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No, this blog will not be all deep literary thoughts….
Though the summer isn’t quite over, I wanted to chronicle some of the wildlife that visited the Clark-Norton estate over the past few months…..
Most interesting was the gray fox (a female, I suspect), which made several appearances in late May/early June. The first time I saw her, she slipped out from behind the little house, and my early-morning brain wanted it to be one of the neighborhood cats. Later, she tended to materialize under the clothesline or in Ruth’s side yard. One memorable night, she barked in the driveway at about ten o’clock. For those who haven’t heard them, a gray fox has a distinctly unsettling voice, sharp and quick. The fox also dashed through my neighbors’ backyard (giving their German shorthaired pointer quite a thrill) one Sunday morning. After a couple of weeks, the sightings ceased (presumably, the kits had left the den) and the only carnivores to be found were of the Domestic Shorthair persuasion.
Nothing was planted in the raised beds this year, so woodchuck appearances were minimal, though one naïve youngster emerged from the thicket as I was reading on the deck one afternoon and practically struck up a conversation.
The skunk population is all too healthy, with plenty of activity spotted in the yard and in Pondicherry Park
It was a fairly typical bird year, though the wrens did not nest as they have in years past. The catbirds raised two clutches of young (with a second-round juvenile seen just today), and there were plenty of blue jays as well. The hummingbirds did not really kick in until August, but were lots of fun to watch. I noticed a preference for dark pink flowers over the traditional red, and they visited the geraniums readily.
Best of all, bug season was minimal!
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