Native animals here

I was just reminded by another homeschool mom about the Perseid meteor showers happening Tuesday and Wednesday of this week after midnight. This is a great spot still for star viewing as we have no overhead lights on our entire 7 acres and most of the neighborhood lights are blocked by heavy foliage this time of year especially. I am going to have to wake up and drag the kids out to the trampoline to see some of them. The tramp is the optimum viewing spot and if it isn't buggy, then it is a perfect place to crash until morning.

One of the other things that I keep meaning to address is the diversity of animal life on this property. There are fewer places for animals to go along this watershed that we live on than ever before. Because we have 3 tanks and plenty of big trees, we tend to have a large array of critters visiting or living here. I must comment on the decided lack of deer however. For some reason...probably the high local dog population...there were NO deer here this year. Last year and the year before, there were only prints of one large buck up by our back irrigation tank.
We do have lots and lots of birds: blue herons, golden eagles, red tail hawks, road runners, painted buntings, cardinals, white wing dove, cormorants, egrets, ducks (wood and mallards and another black and white I haven't identified yet), barn owls, yellow finch, hummingbirds, mockingbirds, sparrows and several others that I can't name or don't recall at the moment.

As far as grounded mammals are concerned, we have several kinds of rodent...jack rabbit, cotton tail, gophers, voles, field mice - never seen a rat though. The dogs manage to face off with racoons and skunks all the time. One of my dogs loves getting sprayed by skunk - must be her cologne. We have bats in the evening over the tanks mostly and tons varieties of lizards and geckos, frogs, toads, turtles and snakes. Our insects population is enormous - both beneficial and otherwise. I miss the chickens being truly free- range all the time because they cut the grasshopper population down considerably but they also ravaged some of the plants we grow in our stock. Our butterfly garden is in it's second year and finally has some plants reaching maturity. Today I counted 5 varieties of butterfly - by the end of the month it will be even more. We also have honey bees and mud daubers. They don't much bother us and we are happy to have them here to pollinate. Tony had one of his workers get rid of a giant patch of native sunflowers a few days ago that made them a bit unhappy but there are insane numbers of those flowers elsewhere and not to far away. I will have to unearth some of the photos that I have taken in the last couple of years to show everyone, but here is one of my favorites of a Blue Heron in my favorite tree at sunrise 2 winters ago. This guy comes back every winter and cleans out the fish in the tank. He even talks to me sometimes when I am out feeding the animals in the morning. Crazy country living, I tell you.