Bunny Buddies

I grew up in a neighborhood full of squirrels. They were kind of cute, but they were also a nuisance. Fortunately, we now live in a neighborhood where there aren't many squirrels. Every so often, we will see a squirrel and one of us will say "Oh look, there's the neighborhood squirrel!" Sometimes it will be weeks between squirrel sightings. What we do have here is bunnies - Cute little cottontail bunnies. It was the weirdest thing to me the first time I spotted a bunny hopping around outside. A wild bunny was something I had never seen before. To this day, the bunnies outside are kind of a novelty to me, and I love to watch them.

We have a pair of bunnies that likes to hang out in our back yard. They're usually out there for a good part of the day, eating weeds and hopping around. We call one of them "Bunny" and the other one we call "Skittish Bunny". We can get pretty close to Bunny before he hops away, but Skittish Bunny darts away at the first sign of movement. This is Skittish Bunny. He's a little skinnier than Bunny.

This is Bunny. Bunny is the fatter of the pair. Hopefully that doesn't mean we will have more baby bunnies in the yard soon.

Aren't they cute? Despite the gardening challenges (don't plant pansies and petunias!), we are fond of our little friends. They try really hard to help us keep the yard mowed (haha) and they're much cuter than squirrels!

Our Little Boarders

We have some little rooms out back that we rent out. All we ask in return for providing them with a happy home is to just be able to enjoy having them here. Can you see one of our boarders peeking out?

I think there were two or three babies in there at the time I took these pictures. We could only see one or maybe two little heads peeking out at one time, but I'm pretty sure I heard another little guy cheeping from the inside. The babies would peek out and say "cheep cheep" until their parents showed up with a snack. I happened to have my camera handy when the daddy bird showed up.

When one of the parents would show up with a snack, the babies went crazy with their cheeping! The parents fed them, then headed off to find more snacks. In the meantime, the babies would just stick their heads out of the hole and wait. The day I took this last picture, it was over 100 degrees outside, and I felt so bad for them! They would stick their heads out as far as they could and they had their little beaks hanging open. I'm surprised they didn't cook!

This little family has actually moved out since I took these pictures. They are the third sparrow family we have had so far this summer, and we already have another pair of birds moving twigs and scraps into the other house. I'm sure the behavior and antics of this new family will be the same as the other families we have provided homes for, but I will be no less fascinated by them than the birds who have lived here in the past. They are so simple and I have already spent many hours watching them, but they still never fail to entertain me!