The End of February

Posted on February 27, 2016 by TJ

I’m surprised that I haven’t written since February 17th. Time went fast.

The second half of February has gone better than the first half, although I do feel a bit worse for wear.

I have mostly been busy crocheting. I have an order for 50 bookmarks. I don’t have to finish them until late summer, but I like to get orders done as soon as possible so I’ve been working hard at them.

In addition to working on the bookmarks, I was able to set up a Facebook page that is linked to my Etsy store AND I was able to put a link to my Facebook page and store in this blog. It’s at the left side of my blog. How cool is that? I think that if you click on the name of my store–Teric’s Treasures, you will go to the Facebook page, but if you click on an item, you will be taken to my Etsy store.

The weather has really been warming up around here–into the 40 and 50 degrees. We still have a lot of snow but it’s melting. We actually can see some of our driveway here and there amidst the snow.

EJ says that with the weather warming up, the bears could start waking up soon. I read that bears can wake up as early as March depending on the weather–but normally bears come out of hibernation in April. Bears wake up very hungry and will often raid bird feeders, so I have to start thinking about putting away the feeders before they find them. I read that normally bears are very shy and will avoid humans, but if they find a food source–like bird feeders–they could get used to humans and become dangerous. I hate to put away the bird feeders because they draw the birds into the open where I can see them. It’s much harder to see them when they are hidden in the trees. Still, I don’t want bears.

I went outside a couple of days ago to refill the suet feeders and found one of them missing. Only part of the chain was left hanging on the hook. I looked around the area in case it had fallen, but couldn’t see it anywhere. I wondered if a bear could have taken it away, but EJ said I would have definitely seen signs of a bear–like footprints–if it had been a bear.

For a while the wild turkeys were coming by every two or three days to eat the seeds that had fallen from the bird feeders. But suddenly they stopped coming. I suspected they might be mating and laying eggs. I looked it up and found an interesting article about turkeys from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources that said:

…Turkeys are social birds and in winter often separate into three distinct groups: adult males (toms), young males (jakes), and females (hens) of all ages. These flocks begin to disperse in late winter or early spring when courtship and mating rituals begin. Toms set up territories and begin gobbling, strutting, and displaying in hopes of attracting a harem of hens. Most hens, regardless of age, will breed with a gobbler each spring. Egg laying begins in April, and each hen will lay a clutch of 11 to 12 eggs over a two-week period…

I think it’s interesting to learn about the wildlife that we encounter.

When the turkeys stopped coming by, some new visitors began making an appearance to eat the cracked corn that we had bought for the birds and squirrels. At first, we saw only one or two deer. They came by early in the morning, about mid-day, and at twilight. Tonight SIX deer came to eat the corn. They were right outside our windows! Most of them are quite young–yearlings, we are certain. The deer are very cautious. The slightest movement spooks them and they run off. So whenever the deer appear, we don’t make sudden movements and we talk in a whisper. If we have to move through the house, we try not to let the deer see us so we duck under windows or slide past doors. Often the deer will look right at us through the windows so we hold very still. The deer are so beautiful. We love to watch them.

The pictures below are some that I took a couple of mornings ago. I wanted to photograph the six deer that came tonight, but my camera was in my purse, which was on the table in the other room, and I didn’t want to risk moving and spooking the deer.

A young deer coming up to eat the cracked corn scattered on the ground

He is very cautious

He came very close to the house.

We have three different types of squirrels at our feeders: Fox squirrels, gray squirrels, and red squirrels.

It’s really fun watching the wildlife.

Although I’m a bit tired of snowblowing snow, and it’s not fun getting stuck in deep snow, the slippery driveway sort of scares me, I’m sort of sad to see winter leave because I get to see so many more wildlife in the winter. Also, when the weather warms up, the bears wake up and so do huge scary spiders. But, still, the warmer months are beautiful too.