Return

The winter was hard on them. They went missing for a full month, while I watched and worried. Finally, the snow receded enough to draw them out from wherever they took shelter, and they brought friends. Not just the customary doe and her buck fawn from last year, but three others as well. It was hard to tell who traveled with whom as they milled about on the lawn, one group wary of the other. I started putting feed out again, and they came regularly until food sources started to improve - or maybe our doe ran the others off.

What with one thing and another, this Spring has not been so leisurely, nor has it afforded the normal spans of time for reflection I normally gain from garden and yardwork. But now and again, I am reminded and rewarded.

A week ago, filling a thistle feeder and a suet cage (the latter in hopes that the woodpeckers will find it more appealing than our cedar siding) and I heard a rustle down the bank, in the gully on the east side of the house.  I stopped moving and looked, really looked.  Four big eyes and bigger ears looking back at me.  I sat down, filled the feeders and hung them all while listening for the crashing that meant they had taken off in panic.  Nothing.  I stood up slowly, and realized I was still being observed.  As I moved off from the feeders toward the house, they paced me - still in the brush but traveling along the property line towards the north, the back.  

I can take a hint.  I came back out with a small bucket of sweet feed and poured a pile on the lawn as they watched, not too close to the deck but without getting to close to them in the sanctuary of the brush line where they feel safe. I moved back up to the deck and sat down. They watched, decided I wasn't a threat at that distance, and came out.  They never came close enough to feed while I was out there, and when they decided I wasn't going to quit the field, they did...but only a little, only going a half dozen feet into the brush, then watching.  I took a ceramic planter bowl I'd used to hold a salt lick through the winter and took it to the brush line, staying west of where they were and moving slowly. I put the dish down on the edge and filled it with sweet feed. They never took their eyes off me.

The doe didn't present me with the right angles but I think she's carrying. I hope she brings this year's fawn back around once she drops.