Silver Creek Habitat

WHAT ANIMALS LIVE AT SILVER CREEK HABITAT? We have observed black bear, white-tailed deer, both red and grey foxes, racoons, hedgehogs, woodchucks, rabbits, ducks, red, gray & black squirrels, chipmunks, field mice, variuos species of snakes, frogs & turtles, bats, red-tail hawks, great horned owls, peregrine falcons, blue herons, turkeys, chickidees, tit-mice, ruby-throated hummingbirds, blue jays, cardinals, blue birds, robins, gold finches, purple finches, indigo buntings, cat birds, rose-breasted grosbeaks, red-winged blackbirds, baltimore orioles, pileated, red-bellied, downy & hairy woodpeckers, and many, many more. Many of these animals have at one time or another called Silver Creek Habitat their home.	This large black bear decided to drop by and visit us on a Memorial Day weekend. I was trying to take a picture of a few wild turkeys when there was a strange blur in my camera lens. I kept re-focusing the camera lens until the blur went away. The blur turned out to be this bear emerging from the trees right in front of me! This photo appeared in the local newspapers and on Channel 40 News. Our most recent sighting was awhile back as "Momma Bear" did some last minute shopping for her cubs...at our bird feeders! Oh well...that's the way the suet crumbles...
This is a small grouping of bird photos taken here at SCH. We see these...and many, many more most every day.	This is "Woody" stopping to take a closer look at me. We never see Woody in the winter. Every spring, however, Woody shows up like clockwork to make babies in our woodchuck's den. The den was built by the woodchucks under a couple large boulders in our front yard. In the early evening all the woodchucks love to come out of the den and eat all of Linda's beautiful plants she has cared for throughout the season!
This is one of our furry friends making use of a hollow log in our old cow-pen. It is a young grey fox.	This is a mother "snapping" turtle. She passes through SCH every spring. She comes up-stream to where she was born, lays her eggs, then returns back down-stream to where she normally lives. This annual ritual takes place durring the first 3-day period of warm weather in the spring.
These two guys found a short-cut up to their tree house. Perhaps the elevator was full?	WHERE DO OUR WILD ANIMALS LIVE? Some of the deer sleep behind the stone walls of an old "cow-pen". Many of the rabbits sleep inside the same stone walls, as do many of the chipmunks and other small "critters". Our local ground-hogs sleep in a nest they built in the ground under one of our boulders. Some of our birds sleep in bird houses while other birds choose to make their nests in large brush-piles. We also have bat-houses up in the trees for our bats. (These bats are a great way to control mesquitoes!) Sometimes we have turkeys and racoons sleeping in our trees. We also have dens where foxes and other animals live from time to time. We also have various four-legged guests spending the night in a few of our hollow tree-trunks. All these animals are wild and are free to come and go as they please. We do not encourage nor discourage animals from visiting the habitat. We do tend to "accomodate" those animals who do visit...temporarily! We never attempt to make pets or have physical contact with ANY wild animal. If you should happen across an injured animal you should notify your local Police Department or Animal Control Officer right away!