Our Plentiful Wildlife – Rabbits And More Rabbits
June 29, 2017 / /
When you think of wildlife photography, rabbits may not come to your mind. For us, they are everywhere.
The most common threat to them comes from the skies – hawks, owls and eagles. Our coyote pack and our resident bobcat may catch several. Even my dogs have claimed a few who were dumb enough to go inside the fence.
Despite those predators, the rabbit population thrives around the house. I watch them forage for food, play and even battle outside my study windows. Last night, I decided to take the camera outside for a few rabbits photos.
NOTE – Click on any of the photographs to enlarge and start a slide show. Depending on your viewing device, use the arrows below the photographs to scroll on a non-touch screen OR just swipe on a touchscreen.
I just love bunnies!
We have plenty of bunnies here too among some other critters. They can’t get inside our fence. We have a picket fence which was great for our German Shepherd and at the time we put it up our what we call pound hound. We don’t know what breed she was, but we adopted her from the animal shelter. When we got our miniature long haired Dachshund we didn’t want to replace out fence. We put up chicken wire. Before we put up the chicken wire I was always nervous about skunks getting in the back yard and inside the fence area. That never happened, but what did happen is I got up early one morning and let Bruce and Penny out and it was pretty dark. Bruce ran to the fence barking and growling as always. This time something ran away from the outside of the fence. All of a sudden I got this whiff of a smell I have never smelled before. I let him in and omg. My husband got woke up from Bruce going downstairs and he knew what that smell was. If you have never smell skunk spray freshly spayed then you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about. Everybody knows that off in the distance spray and you know for sure that smell. Fresh spray smells like very STRONG chive smell. I am allergic to the smell. We looked up a concoction that would help because I didn’t was to go out and buy 50 big cans of tomato juice. He only got sprayed a little bit, but the corner of my garage got hit pretty bad. I couldn’t go out and sit for a while. I don’t know if you have a lot of skunks where you live, but I’d bet you do. Don’t ever let the dogs any where near them. I’d rather let Ty get the bunnies.
Ever since the coyotes in our neighborhood ‘disappeared,’ the rabbit population soared. Then, tularemia increased. People were warned not to let their dogs kill and or eat rabbits. Living next to a flat topped mountain in the Colorado foothills, we do have the occasional mountain lion and some fox have come back in since the coyotes left. Not enough to control the rabbits though. Raccoons were abundant at one time also, so leptospirosis and canine distemper was a worry. Nature balances itself if people don’t get in the mix.