Everyone... Eddie

Here's another pic from July 5th.  This is Eddie standing up for inspection and you can see that he is looking very well developed for a three month old groundhog. Admire them fingers and claws which he uses to dig burrows and climb trees.

Sleepin Like the Dead

PJ got in the habit of catchin' a few Zzzz outside the burrow on warm afternoons this summer (this was July 5th). Not a very wise practice for groundhogs that don't want to end up in a hawk's bill. But what was even more disturbing was how dead he looked!  I had a mini heart attack every time I'd look outside and see him laying there like roadkill.

In fact, it turned out that PJ would sleep just about anywhere. Here he is sleepin' on a cool concrete slab a few feet from the burrow entrance:

Hawkeye

I just found these pictures from July 8th. While I was photographing Eddie poking around on  the ground and climbing a tree a short distance, I noticed a movement in the trees and upon looking up I saw this hawk watching Eddie the way a fat man watches fried chicken cookin'. I snapped a couple of pics and opened the door to get closer and that hawk took off in an instant! I was surprised that he didn't hang around at least as long at the deer and groundhogs do considering he was in far less danger from me being 25 feet up in a tree. But I guess his sense of survival is more developed then the ground dwellers.

Why would anyone want to eat this cute little guy?

Dang Dawn

I had a half hour staring contest with Dawn the Deer today. I noticed she was in the back yard staring at Toby so I opened the screen door and sat and watched them stare at each other. I think Dawn wanted to play but Toby wasn't interested. Dawn stayed just on the opposite side of Toby's invisible fence. Smart deer. I had some left over feed corn from making cornhole bags a few years ago so I took some out and poured it by a tree. Dawn let me get pretty close before she took off running. But she came back a few minutes later and gobbled up the corn while keeping and eye on Toby and me. :)

Staring contest. It was a draw.

Having a little corn for a tasty dietary change.

The Boys Are Back in Town

Howdy All!

Man it has been a long time since I posted!  It has been a long hot summer and the boys of spring have been in hiding.  I haven't seen Booker and the boys all of July and August!  I was beginning to think they had moved off and found new homes. Which would have been very sad. However this evening I saw two of them hanging out by the burrow entrance! And they were HUGE! i think the boys are bigger than Booker now! At just 5 months old!
   Sadly, I raced around looking for a camera and found that none were charged.  I had to take a pic using my camera phone which is pretty poor for this sort of thing, but here's what I got:

   I know you can't tell their size in this fuzzy pic, but I'm charging up the cameras and hopefully will be able to get a clearer pic in the next couple of days. Exciting times!  =)

Guillermo Peanut Stuffin'

I put a few peanuts out for Guillermo to enjoy this morning and the funniest thing happened!  He tried to get all three of them in his mouth at the same time!  Check out the progression of peanuts into his cheeks in this set of pictures:

Before Peanuts:

He gave up trying to get that third peanut into his mouth.  He must have thought he was being selfish so he left it behind for his friend Billy Bluejay who promptly swooped in and picked it up.

Chipmunks like Guillermo are really small, about the size of a child's hand, so they don't like to be out in the open where birds and other animals can see them.  So when they get tasty snacks like peanuts, they stuff them into their mouths and run off to a secret place like a tree house or a fort.  Then they'll take them out of their mouths and hold them in their hands while biting off the shell to get to the nuts inside.

Eddie Up

I'm not sure where Eddie thought he was going, but he decided to test his climbing skills again on another tree.

While Momma Booker watched from atop a nearby woodpile:

Booker's a Girl!

Dang. I can no longer escape the fact that Booker is a female.  The three pups were a pretty big hint but the nipples cinched it.

The kids grazed while Booker was away. They were happy to see her at dusk.

I really wanted Booker to be a boy. I had a sort of kinship with him -- both of us bachelors living alone at 410 Maxine Dr. But now that I have positive proof of his femaleship, I'm not sure how our relationship will change.  We'll see.

Welcome PJ, Eddie & Whizzer

My earlier post about Booker's son PJ was apparently incomplete because it left out PJ's siblings Eddie & Whizzer. Here's a few pics:

 

I estimate that these guys are 5 weeks old based on this information:
"It takes about two weeks for newborn groundhogs to have fur, and four weeks before they can open their eyes. At five weeks, they are running around.  When they are able to eat on their own, the mother will move each one away from the home den to a separate den and leave it. However, she will visit each one daily for a few weeks to check on it." So since they just came out of the den for the first time this week an are feeding on their own I estimate they're at 5 weeks. And they can climb!  Here's a pic of Eddie climbing a tree (For which he was named after Sir Edmund Hilary):

Eddie climbing a tree.

Eddie climbing down a tree.

I have a video of PJ running up the tree just as soon as he saw Eddie do it. I'll try to get that posted soon. It's a very exciting time of discovery for the lads!  =B

Welcome Fawndingo!

My friends!  We welcome another newborn resident to the backyard today!  (Busy week!)  We have a newborn fawn in the backyard who I believe is  the child of Dawn who was born into the back yard at this time two years ago with her brother Digger (you can see their pictures in a previous post here).  So we have named this baby deer "Fawndingo" because we expect great things from him/her.  Here's a pic:

Baby deer have these spots through the summer of their first year (about the first four months of their lives) and then their coat turns an even dunn color like this picture of Fawndingo's mother, Dawn:

 And here they are together:

Welcome PJ!

Banner day, my friends!

Today we welcome Booker's child, PJ to the backyard!

Talk about a major surprise when I looked outside this evening and saw a little grey groundhog snuffling around a few feet away from Booker!

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the birth of baby groundhogs:
"The breeding season for groundhogs extends from early March to mid-April. A mated pair remains in the same den throughout the 32 day gestation period. As birth of the young approaches in April or May, the male leaves the den. A litter usually contains 2–6 blind, hairless and helpless young. Young groundhogs are weaned and ready to seek their own dens at five to six weeks."

So it looks like PJ was born around May first and now five weeks later is learning to forage on his or her own.

PJ -- born May 1st, 2011.

Staying close to dad until I know a little more about the world.

P.S. I'm going to maintain that Booker is male, even though deductive reasoning would indicate otherwise since male groundhogs have no role in raising their young.

Stand-off with Dawn

So here was an interesting experience... I was in the house at an open window and decided to snap a few pics of Dawn the Deer in the back yard.  Dawn must have started thinking that it's her backyard or something like that, and alternates stamping her forehooves while trying to stare me down!  After six or eight repetitions of this, she snorts at me aggressively a few times!  I wish I had captured it on video camera because it was really funny! I'm a little surprised she doesn't appreciate who pays the bills around here and who gives her all the clover and wild strawberries she could want.  Sheesh!

Dawn's foot-stomping stare down.

I told her if she kept staring me down I'd post this picture.  HA! =)

Gettin' Up!

Hey Booker finally got up on his hind legs while facing the house.  Normally I just see his backside when he does this.  Nice change of scenery.  =B

Get on up, get on up.

Sittin' on the dock of the bay, sippin' dandelion.

Booker & MacGruder grubbin' together.

I'm guessin' Booker doesn't like strawberries; he walked right by that one.

Friends and Neighbors

Booker wanted me to give a shout out to some of his friends in da 'hood. Booker's colossally shy and embarrassed by all of the attention he gets when his friends are just as interesting. So here are the other residents of Booker's neighborhood:

MacGruder the Squirrel

Guillermo the chipmunk

Claudio Cardinale

Racquie Raccoon (being relocated to the creek)

Alfred the garter snake

Romeo the other garter snake

Digger & Dawn the fawns (Born June 2009)

Digger, Dawn & Mom

Toby the Shepherd of the Yard

His other friends, too shy to shine, include the other squirrels: Parisa, Equa, Law, Hop Ching and The I-Ching; and a few rabbits that are too infrequent of guests.

Tasty Dandelions

Who knew? Booker likes dandelions. You know those pretty, yellow-flowered weeds kids like to call buttercups that turn into those puffballs that kids make a wish and blow on to spread the seeds around the yard? I watched Booker snap a few of those puffball stalks off at the base and suck 'em down like spaghetti! I'm so pleased there's a use for them, now I have an excuse not to weed my backyard. =)

I snapped a little video of Booker while dandelion-hunting. Here it is:

And here's a pic of the little guy when he thought he heard something in the woods:

He's never facing the house when he gets up on his hind legs like this, dangit!

About a week ago I saw Booker out on the far side of the yard. This seemed unusual because I normally catch the little guy at the backyard buffet right outside my bedroom window. But then I recalled that his burrow is actually 40 to 50 feet long with multiple entrances, so he was actually hanging out on his back porch.  Here's a pic:

Bookers back porch 4.30.11

I also managed to catch a motion pic of the little lad bookin' back to his burrow. It's pretty rare to get a pic of him when he's running because he's really fast!  Take a look:

I feel the need... the need for speed!  4.30.11

Grubbin'

Howdy All -

It's been a while since I've seen Booker... maybe a week. As always I wondered if this was the week he decided to leave for good; just decided that the aggravation of the new dog in the yard was too much and just packed up his few belongings and lit a shuck for greener pastures. But my fears were laid to rest once again as he put in another appearance at the backyard buffet. Here's a couple of pics:

Yeah, I never get tired of getting the ol' stink eye from Booker.

He had himself a pretty good feed today, off and on for a couple of hours. I even threw him a couple of strawberries, but he hasn't found them yet. Hopefully I'm around when he does because I'm not sure whether he likes them or not. :-B

I also got the Flip camera out to shoot the little egomaniac in HD, but the zoom is really poor, so even though it's HD he was kind of just a spec in the center.  I zoomed in even more and cropped him in Wondershare so maybe that will help. Here take a look:

We'll see if we can't come up with a better video camera with a longer lens somehow. Maybe something by Olympus (he indicated that he prefers Olympus).

Woodchucks chuckin' wood

This is just funny! Nasty looking, redneck woodchucks, but funny just the same. =B
Geico Commercial.

Spring's here, time for new bedding

Howdy all -

Booker slept all winter a bed of leaves he harvested last Fall and I guess he decided that it was time for some spring-cleaning around the ol' burrow. So around noon he got out and had a bit of a forage at the ol' Backyard Buffet and then started gathering some new bedding.

Gatherin' some fresh dry leaves for bedding.

He was probably planning on more than the three trips he took, but noticed a suspicious curtain twitch, gave it his customary steely-eyed-stare, and decided he had enough leaves to arrange for the time being and ducked down into his hole.

Thinkin' that twitching curtain on the house looks suspicious.

Which is really too bad, because that subtle curtain twitch was a fresh ripe strawberry sailing through the air like manna from heaven to land serendipitously next to his burrow entrance.

Why heavens! Is that a strawberry ripening beside my burrow?

A bit of video was shot of the bedding-gathering but Booker determined that the quality was wanting and requested HD.  Rich.  The grubby rat's sleeping on moldy leaves and wants me to buy an HD video camera for his close up!  Sheesh!  If he turns his back I'm grabbin' that strawberry.

Refreshed after a long winter's rest

April 4, 2011  FYI: Pics taken through double paned glass never come out well. =B

Howdy Friends -

I'm very gratified to announce that Booker has awoken from his winter slumber and has put in an appearance at the backyard buffet! The offerings at the salad bar were meager this early in the season — the leaves are not yet on the trees and the grass is scrubby. But by the end of April his favorite tasty clover will be in abundance and I'm thinking of seeding some alfalfa near is burrow for variety, maybe toss him a cherry tomato or a bit o' the cucumber to round out the meal.*

I snapped a couple of pics of him before a sudden squall passed through that sent him bookin' back to his burrow. (At the first flash of lightning I thought I scared the little guy off with my camera flash until a thunderclap followed a millisecond later absolving me.) I'll work on focus later in the season. Stay tuned.

Anyway, above is the first pic of the 2011 Groundhog season and here is an interview with a groundhog in the event your knowledge of the breed has some holes in it.  =B



* Enlarging Booker's salad plate should not be confused with my ongoing efforts to domesticate MacGruder the Squirrel with nuts.  =)