Ever Feel Like You're Being Watched?

For Christmas I received serious LED headlamp. Like, 220 lumens and several strange and fantastical settings level serious.  Mostly I wanted this for after dark dog walking, but I'm sure I'll use it for other after dark yard tasks as well as when I go under the house.  POW!

This was a close as I could come to what I saw: just the eyes and some tree trunks, of course noe green misty stuff for me.  Photo: Ralph Martin visual-nature.de

Both Eric and I been using it since Christmas night and last week I saw what I'd wanted the light for seeing and what I was pretty sure I did not want to see.  EYES! A pair of green glowing eyes looking in Betty's and my direction from downwind in the trees on the other side of the fence-that-is-not-an-actual-barrier.  They didn't seem high enough off of the ground to be deer so I assumed it was a fox since they're plentiful and short.  My internet searching hasn't been as productive as I'd hoped, especially for images, but it has been a bit of a roller coaster ride making me feel more like I saw something like this.

There are raccoon, but you get what I mean: post incident minor freak out.

Here are some things I found for various critters that are known to be around here.

(From Predator Masters Forums)
Coyote--eyeshine is greenish gold.
Gray Wolf--eyeshine is greenish orange.
Red Wolf--eyeshine is gold to bluish green.
Mt lion--eyeshine is greenish gold.
Bobcat--eyeshine is greenish gold.
Nothing on foxes.

(From Sunstar-Solutions)
BEARS:
CATS WITH GREEN/YELLOW EYES: GREEN
CATS WITH ORANGE- BROWN/BLUE EYES: RED
COUGAR:
COYOTE:
DEER: WHITE/YELLOW/RED
DOGS: GREEN/BLUE
FOXES: BLUE/RED
RACOON: GREEN/WHITE
WHITE-TAILED DEER: SILVER-WHITE
BIGFOOT: RED
MOTHMAN: RED

(From a public Q & A forum called Blurtit)
Fox's [sic]eyes are green at night.

(From Backpacker.com's Ask-a-bear page)
In photos, the glow ranges from yellow to yellowish orange, though some people report seeing red or green. (Variations in color between species often come from the presence of nutrients like riboflavin, distortions in the lens, and iris color.) Black bears also appear yellow to orange, though people sometimes report seeing red.
Bottom line: You're unlikely to identify my species at night solely by shining a light into my eyes.

(From Survivalist Boards)
It [helps] to have a known reference for height of eyes from the ground. Or good enough light to sense the ground. Deer are clearly taller than Bear, Coyote, Puma, Bobcats, etc.

and

I still have not found anything about the color being a definitive point of identification. The type of light being used without question can play a role in that.


Sooooo, based on the height, what we know from our experience of who's hanging around here a lot*, and what I really want (and don't want) it to have been, I'm going with fox.  Yup, definitely fox; the trendy little predator that generally won't even mess with a full-grown house cat.

I couldn't find a way to credit this great photo, if you know better ways for me to find out, I'd love to credit this.

*We've both seen fox scat and tracks on multiple occasions in the last several weeks.

ADDENDUM: Not 5 minutes after finishing this post, which I admit got me feeling kind of edgy, I took Betty out for last-call potties and saw another pair of eyes! This time they were on the opposite side of the house, but still on the other side of the fence-that-is-not-an-actual-barrier.  Betty did her business and we came in. I told Eric that I just saw more and this time he wanted to come have a look. Once he spotted them he wanted a closer look, but I was not going out there, so I handed over the head lamp and watched him venture ever nearer... nearer to the deer.  D'oh!  But I didn't want to waste all my efforts and research and overcoming of irrational fears up there ^ and I didn't want to waste that adorable fox photo, so I decided to update at the bottom, to bring you along on my journey, you lucky so-and-so's.

Photo: 123rf.com Royalty-free stock photos.

When I went back out a few minutes later with Delia there were two pairs of eyes and they were moving through the forest parallel-ish to the fence line, by the time she had completed her task and we were going back inside they were running which was kind of freaky to see. I felt a little bad that maybe we'd scared them even though it's good for them to be scared of people and dogs.  I now assume that they were further away than I thought which is why they looked closer to the ground, they were possibly a little uphill from me, too, which I know I wasn't taking into account.

Who's Poop Is This, Anyway?

New poop!  And I know you're as excited as I am.  It's been all deer and bear (and, let's face it, dog) all the time until this week.  I spotted a new type on Betty's morning walk last Wednesday, but didn't have a photo taking device with me and forgot to go back out.  Hey, coffee and fire needed making and I have my priorities and mine is coffee.  Eric made the fire that morning.

I'm told the long piece is about 6" long and that they are indeed furry, but otherwise look like domestic dog doody.

Then on last Friday evening when Eric took Delia out for her pre-dinner walk, he came upon this.  He thought it might have been the one I saw, but it's quite a bit different.  We think this one is fox; finally some foxy turds!  Anyone else have any ideas?

One Year is Cookies, Right?

Anniversaries seem like a good time for looking back and for lists and since we've now been here on the side of this mountain for a year, I thought I'd share with you some of the lists we've been keeping both in our heads and written down.

When a dear friend sent me a surprise giftie in the mail of a woodland creature cookie cutter set that had a a fox AND a porcupine* I decided to make cookies of as many of our locally spotted critters as I had the cutters for. Luckily, I have a lot of cutters and I'd already started this post as a handy-dandy list. Neither Eric nor I are huge fans of cookie icing, so I applied only outlines. The cookies are Martha Stewart's shortbread recipe.

Critters we've seen at home or within a few miles of home:
Furry
White-tailed Deer
Mule Deer
Foxes (we've each seen them one or more times in the daylight since this post)
Flying Squirrels
Red Squirrels (I think)
Least Chipmunks (I think)
Skunks (one visual down the mountain a bit, one purely olfactory at the house)
Rabbits (probably Mountain Cottontail)
Marmot, probably the Hoary kind usually along the road, sometimes "sleeping"
Porcupine ("sleeping" by the highway)
Black Bear (cub)

I tried to include a turkey and a duck  cookie, but the turkey dropped when I tried to move it to the cooking rack and the duck wouldn't come out of the cutter with both its feet or its bill.

Feathery
Mallard Ducks
Wild Turkeys
Bald Eagles
Blue Heron
And these:

Plus two different as-yet-unidentified larger, grouse-yish types.

Creepy-crawly/fly-y
Phyciodes orseis herlani butterflies
Some kind of swallowtail butterflies (9 species in Montana)
Other Butterflies
Yellow Jackets
Wasps
Horse Flies
Flies
Mosquitoes (just a few)
Ten-lined June beetle
Western Conifer Seed Bug
Etcetera and so forth

I spotted the Ten-lined June Beetle one night on the deck when Eric was setting up his small telescope for us to peep some stars.  He's REALLY big and freaky looking in the dark, let me tell you. (the beetle, not Eric)  We all played it fairly cool though; the beetle went about his beetle business and we peeped stars. (photo from wikipedia)

Scaley
Mystery Jumping River Fish or Fishes
Mystery Swimming Creek Fish or Fishes

It has been interesting for me, whose only memories are of living in Northwestern Oregon, to get used to this type of forest and it was fun (and a bit of a relief) to watch it get so green and relatively lush in the spring. From late-May to mid-June or so our part of the National Forest was carpeted with wildflowers. I bet we saw more than 2 dozen kinds over that time in the area within 10 minutes walk from the house.

We've lived through all four seasons (five if you include fire season) and can already tell this autumn is cooler, wetter, and less smokey than last.  We've already had a few fires in the wood stove, something we didn't do for a few-to-several weeks after we arrived.  We've had a few weeks of overcast and rainy weather, not real rain-rain, but probably what passes for real rain-rain in these parts.  If your head is covered (with lots of hair or a hat) you don't even really get wet and what wet you do get drys really quickly.

Eric with our Realtor, Sherry Kolenda, on our one viewing of the property back in August 2012.

We've done some cosmetic work in eight rooms. When I itemized it here and looked back at so many posts to make the links it seems like a lot has been accomplished.

Laundry Room (not yet photographed or posted even though it was the first room I painted, etc.)
Kitchen (appliance)
Living/Dining Room
Upstairs Hall Bathroom
Master Bedroom
Guest Bedroom
Master Dressing Room
Master Half-Bathroom
Plus replaced ALL the door knobs

When I think about the things we still have on our list to chance it seem like there's a long way to go.  I think that the stairwell and upstairs hallway, the master water closet. and the downstairs bathroom are at the fore of my mind.  The first three can probably be accomplished with just a little money, but quite a bit of work. The last one will be quite a bit of work, too, but will probably require more supplies be purchased to get to the image I have in my mind.

And tomorrow is October 1, one year from the day I took this photo.

Damn.


* I'm sure it's supposed to be a hedgehog, but as long as it lives under our roof it's a porcupine!

Wildlife Watch V!

I had gotten off my sick couch to take a few minutes to swap out the 2nd and 3rd bedroom closet door pulls for new ones and come back downstairs.  It's usually cold in those rooms if we don't leave the doors open (or turn on the baseboard heaters), but it seemed extra cold tonight and since it didn't get above 10 degrees on our thermometer today I went to the kitchen window to see if I could see the thermometer through the last bit of twilight.  I could not read it clearly and just as I turned away to grab a light, I saw movement out there.  It was a red fox trotting (heh) up the side and around the back of the house!

Vulpes vulpes (so nice they named 'em twice). It looked a lot like this only more trees in the background and nearly dark outside.

Eric was reading by the woodstove and after a second of speechlessness I started whisper-squealing, "There's a fox!  There's a fox!  There's a fox!"  He was able to catch sight of it, too, as we moved to the windows are the back of the house, but luckily the dogs did not and didn't seem to get too worked up over our excitement.