My hubby and I live in the middle of 3 acres in a Missouri woodland west of St. Louis. This home site has given us a great opportunity to observe many of the areas critters. Our backyard is always hopping with activity all year long. We provide feeding stations and water, the natural woodland provides shelter for our backyard habitat. Our feeding stations cater to the bird population from the smallest finch to the turkey. We have one feeding station that now is drawing a big crowd. We ground feed with cracked corn in the winter months. This attracts the Cardinals, Blue jays, Doves, Squirrels and Turkey to name a few. But the main attraction arrives in the late afternoon/early evening when a group of 1 to 3 deer arrive. There is usually 2 large deer and 1 smaller. They will enjoy the corn undisturbed for quite a while. The snows have made them stay longer at the diner, but we can count on "the girls" arriving every evening. Last night was an exception. As usual "the girls" showed up at the usual time and we are able to watch them as we prepare our own evening meal. But, as night was falling and the "the girls" were becoming shadows, my hubby calls out that more were coming out of the woods. We had so many it was hard to count, at our best we could see 9 deer showing up at the diner for a meal. There were 6 eating at one time. This is the first time we have had so many at one time in the yard. I'm sure the snows are bringing them out or maybe they hear there was good eating at the diner. Today we are going to create a few more feeding stations for the corn---so everyone one can have a spot. I just looked outside and the corn is gone--I have a feeling we also had night visitors.
