Life in the Back Yard, Part one: Mammals

A while back I realized that our Indiana back yard was going to be quite different from our Tucson back yard. One morning I found the pole holding my bird feeder bent to the ground and the seed feeder emptied. I put out a trail camera and dumped some remaining seed on a rock.

Apparently there is a raccoon army out in the woods behind the back yard. They haven't gotten into the seed feeder again, but recently I hung a second suet feeder under my first suet feeder, this one containing a small seed block. One night it simply disappeared. 

Where did it go?

I hypothesize that it was hanging just low enough for a raccoon to reach up, unhook it, and carry it off into the woods. I have started hacking a trail through the mostly non-native, invasive Amur honeysuckle that makes up much of the forest understory, but so far I haven't found the feeder. (More about plants in another post.)

You probably noticed the slinky hanging down the feeder pole. This is a new anti-squirrel device called a "Scram Squirrel by Slinky."

The slinky is both effective and amusing. The squirrel starts to climb up, grabs the slinky, bounces down and up, and then let's go. So far we have seen it happen but I have not gotten a photo. (There are videos on YouTube.) Here is an eastern fox squirrel who has either learned its lesson, or is content with the seeds the birds dropped on the ground. 

Eastern fox squirrel

There are four kinds of squirrels here (eastern fox, American red, eastern gray, and southern flying), and one chipmunk (eastern chipmunk). In the back yard I have seen the first two kinds of squirrels, and the chipmunk. The flying squirrel is nocturnal and apparently stays high in the forest trees. I have seen gray squirrels elsewhere, but not here so far. 

The local American red squirrel, which is much smaller than the fox squirrel, lives in the neighbor's shed. Its front door is a broken asphalt tile on the roof.

American red squirrel

Back to the nocturnal scene, sometimes the raccoons get help from an opossum. 

No surprise really that there are squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, and opossums. Although I didn't realize they would be visiting so regularly and that they all like birdseed so much. Of course, where small animals come to eat, there will be larger animals who come to eat them. The neighbors say they have seen coyotes, and here is our ubiquitous suburban predator. 

Non-native, invasive (possibly feral) domestic cat. I don't believe that black cats are unlucky, but any cat is unlucky for small birds, mammals, and reptiles. This black one is not the only one I've seen. See the American Bird Conservancy's information on outdoor cats and one of the studies of their huge impact on wildlife. 

The notable contrast with our Tucson back yard is the ratio of lizards to squirrels! In Tucson I rarely saw squirrels (occasionally rock squirrels and round-tailed ground squirrels). But, at least in the warm months, there were always lizards running around (and non-native Mediterranean geckos). Here I have yet to see a lizard, and the squirrels are always around. 

There are four kinds of lizards in Indiana, but three of them only occur in the southern end of the state. Here, in east-central Indiana, there is only one, the American five-lined skink. Time for a skink hunt. 

Future posts will have more on birds, plants, and plans to make the yard and house more sustainable and wildlife friendly, except possibly not more raccoon friendly.