Fox Sighting!

I was looking at the backyard and saw a fox again! This is the first time in several months. It was not really in our yard but more in the park land trotting through the park. I will have to be on the lookout again now that I know they are still around. The pond has at least one frog daily. I was looking with the binoculars and one frog has a bright green mouth, and reddish brown eyes, whereas the larger frog doesn't have a bright green mouth but has a yellowish lower lip.

Hummingbird

We have had a hummingbird feeder out for a few months now, but I had never seen any hummingbirds at the feeder. I stopped changing the nectar since I thought nothing was coming, but then the other day I saw a hummingbird! I was afraid the old nectar would make it sick, so I put in new nectar and bought some more. Since then I've seen the hummingbird on at least two separate days. On Saturday we must have seen it like 5 times. It is so tiny and its little tail waggles when it is flying.

Deer

Tonight we saw a young buck in the backyard. We watched it eating vegetation as it walked farther in the back yard. Then up walks another buck! ...And another!!! The poor third buck was skinny, kind of mangey, and had a slight limp. Considering this is the suburbs, it was kind of surprising to see any deer, although I knew deer had been here before.

Pond Fiasco

Over the weekend we removed the pot we tried to use as a fountain, and tried to set up the fountain with just the slabs of rock. It seemed to work, so we let the fountain run a while. I turned it off that night, but in the morning most of the water was gone! Apparently the hose had come off and the water didn't get back into the pond. The poor baby frog was still sitting in there without much water, but the large adult frog wasn't there. So we filled the pond up again and fixed the fountain. Two frog have been spotted since, so I guess the adult frog came back.

Mouse in the House

The other day, we heard a screeching, and then our plumpest cat came running through the living room with her mouth full and a tail hanging out. :/ We managed to get her to release the mouse, and I thought it was dead, but then I saw it breathe! So after observing it for a little while, we thought it looked okay because it could run around in a garbage can, so we released it outside. We saw the ground cover move so it must have run off. Poor thing. It was just a baby Peromyscus (white footed mouse). I had done a science project once on homing in white footed mice, and no matter how far away I released the mice I caught, they would always come back and get caught in the live traps again. (We would snip their fur to be able to recognize them). This one mouse I had caught several times, except one cold night it had gotten into the trap even though I would close the traps over night, and we thought it had frozen to death. My mother gave it CPR (well, she rubbed its chest) and I saw it breathe! So we kept it in a cage for a week, and then released it. "Frozen Boy" kept getting caught in the traps after that and I can't remember if I continued to transport him and release him, or if I decided to retire him from the experiment.

Buck in backyard.