New Life in the Woods

While I have been working up at the garden, I have found a number of interesting creatures hiding here and there around the main house. The little fellow here is similar to the many lizards that live just outside the front entrance of the cabin. I found one of them on the front porch the other day. They seem to be everywhere. They love the sun but they are very vigilant so whenever I go outside I hear rustling noises as they scurry under cover.

This one may be a different species or perhaps the adult mother of the little fellow I found, since they were in close proximity. She seemed to have a different strategy of avoiding capture though. She would scurry away when first exposed but then would freeze in plain sight. But she was so well camouflaged that I would lose sight of her after walking a couple steps away, so I guess it was a good strategy!

This fellow looks a lot like what I would call a coral snake, but I believe he is a young Western Mountain Snake, if I remember the name I looked up correctly. One of the telling factors in the identification was that these snakes eat lizards, and I found this one just inches away from both of the lizards above. There was at least one other lizard in the area too, so it must have been good hunting grounds.

This snake is a little blurry here and I haven’t identified it yet, but the orange band around the head is striking. I found him under a piece of plywood about 50 feet away. There were a lot of holes burrowed into the ground, so maybe he hunts mice or something. Both snakes were very intent on finding a place to hide quickly, even though this guy was pretty well camouflaged.

But, if you don’t like creepy crawlies, you might appreciate this more. I believe this is a House Finch. A couple of them started showing up a few weeks ago and quickly became regular visitors. I like the dark red crown on these birds. They are otherwise a rather dull brown, but their head dress saves them from banality. Since I put up two bird feeders, the Juncos generally claim the other larger one and the Finches seem to like this one.

Well over a month ago I thought I saw a Hummingbird fly past my front window and pause there, but I couldn’t believe there would be one this far North when the weather was still so cool. During the next couple weeks I thought I saw it again and heard buzzing sounds like very fast moving wings. But then I saw that the Juncos could hover a bit when they were challenging each other for a perch on the bird feeder and their wings buzzed a bit when they did this, so I wasn’t really sure.

Well, as you can see, I found an old hummingbird feeder up at the main house, cleaned it up, and put it out on my deck. And I do indeed have hummingbirds! In fact, about a week ago, shortly after putting up the feeder I went out on the deck and one of them “buzzed” me because I was standing next to their feeder. He flew off to a branch not far off and watched me until I retreated inside and then came to feed. Despite that brave act, they are very aware of nearby movement and I had to hide inside, wait for the “buzz” sound of their wings, and take this picture from hiding.

There are lots more pictures and I will be putting them up on my Flickr site soon. I’ll let you know when they are up, of course.