Uninvited Visitors

Let me start by saying that uninvited does not always mean unwelcome. Most of the time I love to see wildlife around - though I could have lived without the bear who almost gave me a heart attack when she chased the dogs right up to the back porch and would have followed them into the kitchen except I slammed the door in her face! Before you ask, NO I DID NOT GET A PHOTO OF THE BEAR!!! I was a little too busy to go get a camera!
Though there are a lot of deer around,I have not got any good photos of them. They tend to come around dusk or dawn and my camera doesn't take good pics in that light.

There are lots of birds around the farm, great blue herons, owls, hawks, geese, ducks, wild turkeys (in the pic), and many varieties of songbird. I even saw a fully mature bald eagle once. It flew up the fence line toward the barn at only about 10 feet off the ground, then up over the barn and away - amazing!

There is a fox den or 2 on the property. I see the foxes all the time and love to see the babies in the spring. I like the foxes because they eat rodents. (The one in the pic is hunting.) They have also been very good about leaving my cats alone. The same can not be said for the fisher. It makes a circuit through here each August and I have lost 2 cats to it. I keep Tootsie inside at night during August!

I have several small ponds in the fields. These attract all kinds of critters - fish, turtles (that's a turtle sunning on the rock in the photo), salamanders, frogs, and many others. There is also a beaver pond at the end of the field. The beaver and I have had a few run-ins. I have tried to tell them that they are welcome to stay down at the end of the field but they invariably get greedy and try to flood my pastures. Then I have to make them go away...
There are raccoons, woodchucks, skunks - I've been lucky with skunks, there was one hiding in the barn once but it didn't spray and left on it's own! Occasionally I'll see or hear a coyote, but I think they stay away because of the dogs. Of course there are also all the unwelcome rodents, but at least they do keep the foxes fed!