Month: September 2019

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This is the deer I’ve been calling “Li’l Buck.” I mentioned in the last post that he is feeling his hormones; if you look closely, you can see why. The fawns are also maturing and have lost most of their spots.

Big Mama and her twins show up for breakfast and dinner almost daily. One of her twins walks right up to me, and sometimes I wonder if it is thinking about coming on in the house. The turkeys are beginning to form flocks, and they usually show up for feeding, too.

It continues to be dry in the Hollow, although it poured in Asheville yesterday. (You can see the difference in the river in the last photo below.)  We’ve had only a few small showers that helped settle the dust—briefly. Most of the drivers that see me on my ramble slow down to keep the dust down (one even stopped to apologize!), but the dust lingers in the air regardless. As in most parts of the South, the temperatures have continued to be way above average.

The persimmons are ripe, and I look for them when I pass the trees that are close to the road. I use a long stick knock the branches I can reach to see if any fall for me to eat. I pick up any I find already on the ground and take them to the turtle friend I wrote about in an earlier post. He seems to look back at me when I look for him on my way to the river, and today I was able to video hime on my way back, eating the persimmon.

I hope I’ll be able to tell you about more typical weather soon!

 

 

 

Fall is coming! Tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox, at least according to the calendar. But it sure doesn’t feel like autumn; we continue to have above-average temperatures (and below-average rainfall).

The butterflies are still around, although I think some of them are migrating through. (It’s not only the Monarchs; read this: Do Butterflies Migrate? Where Do They Go?

The plants and animals respond to the days becoming shorter more than to the temperature. The autumn flowers continue to dominate; my rambles will be much less colorful once these fade. The sourwood trees are getting fall colors, but most trees are still green (although I already had to rake sycamore leaves that turned brown and dropped from the lack of rain).

The fawns are losing their spots and spending more time away from their moms, but here are some mamas and babies eating together and a cute fawn that watched me as I walked up towards my house.

The little buck seems to be feeling his hormones and chases others off from “his” feeding dish.

 

 

 

Construction on the new house is moving along,

and it’s time for me to be moving along, too. I’ll post again in the fall!

 

The Hollow is full of surprises, some pleasant and some not so much. Today I was so surprised to see this little raccoon that I laughed out loud! Here’s the back story…. There are lots of Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) trees in the Hollow, and this is the time of year when the walnuts are falling. The nuts themselves are a little smaller than a tennis ball, and I find them to be just the right size for throwing. (I played softball for many, many years and still enjoy throwing things.) I often find nuts on my walk down to the highway and carry them up to see if I can throw them into a hole in a certain tree along the creek. Today I had picked up four and was just sure that I could get at least one into the hole (although that would have been much better than my average). However, when I got to the “pitcher’s mound” I saw this raccoon watching me from the hole! I figured he didn’t want to play catch, so I left the nuts by the road and finished my walk. I grabbed my Nikon when I got home and headed down to see if I could get a better photo, but the hole was empty.

That surprise reminded me of another animal surprise a few days earlier. I had gone out to bring in the birdfeeders (a nightly chore to discourage bear activity) and saw a small shape shuffling away. I could tell from the way it ran that it wasn’t a cat, a rabbit, or a squirrel and followed it, thinking, “Oh no! Not a groundhog!” As I rounded the curve, I was relieved to see a small raccoon climbing up a hickory tree! I snapped some photos in the near-dark but didn’t want to scare it more than it already was; besides, it kept scooting around the tree to avoid me. 🙂 I’ve seen evidence of raccoons nearby previously and have photos of them in the meadow and elsewhere from the wildlife camera, but this is the first time I’d seen one.

Remember the surprise I had when I encountered bobcat chasing the fawn? That was exciting, but last week the surprise was to find the remains of a fawn that had not escaped. I won’t post photos, but the evidence showed that the predator had almost certainly been a bobcat. A neighbor helped me get the carcass over the bank (so I wouldn’t have to see it when I walked), but perhaps we needn’t have bothered. The next day the carcass was gone, and I saw the remains of two legs that had been carried off, most likely by coyotes. I know death is a necessary part of the circle of life, but this was the first time to see natural death, instead of animals killed by vehicle-driving humans. (I’ve found three turtles that were run over and killed in the Hollow so far this year.)

Other surprises? Maybe not a surprise considering the time of year, but the little buck has scraped the velvet off his antlers, the fawns are losing their spots, and the garden is petering out (with help from tobacco hornworms before a Braconid wasp took care of the problem). It was a pleasant surprise to have two fawns join me as I was weeding along the driveway. 🙂

Here’s hoping for more pleasant surprises! Maybe we’ll get a rainy afternoon, and I’ll post again soon!

 

It hasn’t rained in the Hollow for over a month. The roads are slippery where the dry gravel slides as I walk, and it’s like walking through powder where the heavy construction trucks have pulverized the clay. It’s hot, too, which means I often finish covered in a fine layer of dust. The high temperatures have been in the high 80s and even 90—not hot for Alabama, but I don’t live in Alabama any more. The ten-day forecast predicts continued above normal temps. Hard to believe that in a post from two years ago I wrote about morning temps in the 40s!

The deer and turkeys begin showing up in the early afternoon and wait for me to serve their dinner. As some of you have seen, some stare at the house until I emerge, and other come running when I call (or maybe when they hear the corn hit the metal pans). The doe I call “Big Mama” and her fawns stop by most mornings, and I can’t resist feeding them. One morning they were in the driveway, and one of the fawns decided to drink from one of the birdbaths. (I keep water in a large wash pan in the meadow, too.)

One morning I looked out the kitchen window saw another visitor in the driveway. Fortunately he rambled off after I sounded the air horn, but not without turning around to give me a dirty look.

There’s not much else happening in the Hollow; I’ll keep walking and watching and let you know what else I see.

 

This turtle has stayed in a puddle in the ditch along the road off and on for over a month. He sometimes goes to some unknown-to-me place for a few days, but so far he has always returned. I speak to him every time I see him (“Hello, friend! Be careful!”), and one of my biggest fears is that I will find him crushed in the road.

My deer “friends” continue to show up, too. The herd has about six does, one little buck (last year’s fawn), and four to six fawns. I think the buck and two of the does are offspring of matriarch doe I call “Big Mama”. When she brings her 2019 twins in the morning, I usually feed them a little; one of the fawns has begun eating apples from my hand (like his mama).

Fall is on the way (and the experts are predicting a colorful one!). Despite the dry weather, fall blossoms are making showy displays of purples and yellows, the milkweed pods are drying, and some of the leaves are beginning to turn.

Well, friends, that’s it for now. I will try to post again soon.