When we moved to Clatskanie in the summer of 2023 (more about this here), we knew that moving out into the country meant seeing the occasional critter, but we never imagined just how much that was the case!
At first I assumed that my manic photography of the many critters crossing our land was a newbie reaction, probably amusing to our neighbors. But even neighbors who have lived in the area all their lives have their favorite collection of critter-pics on their phones.
Even when we don’t see the critters, we sometimes hear the owls and coyotes, and of course they leave evidence of themselves in the snow:
This post will serve as my place to share my favorite pics and videos of the many critters who visit us here, including the deer, elk, squirrels, birds, and coyote. (Clicking these links will jump you to that spot in this post.)
The deer
There are plenty of deer around, as our land seems to be right in the path of their normal traffic pattern.
Here are some visitor as seen from our dining table (and showing the damn fence that we later removed).
About 18 months into living here, we saw just how much the herd waxes and wanes. In our first months here we saw as many as 13 deer at a time, although usually more like six to eight. But in the following year I didn’t see more than six at a time.
On many afternoons in the summer we can see a handful of deer napping under the trees at the edge of our property.
When we moved in it was shortly before the local herd expanded. One day we were walking in the area between our two acres and came upon this little guy hiding in the clover under a tree.
In our first year we saw only females, but in the second year there was a young buck with the herd. Here he is in a neighbors yard, seeming to pose dramatically for the camera:
In late summer we saw him in the yard struggling with having gotten a large blackberry bramble stuck in his antlers.
Here’s a video of the poor guy with his blackberry bramble, and a young fawn who seemed to be very entertained (or confused?) by it.
While the folks in the neighborhood don’t generally feed the critters (other than bird feeders here and there), some of us do feed the deer a bit, but only in the winter. Here’s a video of some deer in the back yard taking care of the last of my feed at the end of last winter. In this video it is nice to see how easily they jump over fences, and it’s interesting to see how dominant and even mean some of the females can be
One of the deer in our local herd has a problem with her front right leg. I’m surprised she has lived as long as she has. One of my neighbors, thinking it a shame that everyone referred to her as “the lame deer,” named this deer Bianca.
Here’s a link to a video of another limping deer in our herd, but she wasn’t around for long.
It’s especially fun to see the fawns.
This poor fawn was happily staying by his mother’s side when she jumped over a fence and left it behind, then the poor thing tried to join her. I don’t know how he eventually got there.
The elk
Many of the neighbors had told us about the elk, but it was a long time before we saw them. One morning, knowing I was anxious to see them, a neighbor texted me saying “There are elk in your back yard!” I ran into the yard, but didn’t see them anywhere—until I looked up to the hill behind our house, and there they were.
These animals are impressively large, yet are very skittish around humans (I assume as they are often targets for hunters). Here’s a very short video of the elk leaving the hill when they spotted me.
The squirrels and chipmunks
We hear these guys more than we see them. The squirrels up in the trees call out “Pew! Pew!,” like little kids pretending to be shooting guns. The chipmunks are especially shy, even of the local birds. They are very amusing to watch as they take a leap with each step across the grass
Here’s a video of a squirrel enjoying the bird feeder, much to the chagrin of the birds:
The birds
I would never consider myself to be an actual birder, but I admit I’ve really been enjoying noting the many species of birds that we’ve seen here.
While they never land at our place, we get to see cranes flying overhead:
Most of our experience of the owls is occasionally hearing them, but we’ve seen them a few times:
We have seen exactly one pheasant:
And here’s a pic Dave took of a Northern Flicker:
I will return here to post some of my favorites among the hundreds of photos we’ve taken of the birds, but in the meantime, below is a video we posted on YouTube of our bird feeder taken over just two days last summer. Over those two days we saw 11 different species of birds (the ones marked with an asterisk are not in the video). These are:
- Black-headed Grosbeak
- Evening Grosbeak
- Steller’s Jay
- American Goldfinch
- Red-winged Blackbird*
- Brown-headed Cowbird
- Mourning Dove*
- Canada Jay*
- Rock Pigeon
- Northern Flicker*
- … and one other that I haven’t yet identified*
And here’s a short video of robins taking a bath in the little stream that goes across our front yard:
The coyote
We hear the coyotes sometimes at night from the hill behind our place. One day in the autumn of 2024, one of them got much bolder and gave us our first (of very few) actual sightings. The coyotes I’ve seen in the past, in Arizona, were much smaller and more gray than this—to the extent that at first I wondered if this was a wolf!
Here’s a short video of a coyote trying and failing to find a way to sit comfortably on some of the junk on the hill behind our place.