Last night was a momentous occasion – we finally saw a stag in our garden. We have seen many female deer since being here and one comes into the garden most nights. Just the night before we had two does wandering round, but last night a male showed up.
He was quite a bit chunkier than the does with a big thick set neck and of course antlers. I don’t think is a particularly old stag as his antlers were not huge, but then size isn’t everything!
In the pics below you can see the stag and the dark blob on the ground is Ronnie our resident raccoon who stood his ground against the stag.
Well the weather has finally caught up with the calendar. Last week the temps were in the high twenties with humidex in the thirties, and this week we have plummeted to the low to mid teens. The normal for this time of year is 15C by day and 5C overnight according to the weatherman. Yesterday we got to about 9C in the day and last nights temps went below freezing for the first time. We had our first frost of the year last night.
This has also meant that we have switched from air conditioning to heating, so getting the guy out next week to service the furnace etc just to make sure it is all ok for the winter.
Our single deer has been back most nights since our sighting last week. She wanders over around 9pm and stays for about half an hour, or until the food runs out and then wanders off again. She has the most beautiful big ears that are like radars, whizzing round at the slightest noise. The night before last she had a standoff with Ronnie the raccoon.
The deer had been feeding for some time and she suddenly stopped and kept staring into the woods with her ears going mad and her tail twitching, a sure sign of anxiety. After a few minutes out trotted Ronnie who casually walked over to the tree and started eating the food on the floor. The deer stood back for a few minutes watching, then seemed to decide it was her food and walked over and started eating too. Ronnie scuttled up the tree and they were eye to eye with each other. After a few minutes of head nods from the deer and punches from Ronnie the deer wandered off leaving Ronnie to this food. Chris then went out and chased off Ronnie. We did not want to do this whilst the deer was here as we didn’t want to scare her.
On another exiting note, I have finally used my new iron and board and I am please to say both work. The iron is great and made me realise how bad the other one really was!
