Please Don’t Feed the Woodchucks

A beautiful breezy sunny morning on the pond. Breakfast on the porch. Adding to the decadence, a wood thrush just began to tune up in a nearby hemlock. Shameful.

Chuck, our resident groundhog has apparently taken up residence under the porch. We have seen him/her coming to and going from there during the last few weeks. No sign of small woodchuck children yet, so the jury’s still out on the sex call. Nobody here wants to pick him/her up to find out. Chuck (Charlene?) and its relatives are known to take painful and sometimes bloody umbrage to such abusive and humiliating treatment. (ref. Missing digits from avid [mindless] PA woodchuck hunters of my youth).

Several woods turtles have already hauled out onto the edge of the pond to warm in the sun. A large snapper has just surfaced and is floating aimlessly near the island. It showed brief interest in a passing grass carp. Brief, because a 2 ½ ft. grass carp is too much of a mouthful for even a large snapper. Speaking of grass carp, they meander their sexless way in search of their normal prey, the ever illusive clump of pond grass. It must be discouraging to awaken in the morning knowing that the highest point of your day is going to be a mouthful of grass. The bass await the arrival of dragon flies.

Three mallards visited the pond yesterday. After a couple of hours they took off and joined their siblings on the avian interstate to Canada. High point of the day was the arrival of two young bucks, a button and a spike (reference to their not having yet developed a fork in their antlers). They grazed for a while in the front yard and past the porch, finally disappearing in the woods beyond. They still wore their dark winter coats, apparently in response to the cool late winter and early spring.

All in all, a beautiful beginning to the Memorial Day weekend