Back Yard Visitors

I love to feed and watch the birds.  When we moved into Village Inn there was a feeder in the backyard and there was still some seed in the garage.  Fred Mensel made sure I knew I needed to feed the birds.

I bought a second feeder as the old one really was broken and needed to be replaced.  This winter I noticed that every morning the feeder was completely empty.  I thought I had some birds that were absolute pigs.  Then I descovered one day that it wasn't the birds eating every last seed.

It was the deer!  I began bringing in my feeder every evening.

I didn't mind the squirrels eating what was dropped.  It took many weeks before they even found the dropped seed.

One day on the way home from Carthage my husband noticed some seed corn on the ground in several piles.  He stopped and scooped it up and brought it home.  Then he put our firepit in the backyard to feed the deer.  The squirrels and raccoons found it so he hung it from the tree.  That didn't make a difference.  They could still get in it.

But the deer found it.  Only on two occasions have we had bucks come to feed.

On this day there were three bucks.  I thought perhaps they would get their antlers stuck in the ropes.  They didn't.

Each day there are several young does that come to eat.

Now the larger does come as well.

I decided to put some birdseed on the ledge outside the window.  The birds love it.  Every day the seed is gone by evening.

Most nights I have 8 moms and younger does that come and eat.  It is interesting to watch the hierarchy of these deer.  I have one large and one smaller female that are bullies.  It proves that in some ways the animal world isn't very much different than the human world.