Back in June, two fawns managed to wedge themselves into a wooden picket fence on a neighbor’s property at Six Mile Lake.

Their frantic bleats at being trapped caught my attention. Luckily for them, local residents Lee and Chad Tregillis were available that day and managed to quickly free them.

But as the fawns went scrambling into the woods after their mom, I had no indication how this ultimately played out.

Especially one that had visible and deep facial wounds, though healed enough to show it had happened before the fence episode.

Having ESCAPED A picket fence predicament in June, a young buck is now a regular bird feeder visitor at Six Mile Lake.

Predators abound out here to take advantage of any weakness. And it’s uncertain whether such major wounds would fester.

But what happened to the fawns has been answered now. A little buck, now with button bumps on its brow, has regularly shown up at our bird feeders this fall, taking advantage of the black oil sunflower seeds.

It has white marks on its face that align with what the wounded fawn had five months ago.

The other fawn, which appears to be female, often comes with him as well, so both have managed to thrive.

Some of the animal stories at Six Mile Lake don’t have a final resolution but are left to speculation on the outcome. The late-season fawn in the winter of 2022-23, for example, was easy enough to distinguish early on — smaller, with a shorter face than the other young deer — but eventually grew to a point by the end of winter that I really couldn’t be certain.

Clouded sulphurs can linger long into the fall, even in the Upper Peninsula.

So it’s great to have one that, for now at least, will sport markings that make clear he’s still around and hanging in despite the obstacles in his life so far.

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November means we’ve reached the point when the insect life has grown thin. Flies and a few autumn meadowhawk dragonflies — they can endure even the first freezes if the day warms up enough — plus the last of the wasps and Asian lady beetles still searching for a site to take shelter for the winter. That’s why they’re drawn to windows and siding, looking for cracks they can squeeze into to hibernate, which for insects is called diapause.

Most of the butterflies that overwinter as adults already have disappeared, tucked away in cracks in rocks or tree bark, or under leaf litter.

But one butterfly species still was flying around at least as late as last week: the clouded sulphur. It was foraging among the few late dandelions still blooming in the yard.

Unlike mourning cloaks and tortoiseshells, clouded sulphurs don’t hibernate but still can linger long into the fall, even this far north.

These are the pale yellow butterflies that can be seen in great numbers in open fields that have flowering plants, according to the Wisconsin Butterflies website, https://wisconsinbutterflies.org/butterfly/species/15-clouded-sulphur.

It favors the pea family, which includes alfalfa and white clover, as host species for its caterpillars and will have several broods during a summer, according to online sources. The last batch of caterpillars are the ones that will hibernate through the winter to start the next year’s broods.

Wisconsin Butterflies has reports of clouded sulphurs downstate that extend into mid-November; one was seen in Milwaukee County in 2020 in early December.

In our region, they’re unlikely to be around much longer, if not already gone. But if you catch sight of something fluttering by, now you know what it is.

Betsy Bloom can be reached at 906-774-2772, ext. 240, or bbloom@ironmountaindailynews.com.