by Rae Henneman
Pictured above: striped skunk kits
This spring and summer Schmeeckle was awash with babies! Big and small, we had them all. We had a doubled up family of geese with about 20 goslings combined! Good luck walking past them unscathed. We also had multiple pairs of twin fawns. Having twins is very common among deer as it increases the parents’ chances of passing on their genes, though it does lower the individual fawn’s survivorship rate. For a few weeks we had a full den of skunk kits. Baby skunks can spray as early as a few weeks old. They might be “friend-shaped” but I wouldn’t get close to them. Different species of frogs are young at different times in the year but in mid-late summer there were dozens of young spring peepers on the ground along with toads, gray tree frogs, and wood frogs. Watch your step!
Mallard duckling
Red-bellied woodpecker juvenile
White-tailed deer fawns
Painted turtle hatchling
Canada gosling
Cottontail rabbit kit
Northern cardinal juvenile
American toadlet
Spring peeper froglet