Lots of new wildlife in the garden
What a week, first Chris gets the flu and is really ill with fever, coughing, sneezing, aches and pains etc. Then when he is finally starting to get over that our TV stops working.
It turns out that the lamp in the TV blew which is fortunately covered by the guarantee as we have only had it six months. This went on Saturday and we had to phone the maintenance guy to come and fix it. So, Saturday and Sunday we had to bring our spare 32” TV into the living room and watch that – it seemed soooo small. Fortunately the repairman had a spare lamp and came out Monday to fix it. Lets hope it doesn’t go so quickly again as they cost about $300 to replace outside the guarantee.
We have had a fantastic week regarding the wildlife. We kept seeing evidence of deer, but other than a fleeting glance late the other night we had not seen them. We can definitely say we have now. The other night at about 8.30pm we had three deer in the garden for over half an hour. We sat watching them from the window, it was fascinating. Last night they turned up again, but this time there were four of them, soon we will have a heard! We managed to get a couple of photos, but it was very dark, so they haven’t come out too good.
Also, you may remember that a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that we had seen a flying squirrel in the garden taking food from the bird feeders. We have now managed to get a photo of him (below). He is rather chinchilla like, very fluffy and he has a long fluffy flattened tail. He has some lovely marking and is exceptionally quick. He jumps into the feeder and out again in the blink of an eye and if something spooks him, he dashes up the tree at lightening speed.
We can also add another bird to our list. Yesterday I was sitting in the living room when something caught my eye in the garden. It was a large black bird with a red head hanging from one of our trees. Almost as soon as I noticed it it flew off. I called hubby to take a look and we went from window to window until we finally spotted it. It turned out to be a Pileated Woodpecker that is apparently the largest woodpecker in Ontario. He was very large by woodpecker standards, probably bigger than the American Crows we see. He hung around for about ten minutes, jumping from tree to tree then flew off. We managed to get a quick picture of him.
So, a very good week for our wildlife count, not so good for hubby’s health, although I so far seem to have escaped the flu and have just had a couple of days with the sniffles. He is pretty much over it now, he has just been left with a cough, but hopefully that will go in the next few days.
