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!