Credit for this one goes to The Girlfriend, a discovery made while she was distributing the thrice-daily ration of corn for the various critters that come to partake; we now have (at least) two more:
But we’re not letting it go at that, because I have still images too.
When she came to get me, I knew the camera and long lens was still affixed to the tripod in the upstairs bathroom vantage spot, plus she hadn’t told me what I was coming out for, so I didn’t have the camera in hand. Thus, I had to immediately turn around and trot down to Deep 13 to grab the memory card, then up two flights of stairs to snag the camera, then back down and out the back door to get the shots; there was every reason to believe the nutrias would be gone by then. They were quite complacent, however, and I was able to keep firing off frames as I stepped closer. I couldn’t say that I ‘crept’ closer because I was well out in plain sight with no cover, so I just moved slowly. They didn’t seem to notice or care much.
In fact, they were generous enough to pose nicely and the light angle was great, this being about 2:30 PM. You can look at the corn for a rough sense of scale, but they were about rabbit-sized, or 1/4-1/3 the size of the adults.
I was less than ten meters off when one of them spooked just a little and hopped off about two meters, then paused and resumed eating. This was the one that stayed put, faintly cautious but nothing more. I don’t know if I can put this down to being mellow around people, or habituated by one of the neighbors that also puts down food, or simply bad eyesight, but I’m cool with it regardless.
This was the one that had skipped off just a wee bit, and you can see an apparent difference in the color cast of its coat, just like the adults. The larger adult is slightly golden too, and I’m surmising that’s the male, so is this a gender trait or simply random genetics? Can’t say, but since I’d dubbed the gold adult ‘Itchy,’ this one became ‘Itchy Junior’ when The Girlfriend asked me which one was visiting the next day (in the video,) causing her to snort out the water she was drinking. Maybe at some point I’ll dig through the thesaurus for synonyms for ‘itch’ or ‘scratch,’ for baby names. Feel free to suggest some.
But yeah, this is definitely a cool piece of property. We lucked out big time.