Patty, those Owls are really special!! Hawks have made a huge comeback here, but I don't remember seeing any Owls ever!!
Deer? Now those are nowadays living down the road around the local bike bath and I hear just nearby in an abandoned lot and every so often wander into our yard. A couple of months ago I spotted 4 of them just camping out!
I took these pictures on different occasions from the back room window. They are gorgeous animals, but now we placed netting over our young Elderberry and Bushes on the other side of the yard. (And I don't look forwards to check for Ticks coming in from my backyard. )
My husband found two nice antlers in early Spring in our local woods, I am thinking of mounting an Orchid to them.
Now talking about Bats - that is a really very sad thing about them. At our place in NE Pennsylvania we always saw Bats!! Lots of them. Now when we bought the place more than 30 years ago, we found Bats living in the attic. We closed them off from the house at the time and a few years later we needed a new roof and we had to evict them.
They moved!! Right between the aluminum siding and house wall. They didn't get into the house and all was fine. We watched them coming out at sundown, which was most interesting - they came out in groups of several bats at the time, emerging in full flight !! through the smallest crack on the house wall between chimney and siding.
I tried so many times to record this, but I struck out. Not enough light at sundown and movement proved too difficult for my camera then.
Now a few years ago most of the Bats in our area died due to a disease/called White Nose Syndrome. It seems Bats woke up during the Winter from hibernation and perished outside from the cold.
We were so sorry when we realized "our" Bats were amongst those which died. We still miss them. It was really interesting to watch them come out in the evening, they would fly so low you could see them really up close.
We hear they are making a comeback, they were seen south of us in Pennsy. Here in NJ my son lives ca 15 miles north of us, we do see them coming out over his place on Summer evenings.
