Bunnies and Stoats
I was going to actually get a LJ update down about the house, but circumstances this evening have conspired against that. So instead you get a post about the wild animals currently inhabiting my parents garden.
As I have no doubt mentioned before we have had many rabbits inhabit the garden mostly because of the plethora of hiding places all the building related piles of stuff provide. Most of them have been as expected cute when you see them, but nervous and easy to spook. Except for two of them, one is a much older rabbit whose been around a long time and is sometimes quite relaxed and not bothered by our presence in the garden. The other is a very small and very cute bunny, who's practically completing unfazed by our presence; often getting distracted mid-escape by some tasty plant even when we have occasionally spooked it. It's been around for the last couple of weeks or so, and has been a source of extra delight for everyone, especially![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
purplegirl23. The big advantage of it being so relaxed, we've been able to get several photos and the odd video of it, sometimes from only a couple of feet away :)
This evening though we had another visitor, a stoat, one of those creatures which I had never expected to see in the wild, and also much smaller than I'd have imagined. There long and thing and rarely get much bigger than about 30cms, this one was a bit smaller than that. I've managed to get a couple of photos, but as you'll see in the album it had a large area of building stuff to run around and hide in. While it was funny watching it pop up over and over again in different places to see if I was still there before scurrying off someone else very quickly it didn't give me much time to take many good pictures.
The Bunny and Stoat photos can be found here, but I've included a couple of the better ones below the cut, though there are many more pictures of the bunny in the album than the stoat.
( The Bunny Pictures )
( The Stoat Pictures )
Some videos I andpurplegirl23 have recorded of the bunny and a couple of brief ones of the stoat can be found here.
Here's one of the bunny:
Having spotted the stoat again after my Mum's initial sighting I decided to go out with the vague of hoping of scaring the stoat enough to stop it going after the bunny. Now ethically I probably shouldn't have done that, and normally I do tend to side with the predators as success on their part is rarely certain. However considering how cute and more importantly relaxed around us the bunny is (I think I'd have cared less if it had been of the typical run away as soon as we're insight rabbits), and quite probably because I'd recently received two bits of family related bad news and wanted to be able to make a difference in something, I was happy with my decision then. Still happy with the decision now too, though I doubt I'll have made much difference to whether or not the stoat will get the bunny.
As I have no doubt mentioned before we have had many rabbits inhabit the garden mostly because of the plethora of hiding places all the building related piles of stuff provide. Most of them have been as expected cute when you see them, but nervous and easy to spook. Except for two of them, one is a much older rabbit whose been around a long time and is sometimes quite relaxed and not bothered by our presence in the garden. The other is a very small and very cute bunny, who's practically completing unfazed by our presence; often getting distracted mid-escape by some tasty plant even when we have occasionally spooked it. It's been around for the last couple of weeks or so, and has been a source of extra delight for everyone, especially
purplegirl23. The big advantage of it being so relaxed, we've been able to get several photos and the odd video of it, sometimes from only a couple of feet away :)This evening though we had another visitor, a stoat, one of those creatures which I had never expected to see in the wild, and also much smaller than I'd have imagined. There long and thing and rarely get much bigger than about 30cms, this one was a bit smaller than that. I've managed to get a couple of photos, but as you'll see in the album it had a large area of building stuff to run around and hide in. While it was funny watching it pop up over and over again in different places to see if I was still there before scurrying off someone else very quickly it didn't give me much time to take many good pictures.
The Bunny and Stoat photos can be found here, but I've included a couple of the better ones below the cut, though there are many more pictures of the bunny in the album than the stoat.
( The Bunny Pictures )
( The Stoat Pictures )
Some videos I and
purplegirl23 have recorded of the bunny and a couple of brief ones of the stoat can be found here.Here's one of the bunny:
Having spotted the stoat again after my Mum's initial sighting I decided to go out with the vague of hoping of scaring the stoat enough to stop it going after the bunny. Now ethically I probably shouldn't have done that, and normally I do tend to side with the predators as success on their part is rarely certain. However considering how cute and more importantly relaxed around us the bunny is (I think I'd have cared less if it had been of the typical run away as soon as we're insight rabbits), and quite probably because I'd recently received two bits of family related bad news and wanted to be able to make a difference in something, I was happy with my decision then. Still happy with the decision now too, though I doubt I'll have made much difference to whether or not the stoat will get the bunny.