New environment, new animals!

Today we went on two wonderful walks here on Echo Valley Farm, and we saw ten wild turkeys, three whitetail deer and a weasel-like creature. The turkeys were roosting in the trees between the Prairie and Deer Field, and they were scared to the ground by the sound of your stroller wheels breaking the thin crust of snow on the winter rye in the fields. Rather backwards logic, as they are nowhere as safe as in the trees, but hey - maybe that's why we eat them for Thanksgiving! Three young whitetails were furtively skirting the edges of the fields, and bolted when they heard us, but I observed their deep tracks in the not-yet-frozen ground when we passed by the places they had been. And finally, a flash of bushy white tail underneath the bushes and brambles that most likely belonged to a weasel, ferret or marten (recently observed by a local hunter). The winter moon rose over the fields and the clouds hurried home in the last of the pale sunlight, tiptoeing over the tallest bare branches of the trees that guard the creek, cold and flowing and dark.