Renata’s trail camera showed a series of photos as a coyote discovered a young skunk, killed it, and ate part of it. Earlier photos have shown the coyote wandering down the old road carrying a dead cat – but this is the first series of photos that show the kill technique.
We’ll try to get them sorted out and into the Ear. It is rare to get both predator and prey in front of the lens simultaneously – though her trail cam habit really started with a series of terribly fragmented, out of focus photos of a cougar attacking a deer ten minutes after we set the camera in place.
The predators change – twenty years ago, before we built the house, the predators were weasels, doing their job primarily on voles and ground squirrels. They were replaced by feral cats – who did not do as good a job on the ground dwelling rodents, but did a number on the tree squirrels. Now we have a coyote who is doing his or her best to control the feral cat population. There is a succession – and I miss the Least Weasel that climbed to my shoulder when I took the canoe out to repair the aerator. Nothing like looking eye to eye with a midget weasel on your shoulder. First time I ever capsized a canoe. Weasel stayed dry.
I’m dawdling on the second hayfield – it still has a fawn in it (occasionally two) and I’d just as soon keep life hard for the coyote. The fawn’s mother is the little doe that was bothered when I set up a ladder to roof the sawmill shed, and basically lives around the safety of the house. I thought I was scheduling the hay cutting based on the (sub-irrigated) field’s dryness – but it may be that soft-heartedness toward fawns influences my rational decision.
We have one pair of geese with a hatchling who flies poorly left in the pond. The largest group only return once a week or less. The bald eagle continues to patrol, knowing that a goose who can’t fly well will one day be dinner.
The coots are doing well – one hen has raised four little ones, and the other two each have three. Coot parenting is generally awful – but I’m not sure that these mother coots weren’t the little ones who, ignored by their parental unit, were adopted by the geese.
This year’s bear is a specialist in tearing rotting stumps apart for the ants. There are a lot of worse habits a little black bear can have.
It may be smokey and hot, and I don’t get around as well as I once did – but my neighborhood provides a lot to look at.
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