The Bandits Take a Bath!

My DH and I have decided that we're very easily entertained.  It's been very hot and dry here the past week or two so my husband set out a tray of water for the critters.  Of course, the baby raccoons found it right away and have been enjoying both drinking and playing in the water!  We've had a ball watching them and I just wanted to share a bit of the fun with some photos I got of them.

It's always fun to dunk your sibling!

Bathing amongst the butterflies and flowers

The aftermath after the bath!

I start a local watercolor class today and think I'm looking forward to it.  I normally don't get all that much from a workshop/class setting mainly because you either just observe the instructor paint or are told to paint and are at a loss as to how to go about it.

I hope this class will be different.  I know the instructor and admire her skill with watercolor and I think she's the type who will really teach - hope so anyway.

It's to start in a very short time so I need to go get ready for it!  Will let you know how it goes and you can watch this blog for my masterpiece!  lol

Raccoon Update

For a while, we didn't see 'our' raccoon babies then began to see them again about a week ago,  Unfortunately, we found one of them near our country road dead but it did not appear as if it had been hit by a car or had been injured in any way. 

We saw three of them for a couple of days but recently are just seeing two of them.  We don't know if the third one is just hiding/keeping out of sight or if something has happened to it also.  It's usually just one who is brave enough to show himself consistently and the others have all been way more shy and secretive.

But I was fortunate enough today to get some photos before they both scurried up a tree and out of sight.  Oh, the trees they now retreat to are apple trees which are full of apples!  We had hoped they wouldn't find those trees but ------.  My DH isn't going to do anything about them being in the apple orchard though - he's just glad to see them back around again.

Without further ado, here are the 'babies'!

Will be busy for the next several days as the Core Sound Museum is hosting a NC Wildlife Artists Society exhibition starting the 19th of this month (August) and it will run until November 17th of this year.  I have the three paintings allowed for exhibit but am still painting in hopes of producing something with a lot of wow factor!  We'll see what ends up in the show but decisions will have to be made quickly if I'm to get everything down to Harkers Island, NC in time for them to hang the paintings!

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!

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.