Any time is feeding time

Look up and out our living room window just about any time of day now and you can see birds and deer checking out the food situation.  Back in the late fall the deet might only show up after dark, but our motion lights let us know when they were out there.  Now that it is so cold and I'm sure food sources are getting pretty slim in the forest, we aren't surprised to see deer anytime during the day.

Today the deer are especially happy because Leann put out some old apples that went bad on us.  Usually we feed them shelled corn and sunflower seeds.  Since they fight when they get crowded too close to each other, we have to make several little patches of food so it's not just the one we call "Bully" that gets all the good stuff.  While they don't have many distinguishing features, there is one we call "Mouse Ears" because she looks like her ear tips maybe were frozen once, so now they look little and rounded.  She often comes around with a smaller doe who may have been her baby last season.

While we were talking about the deer with guests recently, we realized that the fawns will be born in late May or June (just 3 months away!), so these does are probably all carrying babies.  It's a hard winter for them with the snow being so deep to walk through and the challenges of the extreme cold.  Are we up to 65 days with temperatures below zero?  And more to come.

I guess we can't stop feeding the deer yet.  Or the birds!