Strangers in the Night

We've always known that we have a plethora of nocturnal neighbors roaming the park. But for the most part have only caught glimpses of some of them on the rare occasion that we catch them in our headlights as we're pulling into the park after dark. Recently, however, Harvey and Luna have been regularly waking us up in the middle of the night with the very pleasant sound of a flurry of barking and jumping up at the bedroom window. Every time it happens I jump up to peek outside and try to see who they're so excited about. Well, by the time they get done with their ruckus whatever was outside the window is long gone, so I never got a good opportunity to see anything. Well, last night Sonja and I beat the dogs to the punch and caught a glimpse of not one but two different nighttime visitors.

This pack/herd/pod of javelinas also included a cute little baby, but once I started flashing pictures of them they kept the little one out of sight. You can quite clearly see the "collar" marking on their shoulders, hence their other name: collared peccaries.

About an hour later I heard more scuffling outside and thought the javelinas had come back. So, I stuck my head out the window (I had removed the screen the day before) and was surprised to see this chubby little fuzzball scruffling around in the dirt not more than five feet under my head. When I first saw it I was hoping it was actually one of the hog-nosed skunks I'd seen along the ditch. But that black stripe down its back identifies it as a more common striped skunk.

We've also caught glimpses of a smallish racoon, but have yet to capture it on film. I'm still hoping to try to rig up the birdcam to do this for me...so I don't have to stick my head out the window with my good camera leaning over a skunk.