Backyard tip of the week: You can carry over a little bit of that fall feeling for next year. Take any of your decorative pumpkins that you used for the holidays, the ones that still have seeds in them, and place them in your garden or other appropriate spot in the yard. The pumpkin will compost throughout the winter and you should have some pumpkins next summer. Just look for long ground covering vine with large velvety leaves and you'll know that pumpkins are on the way. You're sure to love it!
Backyard sightings for last week: Including northern cardinals, dark-eyed juncos, and mourning doves. Carolina wrens, eastern goldfinches, house finches. Red-bellied and downy woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, the tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees, blue-jays, American crows, a red squirrel, some grey squirrels, a couple of different skunks, still some chipmunks, and a few crickets, too.
Cool sightings of the week: This week's cool sighting was also a scary sighting! Monday night at about 10:30, I was outside between the house and garage looking at the backyard when a screeching sound was heard which was erie and not at all familiar to me. This sound continued from a distance and I wondered what it might be. Was it a bird that was pulled from its nighttime resting spot by a raccoon or a fox? It sounded like it could be a blue jay screeching in distress. I decided not to brave the dark recesses of the backyard to find out what the crazy sound was. After a few moments I could hear rustling through the leaves and hoped that I might get a glimpse of what all the noise was about. The noise grew closer and I saw two skunks running fast, skirting the edge of the Norway spruce tree. They were the usual backyard skunks, the mostly white one and the one with three spots, but they'd never been seen together before tonight and it seemed like the three spotted skunk was not at all happy about the other one. He was chasing the mostly white skunk and seemed to attack or bite him which created the screeching sound. They were now about twenty feet away, down at the end of the alley, and I clapped my hands loudly to make the mean skunk leave the other one alone. Suddenly, old three-spot turns around and runs straight down the alley toward me! Not wanting to wait around and find out out if he'd be any happier to meet me, I ran into the house and shut the door. It was a little scary, but having somewhat of a close encounter with the neighborhood skunks this week that didn't end with me getting sprayed was very cool!
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