Doug

We have a bird feeder outside our breakfast window and we have several squirrels who like to try to get to the bird seed. The squirrels sure like to hang around our yard. We have a squirrel feeder on a nearby tree, but they eat the feed in the jar so quickly! Well, one of the squirrels likes to look in the window while we're eating breakfast, we have named him Doug. It's fun to see them playing in the yard, bounding from one tree to another, or bounding along the grass. We are definitely enjoying the wildlife on our property.

 

The Hi-Lows

We have two resident Canadian geese who frequent our yard and field. We have nicknamed them "The Hi-Lows" because one has a high voice and one has a low voice. They love to talk! We found out from the previous owners that they love to spend time on our roof, so we guess one is a female and one is a male. We were wondering how to tell them apart so we did a little research. Female Canadian geese have a more pointed tail while males have a more rounded tail. Males also have thicker and longer necks. Also the male has a slower, low-pitched honk and the female makes a "hink" noise, higher-pitched and faster. 

 

Hoot & Glide

We have heard hooting in the evenings and sometimes in the mornings when we are outside doing our chores. We have paused several times and finally saw the source of this noise, a resident owl. As close as we can tell, he is a Horned Owl and is the larger of the two owls we have seen since we moved in. The larger owl is more vocal than the other one, so we call him Hoot. The smaller one must live a few blocks away as we don't see him all the time. We have named him Glide because we usually see and don't hear him. We haven't been able to get a great picture of either owl yet, but here is one we did get. 

 

Pawz

When we moved into this new property, we adopted a barn cat named Little Princess. She has 4 white paws, so we have renamed her Pawz. She does not come in the house as she is a basically wild cat and pretty skiddish anyway. We see her in the garage and she comes out to the barn when we do the horses and outside chores too. 

Since we want to have Pawz keep the mice population down, we don't feed her too much, but we do give her some cat food to offset the mice, especially in the winter when there are probably less scampering around. 

Pawz didn't allow us to pet her when we first moved in, but we have talked to her while we get her canned food ready and she allows us to pet her some now. I have had some meowing contests with her. Fun! 

We have to be careful because she doesn't get updated shots, so if she scratches us it is very important to wash immediately so the scratch gets cleaned. That has only happened once and we need to remember to be careful so it doesn't happen to others.