# Sometimes nature sucks



## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

I'm a week behind on watching my security camera videos. 

While we had a couple inches of snow on the ground the resident foxes were hunting close to the houses. Most of the time the videos showed the rabbits getting away. Unfortunately for one rabbit, it just wasn't quick enough. In the video the fox was trotting toward the dark, shady area between my house and the one to the west. A few seconds later the fox trotted across the area lit up by their back light, carrying a rabbit. 

Then a couple days later, the resident hawk was stalking the birds at my suet feeder. It jumped onto the feeder and came back down with a Downy Woodpecker.

While I would prefer that the foxes eat the squirrels and the hawk would eat the House Sparrows, they just weren't on the menu on those days. ☹

One of the foxes found a squirrel that I shot for eating my bird feeder. At least the fox didn't need a rabbit that night. Lead poisoning is not a concern, the bullet went clear through the squirrel.

I think the hawk was badly injured some time ago. I have seen it several times. It's feathers look scruffy and out of place and it never flies away from me. It hunts from the ground and does not appear to fly well. It looks like a young one. It has the plumage of a young bird and yellow eyes like a young Cooper's. It's on the small scale of bird sizes. While it is colored like a Harrier, it does not have the white rump and it is quite a bit smaller than a Harrier. We have seen mature Cooper's hawks in the yard several times.


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

Nature just is. Our interpretations are interesting.


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## miteigenenhaenden (11 mo ago)

It's springtime here. The blackbird man sings at 5 in the morning on the roof of the house across the street. Nuisance! 😅


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

miteigenenhaenden said:


> It's springtime here. The blackbird man sings at 5 in the morning on the roof of the house across the street. Nuisance! 😅


Maybe I should send my hawk to visit your blackbird.


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## doc- (Jun 26, 2015)

Alice In TX/MO said:


> Nature just is. Our interpretations are interesting.


Nature is neither good nor bad...just what it takes to survive.

How fast does the slowest antelope need to run to survive?...Faster than the the fastest lion.
How fast does the slowest lion need to run to survive?...Faster than the slowest antelope.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

A few years back we had a couple of toads that got into the basement. Hubby forgot they were there and stepped on one. The other lived through the winter in the basement, dodging huge spiders, human feet and dropped items. In the spring I put it outside in the damp area beside the outside door to the basement. It lived there a few weeks. Then one day I saw a garter snake that looked really strange. The back legs of my toad were hanging out of it's mouth!

Then a couple years ago I was raising some orphaned house wrens. They were spending time in my little lemon tree outside when a rat snake ate one of them.

It is the nature of nature that predators must eat other animals. To the humans who have become fond of those other animals, the cycle sometimes sucks. But that is the basis of life in the wild. The foxes live to hunt rabbits, the rabbits live to feed the foxes. If there were no predators we would be overrun with rabbits. If there was not a large rabbit population, we wouldn't get to see the foxes. If the foxes eat all the rabbits, they will starve. If all the rabbits survived and reproduced, they would eat all the greenery then they would starve. Or the rabbits would get shot for eating everyones gardens which is just a waste of life. 

I'm glad I get to see them go through the cycle. 

I don't know if I want to see what moves in to take care of our residential herd of deer. Mama had 2 female fawns last year. All 3 were in my little yard a week ago. Just thinking that those 3 could be 7 or 10 by late summer makes me want to thin them out a bit. It's a bit hard to hunt deer in a residential neighborhood even though we don't have any regulations against it.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

everything has to eat


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## muleskinner2 (Oct 7, 2007)

Danaus29 said:


> Then a couple days later, the resident hawk was stalking the birds at my suet feeder.


Thank you for providing a feeding station for the birds of prey.


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## Pony (Jan 6, 2003)

miteigenenhaenden said:


> It's springtime here. The blackbird man sings at 5 in the morning on the roof of the house across the street. Nuisance! 😅


Worse than the blackbird is the whippoorwill who shows up every evening when the weather is warm. 

That nasty little feathered fiend does all he can to disrupt my sleep. I have told the cats to do something about it, but they laugh at me.


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

Pony, do you remember my Missouri friend, Lonnie? He passed away here in south Texas.

I had never heard a whippoorwill here.

The evening after he passed, a whippoorwill started calling outside my window. My husband said, “Did you hear that? It’s Lonnie.”

Yup. My thoughts exactly.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

muleskinner2 said:


> Thank you for providing a feeding station for the birds of prey.


The owls appreciate the feed I put out for the rabbits too. I haven't seen an owl catch a rabbit but my cameras have recorded a couple close calls.

I haven't seen the grounded hawk in the past few days. If it didn't survive there will be more to replace it this summer. There is at least one breeding pair around.


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## muleskinner2 (Oct 7, 2007)

Danaus29 said:


> The owls appreciate the feed I put out for the rabbits too. I haven't seen an owl catch a rabbit but my cameras have recorded a couple close calls.
> 
> I haven't seen the grounded hawk in the past few days. If it didn't survive there will be more to replace it this summer. There is at least one breeding pair around.


I have a pair of Harris Hawks, and a pair of Ravens that both nest within a mile of my place. They put on quite a show, when they squabble.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

Last summer I watched the Cooper's pair fighting a pair of Red-tailed Hawks. It was pretty neat. I don't remember if I wrote about it here or just my garden journal. They were dive bombing each other for about a half hour, that I watched. They might have been fighting longer.


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## oldasrocks (Oct 27, 2006)

Danaus29 said:


> A few years back we had a couple of toads that got into the basement. Hubby forgot they were there and stepped on one. The other lived through the winter in the basement, dodging huge spiders, human feet and dropped items. In the spring I put it outside in the damp area beside the outside door to the basement. It lived there a few weeks. Then one day I saw a garter snake that looked really strange. The back legs of my toad were hanging out of it's mouth!
> 
> Then a couple years ago I was raising some orphaned house wrens. They were spending time in my little lemon tree outside when a rat snake ate one of them.
> 
> ...


Sounds like Bow time.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

oldasrocks said:


> Sounds like Bow time.


The problem is, if you don't drop them right where you hit them, they could run through several properties or onto the next street or down into the creek. It's legal to use guns out here but either way, dieing deer tend to run a bit.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

Danaus29 said:


> The problem is, if you don't drop them right where you hit them, they could run through several properties or onto the next street or down into the creek. It's legal to use guns out here but either way, dieing deer tend to run a bit.


if you neck shoot in the right spot they drop on the spot , there are a few spots to shoot them where they don't run , the issue is being able to put the bullet right there and often that means well aimed shots at distances of 50 yards or less


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

We're talking distances of only a couple hundred feet. While it is possible to hunt deer in a neighborhood of 1/4 to 1 acre lots it's not very practical. It can be done safely because the houses are on top of ridges and the deer frequent the creeks 30 to 50 feet below the houses. If you could get the perfect set-up you could probably get a good shot. 

We didn't have back yard deer until the DNR broke up a New York based poaching ring.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

I have hunted deer literally in a back yard my tree stand , from my stand I could see the WI State capitol rotunda and the quality inn and and grocery store sign once it started to get dark.

you are best to use an elevated stand and you have to pick your shots very carefully 

the property was my Grandmother in laws it was 16 acres about 3/4 swamp and an adjoining 14 acers that were her brother in laws , most of his property was too close to the school to the south to hunt it.
2400 acre of public swamp land behind the 2 properties 

after a while the DNR put a muzzle loader and archery only restriction on the public land which may or may not have applied to the private but I bought a muzzle loader any way and shot one last deer there with it before the property was sold


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## barnbilder (Jul 1, 2005)

Here we have so many deer the few people willing to thin the herd are not concerned if they run several properties away to die. It's generally preferred, you don't have to fool with a deer and you can keep shooting. Enough will forget to run to fill the freezer. Ground cover is so denuded that we no longer have ground nesting birds like whiporwill. It's a literal deer desert, and the deer are piled into residential and agricultural property. Wilderness areas are eaten out. The hunters that leave the herd of twenty in their yard complain to the game department about not seeing deer in the wilderness and the regs stay the way they are. We need a deer bounty or more predators or market hunting. It's ridiculous.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

We haven't got to the point of being ovewhelmed by deer yet. There is a huge, mostly natural, park very close to here that the deer can easily get to. If they were a constant presence, like the ones near Sharon Woods metro park (which is surrounded by city) the deer would be more destructive locally. A public hunting area is close enough that it would be part of their territory. Hopefully the young does will move to their own territory before they have their fawns. If not, I may have to set up a bait station and do some practice. In Ohio it is legal to bait deer with feed and/or salt blocks.

As it is now, we see the group occasionally. They will be around an hour or so then they don't come back for a couple weeks. It was a month between sightings when there was snow on the ground.

In a way, I am glad to see these deer. Deer are one of Ohio's success stories. When I was little it wasn't legal to hunt deer in Ohio because their numbers were so small. Deer were reintroduced and strict hunting seasons set. They are now so plentiful that the gun season has been increased. Black powder and archery season lasts quite a bit longer. 

Hmmm, Mom has a crossbow that isn't being used.


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## barnbilder (Jul 1, 2005)

Whitetail deer were a good bet to build a success story around. If people thought Norway rats were cute, tasty, and looked good mounted on a wall I could do pretty good as a Norway rat management agency. Until they became a plague and ate themselves out of existence and became a huge disease reservoir, which is about where we are with the deer story.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

Local deer populations vary by area quite a bit. I may see one once a month. Pop knows several of their favorite feeding grounds in their neighborhood. If your state DNR officials have a Disney vision of deer, they can seriously restrict the limits and seasons. If your DNR officials see deer as nuisance animals, they increase limits and extend the season. Your DNR office should have a person to contact to express concerns about deer destroying the natural vegetation because they are overpopulated in your area.


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