the moose who came to dinner (includes inline image)

A yearling outside my dining room window tonight. I see more wildlife in my backyard than on the trail.

She looks healthy! You are blessed to live where you do. Thanks for posting.

happy trails

Cool. I have a yard full of squirrels and various birds... Occasionally we see a raccoon.

Lucky bas*%$!~



Kevin

Well, it's always choices, choices, choices. You get moose in your yard or high speed broadband and cable TV and real restaurants. I've made my choice (easily).

Or you can get moose, fisher, deer, pileateds, woodcock, and high-speed broadband and cable all at your house, but still only really crummy restaurants. When Cumby's is the best local source for a cup of coffee, cooking and brewing at home is a good idea even long before $4 gasoline.

Nice picture!

On a side note, I've had moose, black bear, deer, coyotes, foxes (not my wife, the animal), fisher cats (not the baseball team, the animal), various raptors and a pretty hungry mole in my yard. And, access to FiOS (which I will get once they offer the TV package, too).

sardog1 said:

When Cumby's is the best local source for a cup of coffee, cooking and brewing at home is a good idea even long before $4 gasoline.

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Cumby's coffee is way better than that Dunkin Donuts crap!

Let’s see…I have cable internet, no TV, no landline phone, rarely go out to eat, but have a Keurig coffee maker …and the list of wildlife that stops by to visit or lives nearby is too long…

OK, guys, I'm raising the bar here on who's got the wildest backyard in terms of mammals (we can do birds later): when is the last time you have seen moose (with triplets), deer, bears (with twin cubs), ermine and stot, fox, coyotes, fisher, marten, variegated hares, squirrels, chipmunks and the burrowing ones, AND bobcats? (It doesn't have to be all at once, sequentially will do.) Let's see, what else? I have not seen a wolf or catamount yet but it's just a matter of time, I know, until I can check them off on my life list. More lists.

Fox cubs at my house!

We see fox cubs which are quite neat, and I live in the burbs outside Boston. We hear coyote, but the deer won't cross the street, so our garden is spared! I have trapped two woodchucks in the past couple of years in a Hav-A-Hart. Bunnies we can put up with. The best places are not in the burbs, but then you don't have some of the conveniences. Guess that there is no perfect world!

bogorchis

You beat me with the bobcat fer sure, and probably with the bear. I can locate the latter's den within a mile from the house but no evidence in the yard, yet. And our moose are definitely shyer than yours -- haven't seen any young here. (New fun fact we learned this spring -- there are few things noisier than a fisher chasing a coon in your backyard trees at 2:00 a.m. . . . )

Waumbek said:

OK, guys, I'm raising the bar here on who's got the wildest backyard in terms of mammals (we can do birds later): when is the last time you have seen moose (with triplets), deer, bears (with twin cubs), ermine and stot, fox, coyotes, fisher, marten, variegated hares, squirrels, chipmunks and the burrowing ones, AND bobcats? (It doesn't have to be all at once, sequentially will do.) Let's see, what else? I have not seen a wolf or catamount yet but it's just a matter of time, I know, until I can check them off on my life list. More lists.

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Just now. I googled them on my high-speed internet connection. Saw them all in a matter of seconds

Just kiddin'....you got me beat!!!!! No bobcats and marten that I have seen. Only the occasional hare. Except for the deer currently eating my plants, and a group of turkeys, the other sitings were very rare.

Good restaurants, high speed internet and some wildlife.

In my back yard I have seen deer, fox, coyotes, racoons, cardinals, rabbits and of course squirrels, chipmunks and a routine assortment of birds. There was a small black bear up the street a short way a year or so ago.

Can't quite beat the picture of that young moose though. Thanks for sharing.

carole said:

Let’s see…I have cable internet, no TV, no landline phone, rarely go out to eat, but have a Keurig coffee maker …and the list of wildlife that stops by to visit or lives nearby is too long…

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No TV?!!! Yes!!! Me too.

As with hiking, the type of surrounding terrain has a lot to do with wildlife sightings. Swamps, rivers, tree species, elevation, etc., all are impotant to wildlife sightings.

Waumbeck's got me beat, but we do hear the loons loud and clear

I live nearly shouting distance from Dug, so we overlap I'm sure. I hope the deer eat your garden and leave mine alone Since we have power lines running along the side of our house, we have a "game highway" nearby.

I have seen and/or heard

fishers (heard / seen tracks)
turkeys
deer
fox (thank you, Amanda)
milk snakes
garter snakes
toads
coyote (seen it twice, seen tracks in winter a lot)
moose tracks but not the moose

My favorite though is the whip-poor-will that has come back every year for the whole 9 years we've been here. It / they should be making an appearance shortly.

I'd miss the Red Sox too much to give up the TV.

There are 8 does in this photo, taken from my deck a few years ago in early spring:




Tim

Turkeys

We've got tons of turkeys. Every day last fall a flock of about 20 would visit us every morning to feed.

The other thing we HAD was chipmunks. Tons of chipmunks until one day, we spied a grey fox with kits staring us down. Obviously, she and her family chose our woods to den. A few weeks later, there were no more chipmunks.



bob

I've seen enough skunks to last me a lifetime. They really grow em big here in the upper valley. ;-)

On the trail, I've seen grouse, deer, moose, snowshoe hares, porcupines, skunks, and bears. In the backyard down in Chester, I've seen skunks, moose, fat woodchucks, (you can thank my dad's garden for that) and one fisher cat. I'm sure others things have wandered through at odd hours. But I was probably sleeping at the time. Oh yeah, and a wild turkey...which started to chase me when I was heading to the lawn mower. Then I turned the mower on, revved it up a little, and I'm pretty sure that bird tried to fly away.


grouseking

Depends on how liberally you define "back yard" I guess...

Waumbek said:

when is the last time you have seen moose (with triplets), deer, bears (with twin cubs), ermine and stot, fox, coyotes, fisher, marten, variegated hares, squirrels, chipmunks and the burrowing ones, AND bobcats? (It doesn't have to be all at once, sequentially will do.)

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If we're liberal and allow "around town", then Waterville Valley provides us with a steady diet of moose (pretty much weekly), deer (ditto), bear (a few times a season), fox (just about every day), coyotes (fleetingly, maybe once a year, though we hear them all the time), hare (regularly), red squirrels and chipmunks (all the time). Saw one small member of the weasel family in winter garb a month or two back. No fisher or marten, yet, but always hopeful! Most recent close encounter was a red fox who belly-crawled past my back deck last Saturday night as I sat out quietly enjoying the stars and a glass of wine. I am pretty sure he didn't know I was there, as he was busy hunting along the treeline.

All this within a few hundred yards of a couple decent restaurants, a middling-to-good cup of coffee (Waterville Valley Coffee Emporium -- bypass the drip and ask for anything they do in a French press, which is remarkably better), with DSL and passable cable to the door. I really don't miss the 'burbs at all -- we love our neighbors, both human and critter.

Baby fisher in our neighborhood

We have had a fisher in our neighborhood that we and our next door neighbors have seen regularly this Spring. I thought that was really weird, till our next door neighbor saw one of its kits (!!) drinking from her pool cover yesterday. It makes sense habitat wise, as we have loads of partly dead oaks with lots of cavities high up, and chipmunks/squirrels galore. I'll see if I can get any pictures. I think this is really rare in the suburbs. What will make it even stranger is that they are planning to open their pool this weekend. Hopefully Mama fisher has a short leash on her kids. We'll see.

Weatherman

weatherman said:

We have had a fisher in our neighborhood that we and our next door neighbors have seen regularly this Spring.

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Fisher can decimate domestic felines, which is one reason why most people here have decided to keep their house cats in the house. Fishers are all muscle, highly efficient killing machines. Here they normally prey on hares, but they'll take cats too.

And speaking of cats, bobcats are apparently moving into the 'burbs. Bobcats are normally extremely secretive and nocturnal, but females may be feeding their kittens now, hence bolder and diurnal.