Young Raccoons

The female raccoon has finally brought her young ones out into the open.

Earlier in the week, I got this shot of her visiting the feeder for sunflower seeds.  She was obviously still nursing her young.  Her daylight visits to the feeder have been a regular event during the past few weeks.  She has also cleaned up any organic scraps that we’ve thrown into the field and one morning I found her dining on a freshly killed Wild Turkey hen.  The hen frequently slept in the yard near the feeder and often remained asleep as I walked past on my way to the barn.  I think she was just old.  She showed no signs of disease and reminded me of pet poultry I had raised that had lived long enough to die of old age.  This was just a classic example of what happens to the weak and infirm in the wild.

Here's Mom with her four youngsters.  That’s about average for a raccoon litter.

She fled when she spotted me peeking at them from around the corner of the house.

The little ones headed for the tree.

Unfortunately, instead of going up the stout trunk of the dead Silver Maple, they chose a spindly Black Walnut sapling.

If they were capable of such emotions, embarrassment would have been top of the list when their tree bent right into the face of the thing they were trying to avoid.

Eventually they got themselves sorted out, so they were at least in an upright position.

Then they began to explore for a possible escape route.

A more mature Raccoon would have been showing signs of fear and aggression.  The youngsters just kept trying to perform their instinctual behavior.

I finally left them to sort themselves out and reconnect with their mother.  Later in the evening I saw the whole family cross the backyard to visit one of the shallow containers of water set out for the birds.

A Camera Critters submision.