Mrs Walles and I were looking out the window the other day when we suddenly spotted something different in the trees at the top of our back yard - a groundhog! This is, amazingly, the first one that I've seen this season. It's not as if they are uncommon, and we have even passed several on the side of the road in the car, with me missing them each time. We've since seen this groundhog several times, though not as close as that first day.
It seems likely that it is the same one we saw last summer, since its feeding in the same places. It
is smaller than the one last year, but possibly that's because groundhogs hibernate, so they look smaller in the spring when they emerge compared to the autumn when they settle with a good supply of excess body mass to tide them over the winter.
Groundhogs are quiet little critters and they are built like tanks so that not much worries them. Even so, they have a habit of keeping an eye out while feeding by rasing their head every few seconds to see what's going on around them.
This one wasn't too concerned by us even when we went outside to take its picture. We were probably too far away to be perceived as a threat.
These are the best photos of our new neighbour that I have at the moment. I'm hoping it will come closer as time goes by and if I get some better pictures I'll post them here.
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