I could barely make out the turkey and had no idea there were chicks too!

I'm very blessed with this camera and would have missed both the raccoons and the turkey chicks had I not bought the Canon camera.  Maybe the Nikon B700 is a better camera but I've waited for it long enough.  First it was supposed to be out in the spring of this year, then they moved it to July 1st and now they say it will be the middle of October.  Not any baby animals around at that time of the year around here at least.

Will keep you posted with other photos that I'm able to take with it.  Well, if I have enough time since I now have enough reference photos to keep me painting for quite a while!  Maybe you should watch this blog for both photos and paintings!

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Then There Were Three!

Yep, we looked outside yesterday and a third baby raccoon had joined the other two.  Two of the little ones are fairly skittish but one doesn't seem to mind me taking photos of him.  Here is one photo of the three of them together that I was fortunate enough to get.






They were across the fence peering at me like the little masked bandits they are!

This has been an exceptionally good week for wildlife sightings and already before 8:30 this morning, we've seen deer, a wild turkey, a hawk, bluebirds and humming birds as well as a multitude of various other birds.  There have also been an abundance of butterflies and insects of all kinds.  Can you spot the bee in the following photo?





And, our wren house has new tenants!  We didn't even know there were wrens nesting in the house until the Mama and Papa Carolina Wrens began feeding the babies.


As before, this photo was taken through the glass storm door and isn't as clear as it could be.  At least you can see one of the parents feeding the babies.  Hopefully, I'll be able to get some photos of the babies when they start to leave the nest in a couple of weeks.

It's times like this when I'm really glad we live in the country.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Two!

We thought we had one baby raccoon but discovered there are two of them!  Actually, we thought we saw two yesterday but when it didn't show up in all the time I was taking photos of the one, we thought we must have been mistaken.

These two don't seem to be really afraid of us and just go about snuffling the ground almost ignoring us.  I was able to get quite a bit closer today.  So, let me introduce you to TWO young raccoons!



They're really cute right now but I know they'll grow up quickly and can cause some damage with their curiosity so I'm really resisting the urge to feed them!  I don't want them to become dependent on us either.  It's hard to resist babies though, isn't it?

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Just Another Day In The Country

In my bio for Blogger, I talked about seeing wildlife out here on a regular basis.  Well, we do.  We see all kinds of birds and even deer pretty much daily.  The other day we even saw a coyote traveling across the new dam of our pond.  He was traveling at a pretty good lope though so there was no chance of grabbing the camera.

But today, my husband was sitting on the porch cooling off after working in the garden and saw a young raccoon in the front yard.  I had the camera handy and was able to get the following photos of the little rascal!

Here he is as he was nosing around in the grass searching for grubs or other insects, I guess.













He was darting here and there and I couldn't quite seem to catch a full face shot of him so I yelled a short "Hey!" at him to get him to look at me.  The following is that photo:

That got his attention all right but it also startled him a bit.

He must have decided that a tree might be a safer place than the ground but fortunately, he didn't climb
any further than the base of the tree.  He was obviously a very young, but weaned, raccoon, and was more concerned with filling his belly than being scared of me!

After a few seconds, he returned to nosing around in the grass.

We don't often see raccoons as they're nocturnal creatures so this was a special treat.  I kinda think he's newly on his own and just trying to figure out how he was going to survive.  Maybe he's still used to mama feeding him at all hours of the day and doesn't realize he's supposed to hide during the day and feed at night.  I'm sure he'll eventually work it all out!

I do wish I'd had a good camera for these photos.  I had decided to look at the Nikon b700 which was scheduled to debut on July 1 but for some reason they've delayed the introduction until October!  So, if anyone has a recommendation for a good camera with a super zoom, that takes sharp photos and doesn't have much of a lag time, please let me know!