Turkeys, Turtles and Muskrats.

The rain of the last few days has kept us indoors for most of the time but the wildlife has been out and about. New additions to my list of animals seen include a flock of wild turkeys, several adult and 5 or 6 babies, crossing the drive in the early morning to get to the soya bean field. Too far away for a photo but quite a sight nevertheless.

Down at the stream while feeding the fish garlic naan bread (!) saw a turtle the size of a dinner plate and what I thought was a swimming groundhog. That's the last thing James needs, for his most favourite animal (heavy sarcasm here) to be colonising the stream as well as the vegetable patch. However on further investigation this swimming mammal turned out to be a muskrat, picture above.

The hummingbirds come regularly to the feeders,trees and flowers around the porch and deck which is an amazing sight to see. The first you know of them is the hum of their wings, rather like the sound of a very angry wasp but much louder. Then they hover like little helicopters feeding from the flowers. Have noticed that they are very territorial and we often see them fighting each other off, though there is plenty of food to go round.