September

The nights are busy. Six to eight raccoons each evening, one or two skunks, five to eight foxes, most gray, one red. No ringtail. During the month of September I think I saw the ringtail just once. She showed up ten times that night, took a hot dog each time and then came back five minutes later and took another. Haven't seen her in a couple weeks. I think back this is the second time I ran out of ringtails. They are the most entertaining of all the critters that come to the porch.

The morning feed of Colorado chipmunks, white-tailed antelope squirrels, and rock squirrels is about the same. Where the old firepit use to be at the lodge we had a pile of wood there and the Colorado chipmunks have made that their home so it's a pile of wood that will never be used.

In the bird world the Eurasian doves mostly eat at Tiffany's three in the back yard off the deck. In the early days as their underside looks much like a sharp-shinned hawk and a Cooper's hawk when they would land it would scare all the other's who had gathered to eat and they would all take off. The Eurasion doves seeing everybody run would think there was a hawk coming and abort their landing and taking off. In time they learned to land 20 feet from the feeding area and then walk over so as not to scare everyone and in turn scare themselves. The white-crowned sparrows mostly eat there also. The red-winged blackbirds hang out by the perished cottonwood tree at Breakfast at Tiffany's 2. When they migrate the cowbirds take their place. The house finch's rule Breakfast at Tiffany's one across the driveway.

It looks like a couple more ugly tents have showed up across the river in the same places the Geo-domes were.