Fawns, Butterflies and More at LRDC

Until this week it has been a hot dry summer here at Long Ridge, and the turkey dusting bowl and feather you see below are all over the place in our woodlands.

Below is the same picture I posted on FB of two Monarch butterflies mating about 50 feet up in a tree. I had to fully zoom my pocket camera to get them, and they are hard to see unless you double click the picture. Below them is our big milkweed plot.

The first Monarch caterpillar I have seen on the milkweed thus far.

This is the wild sweet pea patch in the Far field, which I have claimed were good for nothing but their beauty. I was wrong. This year the deer have browsed them heavily.

Three baby Phoebes in one of our barns, the day before they jumped the nest.

The turkey below was about 100 feet from me as I sat on the tractor idling toward her. Double click to see the one or two day old tiny poults with her. There looked to be about 7 or 8 but I could hardly see them in the five inch grass.

Camp wood is finally in! This will last for nine days of deer camps.

Here is a healthy set of twins. Many more fawns surviving this summer than last. 

Leaping for exercise...

These fawns are simply running for exercise and training. The timer shows them right back here minutes later.

This turkey has much bigger babes, so I suspect the one above lost her first clutch and had to start from scratch, because the teacup sized ones are my most recent picture!

Synopsis: As usual the bucks I was getting pictures of have disappeared from camera view, and the fawns are showing up everywhere. The deer herd here looks very healthy. The clover plot above is one of the reasons they are all so fat! If you blow up this picture you'll see the deer paths all through it as they have started to browse it heavily.

jackzeller@myfairpoint.net