Nature comes surprisingly close

Yesterday a group of four deer strolled through my back yard--two small does and two fawns. The fawns were old enough that they've lost their spots, which seems a little early, but they clearly haven't been through their first winter.

Then this morning, right after I re-filled the bird feeder, I saw what may have been an eastern kingbird, but it came and went (twice) so quickly that I couldn't get a picture. Whatever he was, he's new, and this is the first new species I've noticed since June. Also present this morning were a grackle (who was more interested in suet), a cardinal, two Carolina chickadees, and a tufted titmouse. In the last few days I've also seen a Carolina wren or two, some mourning doves, some finches (I keep going back and forth on whether they're house finches or purple finches), some robins (they never come to the feeder, but I see them in the back yard) and an eastern towhee.

And then just a few minutes ago, a blue-tailed skink came skittering into my office. God knows how he got in here--I suppose it doesn't say much for the quality of the weatherstripping on the front door. Strange--I really don't like snakes at all, even non-poisonous ones, but lizards don't bother me. I saw a big black snake slithering through the short grass a few feet out my back door a few weeks ago, and it's fine with me if he keeps right on going and never comes back.

One more thing about snakes: Cathy tells me that most people have an innate fear of snakes. I was surprised, because I wasn't aware of my own distaste for them until I was in my early twenties, and I know lots of people (adolescent boys, particularly) who seem fascinated by them, but she's usually right about these things. The black snake in my back yard was pretty long--maybe four feet--and the grass was short enough that he was plainly visible as he sped (my Audobon book refers to the species (colubor constrictor) as an Eastern Racer) about three feet away from my bird feeder, which was full of seeds. There are usually three or four birds on the feeder at once, fussing at each other, and more sitting on nearby branches, waiting to fly in and bump somebody else off. There are two squirrels who live in a nearby tree and a chipmunk who dug his burrow about two feet from the base of the feeder. Some of all of them are almost always under the bird feeder, nibbling on seeds the birds have dropped. When the black snake passed by, though, there were no birds at the feeder, no birds on nearby low branches, and no squirrels or chipmunks darting around under the feeder. Everything was quiet. From this I deduce that all of the birds and mammals in my back yard were either the right size for a black snake meal or had nearby offspring that might be, and that the fear of snakes is not only instinctual and innate, but that it crosses species and genera.