Wildlife

Mourning doves have set up again on our front porch, this time on a slightly more out of the way column. Eve did an illustration of the stages of mourning dove life (egg, hatchling, fledgling, juvenile) based on Wikipedia.



In less welcome wildlife news, Cobbham has a coyote, and it lives somewhere behind our house and our neighbor's. She first spotted it on Thursday, and it has been seen every day since then, which is not so good. If it were a solo male it would be more likely to roam about; its ongoing presence suggests it's a female with pups. We all saw it today; first me, when I went to take the compost out, and Michael took the kids out. We see it running (easily spooked) in the back 15-20 feet of our property, which is bushes and small trees.

The Michael mowed the lawn and found evidence it's been venturing into the yard proper at times. Our neighbor says she saw it eating berries, and I think it is munching on the fallen berries from our mulberry tree, which is right beside the house. There are several evidence packets like this:



I am not afraid for the children, though we'll keep an eye on them and forbid playing in the bushes. But our nieghbor's dog is way stressed out, and in general, I just don't want a coyote in permanent residence in my back yard, you know? Ah, modern city life. (Google "urban coyote" and there are tons of official pages as cities tackle this problem.)