A Walk Through Moonwood

Wild Baby Bunnies - 19 days old

roo — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:12:42 +0000

My husband tapped urgently on the window last night while he was mowing the lawn in the backyard. ‘Baby bunnies!’ he shouted at us as we looked out. I grabbed my camera and sure enough, here they were :) It appears that they are still living in various parts of our garden. We spotted three last night, not sure where the other two are hiding out, the photographs below are of the same bunny:

Wild Baby Bunnies - 15 days old

roo — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:58:14 +0000

When I went out last night to see the bunnies, they were out of the nest. In fact, they were all sitting on top of it and around the small garden statues I had placed there containing timothy hay and water. Although they did not run from me, it was obvious that they were now ‘grown up’ and ready to go into the world, small as they are. I snapped a couple of pictures, but had a feeling that they would not remain here much longer.

And I was right. This morning, the bunnies had departed and left the nest empty. I’ll still leave the table out for a while, and hay and fresh water, in case they need to come back and feel safe. Jesse will be disappointed when I tell them that the bunnies are gone.

The last photos:

Wild Baby Bunnies - 12 days old

roo — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:39:14 +0000

Here are the bunnies at 12 days old, I took these the evening before last. As soon as I put them on the towel , one little bunny (the fiestiest of them all!) took off at full speed across the lawn and towards the road, where s/he stopped and waited by the mailbox. I managed to recapture it and bring it back to its siblings, but boy, that one sure is fiesty! They were all a little jumpy as a matter of fact, not sure why, I thought at the time that perhaps their natural instincts were kicking in and this was the point where really, all the cuddling was over.

Last night, by the time I got home it was too dark to photograph them, but I did go out to check on them, and as soon as I lifted the grass they came to greet me, which was a surprise. There was no jumpiness, no fiestiness (even ‘Fiest’ was nice and relaxed). I will check on them again this morning because I noticed that at 9pm last night mamma had not fed them yet, which was strange.

Wild Baby Bunnies - 11 days old

roo — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 02:19:52 +0000

The gentleman next door has bought himself a wonderful ride on mower… he loves to mow everybody’s grass, so today when I heard him driving around my front yard, of course I was concerned about the bunnies with the loud noise, and perhaps they would be scared enough to leave the nest and run right under the blades in their terror. I got a bowl, put one of Jesse’s sweaters in there, and took the bunnies from their nest. They stayed in the basement until the mowing was finished, then I returned them right away. All of them were sound asleep as I moved them back into their shallow hole in the ground.

We photographed them this evening at around 8pm, and I noticed that all the bunnies are very active and inquisitive, except for one little one that stays back and looks quite sad and forlorn. This particular one is one of the larger ones, so it’s not the runt of the litter. Looking back over the past couple of days’ photos, I can see that this little one was already looking like that then, I just hadn’t noticed it while all the bunnies were inactive. Hopefully it’ll be alright, we’ll know soon enough.

Wild Baby Bunnies - 10 days old

roo — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:44:36 +0000

The bunnies, now that their eyes are open, are EXTRA bouncy, and are able to hop straight into the air at great heights in reaction to being startled. So to keep them safe during photographing I set them on a towel rather than run the risk of one of them jumping out of our hands suddenly and plunging to the ground. My husband came out today to help as we were in a great hurry - the afternoon had been rushed, dinner already cooked, it had been raining quite a bit, and it was quite late, so we wanted to make it a quick photo session. The bunnies however, were very aware that there was a ’strange’ person there. They are able to raise their ears into the air now, and have a lot more head control, they are beginning to walk now, rather than push themselves along like seals. Soon they will be venturing out of the nest by themselves and I’ll need to worry about predators.

Wild Baby Bunnies - 9 days old

roo — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:45:43 +0000

Notice anything???? Look closely

Wild Baby Bunnies - 8 days old

roo — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:44:25 +0000

There was much rain today, so around noon Jesse and I raced outside to place a small pastic table over the nest so that the babies would not get flooded out in case of a downpour, which is what we were expecting for much of the remainder of the day. I peeked briefly under the pile of grass and saw that their mother had come to visit them late today, for they all had just been fed and were sound asleep in a pile.

The table worked really well! Inspecting the nest half an hour or so ago everyone was warm and dry, and again with full bellies… mom must have checked on them early today, darting in and out between rain showers. You can see in the first picture that baby has a rounded belly - this indicates a recent meal of milk. In the previous photographs they look long and skinny, as those had been taken before their mother made her daily dusk rounds.

The babies are developing nicely, their fur is fully in now, even under their tails, and it won’t be long now before they’ll start opening their eyes. Once they start wondering from the nest it is going to be so much fun to watch them play!

Wild Bunnies - 7 days old

roo — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 23:03:20 +0000

Wild Bunnies - 6 days old

roo — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:34:20 +0000

Yesterday I discovered a nest of wild cotton tail baby bunnies in my garden while pulling weeds and trimming a tree. It’s a miracle I did not step on them! After the initial ‘oh no!’ and worrying that momma bunny would be so upset by the weeds gone and therefore a lot of the shelter of the nest that she would not return to feed her babies, I did some research. It turns out that wild rabbits are not put off by human scent, in fact it is even possible to move the nest a few feet and mom would be quite happy about that.

This morning I checked on the babies and dug a couple out so that I could determine how many there were and if mom had fed them during the night. There were 5 bunnies in the nest, all with rounded bellies which meant mom had fed them very recently. I covered the nest back up and decided to return in the evening to take photographs once it was a little cooler. I also dug through my photos of Sienna’s litter back in 2008 to determine how old these babies were:

I was able to see that the wild bunnies are 5 days old. Sienna’s babies are Satin Angoras which means they have much larger muzzles, but the likeness is obvious.

This evening I returned with my son Jesse to look at the bunnies and photograph them. Mom had not fed them yet. I noticed that the late afternoon sun is hitting the nest directly, so I placed a log and planter to cast shade on the bunnies. Temps today were around 95 degrees, so direct sun, even the late afternoon one, can be devastatingly hot. I’ll keep a photo log of the bunnies as they grow, I think it will be a lot of fun, especially if they grow up to be relatively tame.

Tonight’s photographs:

Alpacas with heart

roo — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:06:30 +0000

Unreal and the two young males that Pam brought back from the AlpacaRosa have been quarantined in a pen in the barn since their return, to ensure that nobody was introducing unwanted parasites to the rest of the herd. Their fecals revealed nothing of interest, so they were released from the pen to join the other juveniles. What a joy it was to watch them run and pronk with excitement, happy to feel the grass under their feet and the wind in their ‘hair’.

When Serious was in ICU at the vet recently, and we had to reintroduce him to his mother Mazara who I brought as his companion, I was struck with how highly emotional alpacas truly are. He was so relieved, so surprised, so comforted, when I led her into the stable where he was cushed, depressed, in a corner. They hadn’t seen each other in months, and yet they immediately resumed their roles as mother and child.

The way in which Unreal and his new friends behaved when released from the pen was also a display of emotion, one of pure happiness and excitement. When observed closely, and in many different situations, it becomes very clear that alpacas are delicately balanced creatures, who absolutely thrive only when herd relationships are maintained.

In another pasture, 4 of my girls were grazing together. My intention was to get some ‘belly’ photos of Penelope, but I got sidetracked because I wanted to take in the peace of of their private little herd, and because I can’t help but be impressed by the amount of fiber that Arabella is carrying around. After they posed for some pictures, they dismissed my presence as thought I wasn’t even there. Just the way it should be.