In addition to the equines and dogs, our farm is home to a lot of wildlife. Some of them I enjoy having… others not so much. Since the weather is keeping me from getting much riding in and the 50 millions things that need fixing around here are keeping me from blogging as much as I’d like, I though I’d do a quick little post about the various animals are barn hosts.
Turkeys
I don’t know if it’s the same rafter or different ones, but I see wild turkeys almost every day.
Rafter of turkeys on the fence
Frogs and Toads
As it’s started getting cold (damn you snow in October) I haven’t seen any of the frogs and toads in a while, but we were seeing them almost every night. The toads are huge (dessert plate size) and I have nearly fallen over trying to avoid stepping on them at the last second.
Frog
toad
Eastern Newt
I only saw this one, but it was so cool. This is the eft stage for newts; a stage where they live on land in between being born in water and returning to the water.
Chipmunks (and Squirrels)
I have no pictures of the squirrels, but they are definitely a presence here. They seem really obsessed with eating crabapples and pears on my porch and leaving the crumbling remains for me. Chipmunks are super cute, but they’re troublemakers. We made the mistake of leaving our tack room open while riding one day and returned to find this little bastard leaping all over the place.
Porcupine
My husband saw this guy when we was out hiking our property with our forester. Apparently he was a bit camera shy and would circle around the tree whenever my husband tried to get a picture so this is the best he got.
Birds
The previous owners left behind a bird feeder and I’ve gotten really into feeding the birds. I love all the different little ones:
little birds
I do not, however, like the *sshole blue jays. As pretty as they are, they’re bullies. They scare all the other birds away and they go through all the seed way too quickly. I’m working on some changes to discourage them.
We also have a big owl living near our house. I hear him(her?) frequently at night though I’ve only seen him the once and I didn’t have a camera on me. He was huge and very cool to see.
I’m sure we’re home to a lot more wildlife that we just haven’t seen yet. I know we’ve got coyotes since I hear them howling at night. I always enjoyed seeing all the wildlife at the barn we boarded at in CA and I’m exciting to see all the new ones here. I do miss the California Quail. I always called them velociraptor birds as they liked to run instead of fly off and would stride through the brush like the little dinosaurs they are. They were probably my favorite barn wildlife – although the twin fawns were a close second. What’s your favorite barn wildlife?
I love the hawks and eagles. I could watch them all day. We have a grouse that lives in our woods although I mostly just hear her and she takes off. Coyotes for sure (they are much larger on the eastern coast- some are German shepherd sized). Blue jays are bullies. The only thing that works for me is to get the glove feeder (it’s a feeder in a cage). The jays can’t get through. We don’t have turkeys but turkey vultures are moving in.
I’ve been thinking about getting one of the cage feeders. Our feed store is having a bird feeder sale in November so I’m waiting for that.
So cool! We have a pair of owls living in the woods behind the pond and an osprey that comes to fish for his meals though I don’t know where it lives. We also have a ton of frogs and toads, more grasshoppers than I thought existed on the entire planet, chipmunks and squirrels. Your porcupine is awesome! The coolest thing we have is a fox which I adore.
I’d love to see a fox. I’ve seen one wood duck at our pond and he was only hear a few days, but no other water birds.
That’s really cool! We have a raccoon that has decided to live in the upper rafters of our barn. I wouldn’t say he is a complete nuisance, but it can be a bit scary when he is basically running over your head.
I do love the deer, even if they make me a nervous nelly while driving around this time.
I used to like raccoons before they killed all of our barn chickens a few years ago. Now I know they’re vicious little murderers.
You have all the super cute wildlife. We have coyotes that roam our alleys and snakes at the barn. Hooray for living in Texas
We’ve definitely got coyotes. I’m hoping not to see them though.
Tons of turkeys here too, and they’re HUGE.
We have some kind of cat around here. I thought it was a bobcat until I googled what those look like, and now I think it’s like a mountain lion or something. Thankfully it’s in the forest mostly and NOT at my barn!
I’m gonna go ahead and guess it’s not a mountain lion, but I hope it stays away. The turkeys here are pretty big too, but no where near as big as the ones we raised last year so now I have a different perspective on big Turkeys. I wish I knew how to hunt.
OMG PORCUPINE! I love it!
And I hear you on the bluejays. Grew up cursing them at my parents. Now we have white breasted nuthatch who are nearly as bad. They don’t swallow all the seeds so much as scattering them EVERYWHERE. Bastards.
We have a woodpecker who has been eating the bird seed too and I’m at the window yelling you’re not even supposed to like that!
OH I want to see a porcupine. We had a flock of turkeys in the field next to use the other day and Remus could not even control himself he was so WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY MOM?? He was trembling. We love the birds here, we have so many toads and frogs and turtles too. We had no squirrels all summer but they are here now but haven’t seen chipmunks(I hear they are worse than squirrels on destroying stuff ugh)…and that lizard is so cool. We just have the blue tailed ones here. We have owls too but haven’t seen only heard. the other night we went out with the dogs in the rain and my headlamp caught six staring eyes up in the tree above our driveway. It was three raccoons getting out of the weather.
Love how pretty all your fields are. SO excited for you guys!! Enjoy!! (Blue Jays do scatter seeds a lot…)
We have a bobcat in the area which we saw and coytoes which we hear nightly but luckily have not seen yet 🙂
I love we have so many similar sightings 🙂
It seems like we both moved to similar locations with our pastures and ponds. Of course, I think we’ll be more socked in with snow during the winter though. I haven’t seen any bobcats here, though I had seen them back in CA a few times.
Such fun creatures you have! We have the typical deer, squirrels, opossums, skunks (a cute almost solid black one lives in my neighborhood) and turkeys, groundhogs here. But the coolest (I think) animal we have are white squirrels. They aren’t as prolific here as they are in other parts of NC (Brevard has an entire festival dedicated to the white squirrel) but you do see one every so often. Also I’ve heard of some friends with a black bear that comes snooping around and I think there are wild hogs in some parts of this area. Basically we have a lot of wildlife 🙂
White squirrels sound so cool. I used to feed the squirrels when I was younger. I always kind of wanted a pet squirrel.
Surprisingly similar to CA, except the porcupine – that is super awesome!!
I wish I’d seen the porcupine myself.
ETA – I hate turkeys. And large birds in general (owls are pretty cool though)
man that’s a lot of turkeys – my SO’s goal in life is to get a bearded fall turkey 😀 but she has been trying and they seem to know when she’s coming so they tend to make themselves scarce…
We were told by the neighbors that the turkeys are really good at knowing as soon as it’s hunting season and disappearing.
omg so many animals! <3 jealous of the toads
They’re really big. Hopefully they’ll be back in the spring.
Aw I love the chipmunk!! My friends just had to get a new special type of dog tho bc squirrels were eating their log cabin, oops
That’s pretty intense. We got a barn cat for mice, but I’ve never heard of needing a dog for squirrels.
I love the barn owls. I’ve only seen them a time or two at the farm but they’re amazing. There was one living near our house as well I could hear but he’s since left I think.
Owls are so cool. Our barn is closed up too much to have any living in it, but I’m sure they’re in the area.
I looooove wild turkeys!! They are my fav.