Circle of Life

This past Tuesday Ryan and I came home and noticed that our only male Cayuga duck was missing from the flock. We were upset to lose him because he was one of our first birds and the mate of our favorite female Cayuga. The saddest part of the whole saga is that his mate has continued to call out for him the entire week. She runs around a little crazily looking and calling for him every time we let the birds out of the coop, which just breaks my heart.

Two nights ago Ryan noticed that a group of mammals were grouped at the back of our yard. From a distance we couldn't tell if they were baby raccoons, opossums or cats. As we walked closer we could tell they were baby red foxes!

Red foxes are ubiquitous in New Hampshire, but this is the first time we've had the luxury of watching a wild family of dogs. So every night since then we've been keeping an eye on the new pack watching them play, hunt, and be wild. Here's the youtube video I uploaded today capturing some of their cuteness: http://youtu.be/Op-L0yDygZI I counted six pups. And the mom and dad come around every evening. The adults are much more secretive so its hard to snap a picture of them. Once they see us they tend to drop what ever they're doing which is usually eating (usually a rodent or bird...not ours luckily) and hide in the woods till we walk away. Of course, we keep our distance from all of these animals because they are wild. And other than the first bird they snagged, we have not left any food outside for them to enjoy. They are truly wild, but their den is in a perfect location for us to keep an eye on them.

Because we like our new neighbors, but recognize there can be a bit of tension between hungry foxes and well-fed outdoor ducks and birds, we are building a rather extensive coop enclosure so that our birds can go outside without becoming our neighbors' dinner. We're still trying to figure out the optimum design...thanks in part to Ryan's meticulous calculations of not only the dimensions of the materials we need, but also whether or not the materials will fit in our cars :) ...so it might be a few weeks until we finish constructing the new coop addition and the birds can roam freely again. For now they only come out with supervision, by either myself, Ryan or our dogs.

It is sad for both Ryan and I as well as the female duck that our male Cayuga is gone, but we are quite excited to have new four legged neighbors that are cute and fun to watch. Plus, it's kind of cool that we provided them with their "welcome to the neighborhood" dinner.