Wildlife in Our Backyard
Continuing with our theme of enjoying what is in our own backyard, (see our last post This Spring Glows!) we have some fun wildlife to share from our home state of Maine! If you follow Go See It Travel, you know we venture far and wide to have the opportunity to see unique wildlife all over the globe! One of the difficult things about wildlife travel is if the weather or wildlife doesn’t cooperate, you might not get to spot the animals you came hoping to see. In Patagonia, during our 10 days, we never did get the opportunity to see puma despite spending many hours tracking them with expert guides, (see our report here) That’s how it goes and what you have to accept as a wildlife traveler. A wise local guide in Alaska once told us, ‘The animals don’t read the guide books’! But looking for wildlife where we live allows us to spend more time, under the best conditions, looking for animals. Read on to see what we’ve spotted in the neighborhood and some of the stories of these amazing animals we call our neighbors!
Buttercup the Bear
One evening driving home from dinner out, we spotted Buttercup enjoying some tasty greens in a field near our home. With binoculars and a long lens (400 mm), we were able to observe her from a safe distance in our car without disturbing her dinner. After about 20 minutes she ambled off into the woods and seemed to disappear into the shadows.
We first “met” Buttercup a few years ago…a yearling cub on her own probably for the first time, she blundered far to close to us while we were walking along our dirt road (her dirt road now!) An older, smarter bear would have known to stay hidden in among the trees where we couldn’t have seen her, but this little one ran off terrified of us, through a field of buttercups and earned her nickname! She was curious enough to come back out of the woods and take a little peek at us from further down the road!
In 2023, we spotted Buttercup heading to the shore to look for shellfish and possibly eggs of nesting shore birds.
Over the years, we’ve often spotted her in the early spring near the coast where she eats easy to find shellfish after she wakes up from her long winter nap, then she moves further inland probably terrorizing back yard chickens and roaming the blueberry barrens when the berries are ripe.
A neighbors trail cam picked up Buttercup on an evening prowl
A week or so ago we read in the newspaper about a collision between a bear and car just up the road, but the bear ran off, so there was no report of the condition of the bear and we worried about Buttercup! Then while photographing birds on the beach a few days later, we noticed a big, fresh bear print in the tidal mud right over the tracks we’d left walking along the shore. Seems she’d taken another little peek at us, this time, an older, wiser bear, she knew to stay hidden till we passed. But her pawprint told us what what we needed to know…she’d survived her collision with the car!(or not been the bear hit)
We had Buttercups prints from an earlier crime…an attempted B&E of our vehicle, so we recognized them in the mud after hearing the reports of the car/bear collision in our neighborhood and could surmise she was ok!
Birds and More Birds
Not being sit-on-the-beach people, most of the time we are enjoying the shore, it’s in a kayak or on a walk, with binoculars and cameras in hand. These are some of our neighbors on the beaches and waterways.
Our resident osprey family has succeeded beautifully in our neighborhood, with subsequent generations returning and setting up nests on any tall tree, pier or pole…including power poles which has caused occasional power outages during the early spring when the osprey drop huge sticks onto power lines!
Once the nest is built and eggs are laid, the pair will fish, first to feed themselves and regurgitate for their young chicks and later bringing whole fish to the nest to feed the larger chicks. Then on a windy day, we’ll see the youngsters fledge, taking their first flights, with comical landings and frantic flapping as they learn how to work with the wind and air currents to fly, and eventually fish directly out of the ocean!
A merganser takes her brood out for a ride on the ocean
We joke that there are two kinds of gulls in the world; french fry gulls who live near people and eat people food like french fries on a busy beach and seafood gulls who live in more remote places and feed on shellfish. Our gulls are seafood gulls and they are naturally very shy of people, making them harder to observe and photograph!
Our noisiest neighbor, the song sparrow, sings beautifully and eats the bugs that bug us, so we love having them flitting around in the marsh near or home!
This semipalmated plover is a seasonal visitor who comes to our beach to feed on tiny crustaceans and sea worms at the edge of the tide. They arrive during their long migration to feed and rest up for the rest of the trip. We help by avoiding letting dogs on the beach and shooting photos with a long lens so they aren’t disturbed.
Eastern Blue Birds nest in boxes monitored by volunteers from Down East Audubon
Volunteers from DE Audubon serve as citizen scientists, monitoring Eastern Blue bird nesting boxes and reporting how many eggs and chicks and how many pairs are nesting.
The alewives (small fish) swim upstream to spawn and the eagles follow to feast on the concentration of tasty fish in shallow water.
Deer
A young male deer poses for our trail cam!
A family of deer has, for the last few years, started stashing their fawns under a window where our daughter works at home, while they browse, knowing predators won’t come close to the house. It gives a chance to see them from the safety of the house or on trail cameras. Everywhere seems to have lots of deer these days…they’ve become a nuisance in many areas, eating garden plants, leaving ticks behind and more dangerously, causing collisions with vehicles when they run into the roadway.
This doe and her young fawn wander right into our yard
So We Have Wild Animals in the Backyard!
When we travel to see wild animals, we let the wild animals be wild, allow predators to thrive, we don’t feed any wild animals (including birds…which is fun, but can inadvertently change the local ecosystem and encourages predators into our back yards where they can have negative interactions with humans and pets.) Even at home, we watch them and photograph them from a safe distance, both for our safety but also for the animals to feel undisturbed as they go about their day surviving the environment. Wise wildlife guides have told us that if the animals notice us and change their behaviors when they see us, we are too close. Sometimes, we do have to assert ourselves (such as shouting off coyotes who move into our yards) and our territory, so wild animals will avoid humans, pets and livestock, but usually we can observe them and let them be!
Despite the challenges living with wild animals, we enjoy watching them in the wild. We impact the animals and they impact us, but I guess we all have to try to be good neighbors!