We get a fair amount of wildlife traffic through our yard. I have posted shots of turkeys, deer and coyotes in the past. It’s time for an update.

Here are some of the deer we have seen lately. First, the does:

That’s a small fig tree between them.

Here is a buck we saw recently.

He was eating the pitifully sparse grass that sprouted after my spring and early summer labors.

This thing flew past my head one night when I took the dogs out.

It’s a cicada. This is an annual cicada. According to the wikipedia article, it has probably been living underground as a nymph for several years. The emergence of this type of cicada is not synchronized like the emergence of the 13-year or 17-year cicadas. It sounded almost like a hummingbird as if flew past my head and landed on the driveway. The dogs were fascinated, especially when it started singing. The cicada song is ubiquitous here, almost a characteristic of the Southern night.

The next passer-by came though a few days ago. Leah called me to the kitchen window to point out what she thought might have been a fawn. I looked out and spent some time trying to identify a fawn in what I saw, and suddenly realized that it wasn’t a fawn at all.

It’s a goat, one of two that escaped from someone down in Texas Valley on August 29. The photo is from the owner’s Facebook post reporting their escape. The goats have been seen several times lately. The latest sighting was Thursday. One of the people I see on Fouche Gap Road on my daily dog walk stopped to tell me about seeing one of them. They are apparently enjoying their freedom, at least for the time. I think they are lucky that coyotes seem not to hunt in packs around here.

Bow hunting season opens on September 8, a date the goats would do well to note.

I mentioned on Wednesday that the day before the dogs and I found a dead armadillo in the road near our driveway, and that later in the day a vulture was chowing down. Wednesday as Leah and I down the driveway for our regular lunch of huevos rancheros and a visit to the grocery store, we found a wake* of vultures feeding on that lone, little armadillo carcass.

They startled at our approach, so I slowed down. A few had flown, thereby becoming a kettle*, but most stayed near the dinner table.

I count at least 15, although I am pretty sure there were more

* “Wake” may or may not be a legitimate term for a group of vultures feeding on the ground. Likewise, kettle may or may not be a real term for a group of vultures in flight. I suspect that most scientists who deal with birds don’t use these terms; I’m pretty sure they would refer to a group of birds on the ground or in flight as a flock.

We see a lot of stuff right at the bottom of our driveway. Lately the muscadines have been falling from the vines by the dozens. There’s a very productive vine right across the street from our driveway. Sam likes them.

There seems to be pretty general agreement that grapes are potentially bad for dogs, so I try to keep him from eating them. He’s quick with the grapes, though.

Tuesday as we walked down the drive for the dogs’ morning constitutional, the three of us (Zeke, Sam and me) saw a fairly large object a few yards up the street from the driveway. I identified it as an armadillo almost immediately; there really isn’t anything else that looks like an armadillo around here. It wasn’t moving, but I couldn’t tell whether it was alive or dead. The dogs lunged and barked, so we turned around.

When we went for our longer walk, I decided to let them sniff it out.

It was definitely recently deceased, but it didn’t have any obvious injuries. It had probably been hit by a car, maybe a glancing blow. The dogs lost interest pretty quickly.

Later in the day it was on the side of the road and had become dinner for a vulture.

I had just taken Zeke down the driveway for a little constitutional before Leah and I left for our regular Wednesday lunch (huevos rancheros, sauves, por favor) and grocery stove visit. We got into the car and started down the drive, and then we saw this.

I wondered where the stick had come from, since there aren’t any trees right there to drop a limb and it wasn’t there when I had just gone by there. Then we got a little closer, and I said, “Whoa, look at that!”

It was a rattle snake, and a good sized one. I got out of the car with my phone to take a better shot.

I didn’t get very close, maybe eight feet. The snake wasn’t coiled, so I doubted that it could strike very far, but I didn’t want to disturb it, and I especially didn’t want to risk a bite. I got back into the car and drove slowly past. It still didn’t move.

What a beautiful creature. It’s holding its rattlers up, but not making any sound.

I have mentioned snakes before, and as I have said, I don’t see venomous snakes around the house. Or I didn’t. This confirmed that they are, indeed, in our yard. From now on I’m going to be a little more careful when I go traipsing blissfully unaware through the tall grass.