Stunning!

April 23, 2018April 23, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Earlier today, while in my office, I heard a loud bang on a window somewhere. Going to check, the girls, who were in the kitchen, were also wondering what the noise was. We’ve had many birds hitting our windows lately, and that seemed likely, but never this loud!

So I went outside to check. Sure enough, I found a stunned bird on the ground, outside the dining room window.

When I first picked it up, it was panting and groggy.

After a while, it was doing better, but still stayed in my hand. Happily, it did not seem to be injured.

I waited a while, then put it near a tree branch, but it still stayed in my hand.

So I sat on the steps at our front door (which, I’ve discovered, we cannot open. The inside door opens, but the outside screen door is stuck, as if painted shut. My brother had removed it to fix it, and it had been working fine in the fall!) and waited.

As I sat, Rolando Moon came by, curious, but not curious enough to climb the steps. Instead, she moved to the corner of the house and settled in.

Eventually, the bird flew into one of the bushes.

It still stayed for a while before moving to another branch, then continued to hang out for a while before finally leaving.

As I was still sitting with it, however, I saw out of the corner of my eye, Rolando Moon suddenly spin around, pounce on something, then run off with something in its mouth.

After the bird went into the tree, I went around the house to see, thinking Rolando Moon had maybe caught a rodent.

I was wrong. It was another bird.

I now wonder if there had been a second stunned bird that I did not notice before, because of how close it was to the house.

Now I’m torn between happy that we saved the one bird, but sad that we lots another at the same time.

I had taken a bunch of short videos and have put them together in a playlist.

I hope you enjoy them. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Birds, Birds, Birds!

April 22, 2018April 22, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 6 Comments

Well, today has definitely been a day of the birds!

From what I’ve been able to find, the “new” birds are dark eyed juncos. They would be returning from overwintering elsewhere. There were only a few yesterday, but today, there was tonnes! I now realize that we did see them last year. I had just not been able to look at them so closely at the time. But I definitely remember seeing this…

(I don’t know why the video quality is so bad after uploading it to YouTube!)

There were masses of juncos and redpolls swooping in and out, with many, many bounces off the windows. Even the dining room window was getting hits.

We are starting to see a lot more of the male redpolls now, too.

Of course, all that activity attracted a watcher…

Trüllbus wasn’t able to do much more than watch from the lilac bush, though! LOL

Love how my daughter caught this redpoll, peeking at her through the twigs. He looks angry! :-D

From what I could find, there is quite a variety of juncos, but it does look like these are dark eye juncos, and the lighter coloured ones are the females. The one in the photo above would be a male.

At one point, as I stood near the window, something startled them and the whole flock took off. Three or four of them bounced off the window, right in front of me. After they were gone, I realized that one had been left behind.

At first, from inside the house, I wasn’t even sure if was a bird or if it was some darker foliage. After a while, though, I could see the beak. Ever so slowly, the beak opened, and stayed open. Eventually, I decided to go out and check on it. When I got close, it was aware enough to watch me, and even start to move a bit. I was able to pick it up, though, and then it flew away from my hand. No injuries.

Besides the birds, some deer did make a showing when my husband was up bright and early, but I have not seen any since. I’m hoping some will show up this evening.

The Re-Farmer

New Birds today!

April 21, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Another sick day for me today, so not much accomplished! My husband put out the food and water for the animals outside this morning. Now that the snow is pretty much gone and the risk of falling is reduced, he wants to do that more often, as the pain allows. He informed me that we were now out of deer feed and almost out of cat kibble, which meant another trip into town – our own hamlet for the deer feed, then the next town over for the cat kibble. We can get the kibble locally, but the brand they carry is something even the outside cats don’t like. I don’t mind going farther afield. It gives my younger daughter and I a chance to play Pokemon Go for at least long enough to get some achievements in the game. Still, I look forward to when I’m not the only one with a valid driver’s license!

When we got home, I pulled up near the house to make it easier to unload the bags, then we took advantage of the situation to clean up the garbage and recycling (yes, I keep recycling bags for sorting in our van, too! :-D ), refill the cooler we use to keep water bottles (that came in REALLY handy when we had to keep adding coolant the day the hose broke) and reorganize things a bit. So the back of the van is now all open and ready for when we do our monthly bulk shopping.

It didn’t take much to clean up the van, yet it was enough to wipe me out. I may be feeling a bit better, but wow, am I running out of energy fast. By the time we were done, I had broken into a sweat and my chest was on fire. Ugh.

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate that the girls are with us to keep things going when I’m out of commission? Well, even if I have, it’s worth saying again. I so appreciate that they chose to stay with us. They didn’t have to move out here. They could have stayed behind and done their own thing. Instead, they chose to stay and help us.

I am so blessed to have such amazing daughters.

Who also happen to be good cooks. Supper is smelling so good!

On the wildlife front, once again, we had very few deer visits. My husband had to get up insanely early, when it got too painful to be lying down, so he was there to see a couple in the wee hours. We didn’t see more again until about 7pm. I had hoped all our regulars would keep coming back; I really wanted to see how the antlers on the young males are coming in. Hopefully, we’ll still get visits from them.

The squirrels are chasing each other all over the place, but only one seemed at all interested in the seeds.

I love those little paws!

We also got a new type of bird today!

There was only one of this greyer one. The rest were much darker.

I’ve gone looking through my bird book, and there’s nothing quite like them in there.

There were quite a few of the darker ones. They are slightly larger than the redpolls. Their behavior is also more… sedate, shall we say. They seem downright chill, compared to the non-stop motion of the redpolls, chickadees and grosbeaks.

If anyone knows what they might be, please let me know in the comments! I’d love to know what they are.

Then Hungry Girl and Barbecue showed up.

At first, it was just Barbecue on her own, then Hungry Girl came trotting in from behind the house. She was much more antsy, though.

It didn’t take long before she took off into the garden area and stayed away, though I did see her grazing on the far side of the garden for a while.

Barbecue ran off, too, then came back for a bit, before finally taking off for good.

I noticed something interesting as they were leaving.

As the more shaded areas of snow slowly melt, we now have a kind of long, narrow “river” of melt water running across the opening to the garden, and then a bit past the spruce grove. After that, it’s still ice and snow, where it only gets sunlight for a short time in the mornings.

Both Hungry Girl and Barbecue carefully skirted around the water, to where it was still ice and snow, then cut across to the row of apple trees and into the garden. Going through the water would have been much shorter and faster, but I guess even deer feet don’t like getting cold and wet, if they can avoid it! :-D

I look forward to seeing who shows up outside our window, tomorrow. :-)

The Re-Farmer

Snoozing

April 4, 2018April 4, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

After our vehicle troubles yesterday, I’d intended to stay close to him today. I had to go to the post office before noon, and that was the only thing on my list that required driving.

I ended up out three times today, first to pick up the mail, next to pick up prescriptions, and finally to get a few more groceries. I tried a different town this time; one I haven’t been to in probably 2 decades. It’s a half hour drive away, and I was hoping it would be more of a stocking up sort of place. I was wrong. Ah, well. Live and learn. It did give me a chance to test the vehicle out – and be totally paranoid, constantly checking the gauges and the heat, and listening for any unusual noises.

No signs of any leaks. I checked under the van in the garage, to see if there was a sign of puddling that I’d missed before, but the ground (the garage is just over packed dirt) has had so many spills over the years, I couldn’t tell if what I did see was old or new. Since I was in and out so many times, though, I could compare from within the day, and there is no sign of any leaks.

Of course, I’m still going to be paranoid!

For now, I get to share adorable photos with you. I give you…

Sleepy kitties!

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Nasty Crime Boy was back in what seems to be a favourite spot, causing us to spontaneously melt into puddles of awwwwwww….

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Then Trülbus the Crime Eater joined him, for double awwwwww….

I even got some bird pictures today; here is one of them.

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They seem to like the new feed, too. :-)

They also were completely ignored by the sunning cats. :-D

We haven’t been seeing the grosbeaks for a while now. They seem to disappear for a while, then come back in droves.

When getting the mail, I picked up some more of the previous deer feed, that’s mostly sunflower seeds. I plan to mix them about half and half for the next while. That way, there will be a wider variety of seeds for the critters.

There are deer pictures for today, too. So many have me laughing out loud! I will share some of those in a separate post, once I’m done resizing them.

The Re-Farmer

Deer visitors – and a surprise guest!

April 1, 2018April 1, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

This morning, we had a WHOLE lot of activity out our living room window! Detail and her boy were back, as were Mama and the twins. Sometimes, they’d be eating peacefully together, other times, Mama would chase them off.

Then we saw more activity in the spruce grove and realize that Hungry Girl and Barbecue had tried to come over, but they were getting chased off by Detail’s boy!

Getting photos was rather difficult, though, as the sun was shining into our living room, and there was a lot of reflection of us in the way. I did manage to crop most of that out of this image I got with my phone.

You can actually still see my husband, and part of the book he’s reading, in the reflections. :-D

Later on, something big went flying by, and I had to check it out. That’s when I saw a huge raven, over by our compost pile. It didn’t stay anywhere for long, so the best I was able to get was this photo of it in one of the maples. while leaning up against the window as far as I could!

I remember, in my younger days, reading about ravens and descriptions of them. We never had them around, so that’s all I had to go by. It seemed to me that they were kinda like big crows.

Then I moved to Victoria, BC, and saw a raven for the first time. I couldn’t believe how massive these things get! And that noise they’d make. Yikes!

Usually, the biggest birds we see are blue jays, crows, magpies and grouse, with the grouse being the biggest. Red tail hawks are not much bigger than crows. Once in a rare while, I’ve seen owls and eagles.

This raven? The only birds I’ve seen locally that are bigger than this was a great horned owl and a bald eagle, many years ago. This thing was massive, even compared to the ravens I saw on the West Coast! They are not at all common around here.

Early this evening, we got visited again by Hungry Girl and Barbecue, for a little while. I’m glad they came back, because they sure didn’t get a chance at the feed this morning!

Barbecue looks like he’s giving me the stink eye!

Or should I say “she.” No sign of antler nubs!

The Re-Farmer

For the Birds

March 6, 2018March 6, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Alas, no deer photos today. None dared go past the snowman to get to the feed.

The birds, on the other hand, had no such issues.

I played around with the preset settings on the camera today and found that the landscape setting seems to address a problem I’ve had with some photos I’ve attempted.

Getting images of the birds when they are sitting in the lilac bush.

This redpoll is on a branch that broke from the weight of our recent snowfall. It is at the far side of the bush from our window, so there are twigs and tall grass in the way. It’s pretty rare for the birds to perch somewhere that doesn’t have twigs or branches in the way of a clear shot. The camera will keep trying to focus on the things in front, and in the time it takes me to get it to focus past them, the birds are usually gone. But on this setting, it seemed to ignore the things in the foreground and focus on the larger objects behind them.

I’m still at a loss about the purple that is in the photo. It’s there in the original, unadjusted image. When I lighten the images for these posts, it brings the purple out just like any other colour in the image.

It’s not in all of them, though.

This is actually the first photo I took today. The bluejay is perched lower down on the broken branch. You can see the shadows of twigs in between the camera and the blue jay.

No purple in sight!

Any camera people who can explain it to me?

I also got a nice shot of a blue jay in the sun.

Oh, those colours!

I think I could happily paint the entire house in that blue on its head, neck and shoulders.

Hopefully, tomorrow, the deer will be brave enough to emerge from the trees and I’ll be able to get some photos of them, too.

The Re-Farmer

Blue Jay Antics

March 5, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

I had a blast getting pictures of the blue jays today! They were dashing in and out of the trees and to the seeds so fast, it was a real challenge. Many of the photos didn’t work out at all because of that. More than a few times, by the time I took the shot, the bird was already gone, and I was left with a picture of a pile of seeds! :-D

These photos were taken before the snow completely covered the seeds, and I fiddled around with the settings on the camera part way through, to try and better capture flight images. Unfortunately, one of the down sides of using the zoom lens is that it makes for darker photos. Between the two, I had to do a fair bit of lightening of the images. Hardly the best photography, but they were fun to take!

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I just love that little head tilt!

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Out of focus, but gosh, I love this one!

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It wasn’t until I cropped and lightened the photo that I could finally see what was really going on here – that blue jay in front plowed right into the soft snow at landing!

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It then immediately turned and hopped the other way, again, sinking into the snow on landing!

The other bird seems to have a “this guy is nuts” expression going. :-D

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Another poor photo, as far as image quality goes, but I think it’s my favourite of the bunch. Just look at those wing feathers!

The Re-Farmer

Got a Camera

February 16, 2018February 16, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Hungry Girl and Barbecue visited again this morning. I didn’t even try and take photos with my phone. Instead, I just enjoyed watching them.

After they left, the birds came back in full force, including a total of 5 blue jays! Usually, it’s just two or three. There were also the massive numbers of redpolls (which I’d mistakenly identified as chipping sparrows, previously), lots of pine grosbeaks, chickadees and nuthatches. Squirrels made their appearance, too.

After a while, I broke down and finally asked my daughter if I could borrow her Nikon D80.

After a bit of maintenance (lens cleaning, battery checking, etc), I set it up and tested it, using the 18-55mm lens she had on already.

Ghost bird!

Then I took it off the manual setting. :-D

Though ghost birds are rather neat photo subjects.

I then switched from her 18-55 lens to the Nikkor 70-300mm lens we were using on the old camera.

Blue jay

Blue jays are one of my favourite birds. I love their incredible colour! It’s interesting to see how they try to pack so many seeds into their beaks at once. I didn’t realize they did that until I started taking photos of them with the zoom lens.

Pine grosbeak, male

It’s a real challenge to get photos of the birds when they are in the bush nearby. Usually, in the time it takes for me to notice them, then swing the camera around on the tripod, they are either gone, of have moved to another branch. One of these days, I’m going to get a picture of a nuthatch perched upside down on a twig.

The grosbeaks tend to hang around on the branches a bit longer than the chickadees, nuthatches and redpolls – they’re too big to hop around the way the little guys do. So I was able to get a pretty decent shot of a male grosbeak in the trees.

Pine grosbeak with redpoll

There tend to be a LOT more females than males among they seeds, but even they are usually outnumbered by the redpolls.

Downy woodpecker

Getting any images of this downy woodpecker was a challenge, too! It kept moving around, then went behind the branch in the foreground.

My daughter just swung by to let me know she got pictures of the woodpecker while I was posting this. I’m glad I made sure the camera still had a memory card in it when I took out the one with the above photos to upload!

The Re-Farmer

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2018 / Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Hello, all, and Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope those of you who take part in it had a wonderful day. :-)

This year, today also happens to be the first day of Lent, which we each observe in different ways. My “fast” will be the same as the last couple of years; I am giving up Facebook for Lent. I spend way too much time on there! I’ve already caught myself almost going onto it when I sat at the computer (I removed the shortcut on my phone), just out of habit. I only went on this morning to post my usual note letting people know that if they wanted to reach me, they’d have to use something other than Facebook for the next while. And wish people Happy Valentine’s day at the same time.

We’ve never been big on Valentine’s Day. I suppose I could always be cheesy and say that we don’t need to, because every day is Valentine’s day, but the truth is, we’re just not particularly romantic. :-D Very early in our relationship, I told my (future) husband that, while I enjoy things like flowers, I’m more of a kitchen appliance kind of woman. :-D Since then, it’s expended to things like yarn and tools. Nothing like a sweet, sweet skein of gorgeous yarn, or a set of calipers, to make my heart go pitter patter! Still, we basically just wish each other Happy Valentine’s day, then get on with our day. After almost 30 years of marriage, we’re pretty laid back about such things. :-D

Unfortunately, yesterday was hard on my husband, so he had to deal with the fallout from that, today. :-(

My morning still started out with some aggressive cuddles, though.

“You weren’t planning to get up, where you?”

Our mama cat was all over me this morning, draping herself over whatever limb she could get at, and trapping me!

Her boy does the same to my daughters.

I honestly don’t know why she likes me so much. Even when she isn’t cuddling hard, she still tries to be near me all the time.

Not that I mind, except that we haven’t been able to trim her claws for quite a long time.

It was a warm day today – about -7C when I went to feed the outside cats. Which made it a relatively rare day when all 7 of them were out at the same time.

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My daughters were kind enough to lay out a new piece of cardboard for me yesterday, while we were gone for so long. The first time I laid the cardboard out, the cats weren’t sure about going on it for a while, but this time, I think they were quite happy to have something a bit warmer on their toes!

It was warm enough that I stayed out after putting the deer feed and bird seed out and dug out the ice chipper. The packed snow was starting to encroach in spots. One of the areas I cleared was a side section of the concrete steps. Strangely, the cats loved it. After I moved on to the sidewalk, I looked back to see Rolando Moon rolling ecstatically on the freshly cleared concrete. Then Beep Beep and Nasty Crime Boy took turns, all in that same section of step! I have no idea what was attracting them to that one spot.

“You may touch the royal paw.”

Rolando even let me pet her a bit.

A bit.

Meanwhile, my husband was able to call in some prescription refills today. Being warmer today than it will be for a while, I was going to take advantage of it and install those new headlight bulbs before my daughter and I headed into town.

Now, I’ve changed automotive light bulbs before, but not on this vehicle. We’ve had it for less than a year. Our previous van was pretty straightforward. You could just look at it and figure out how to open things up.

Not so much, this one. After looking around and not seeing how to open up the casing, we decided to do it later.

I did get out the new gas cap and put it on, leaving the tethered old gas cap in place while I turned on the engine to see if the “check gas cap” alert still came on.

It did.

*sigh*

So it’s likely a faulty sensor.

I put the old gas cap back for now, since I want to make sure I can remove the tether without having to cut it. I’m sure I can, but just haven’t had the time to fiddle with it.

While we drove to town, my daughter dug out the instruction manual and found the section for replacing the bulbs. Turns out there was a pin somewhere in there that needs to be pulled out, first. I never noticed a pin anywhere when I was looking.

She also looked up the “check gas cap” alert. It says that when it comes on, it means that gas cap is off, so go put it back on. (*duh!)

The gas cap is on just fine, so that’s not the problem, but it confirmed what I already thought. I was just hoping for a bit more information for, say, why the alert would continue after ensuring the cap was on.

Once we were back from town, I started working on the headlights while my daughter took our stuff in, then shoveled her way back. It had started to snow by then, so she shoveled the path to the burn barrel, too. It was finally a warm, wind free enough day for a burn to be done. It’s been quite a while since we’ve been able to do one!

While she got her workout in outside, I was able to hang up a light and see what I was doing under the hood, thanks to the 200ft of extension cords from the house to the garage. (That was so sweet of my brother to buy those for us!) I found the pin, which was nowhere near where I expected to be, and managed to get it out. Then I had to loosen a bolt.

To do that, I needed a wrench.

I found a couple of very old tools hanging about, but it turns out there are pretty much no tools left in the garage at all. There’s lot of other weird stuff, but no tools.

I’m told there used to be lots of tools, not only in the garage, but in the basement of the house, too.

Not sure what happened to them all.

Thankfully, we have our own tool kits.

After much fin-angling, I finally got the casing off and the burnt out bulb out. That thing did NOT want to come out! But I got it done. The second one went much smoother! Only partly because I knew what I was doing this time. :-D

So we now have new, brighter headlight bulbs.

I’m kinda looking forward to our next night drive after dark, now. :-)

One more thing to tick off the “to do” list.

Later on, after I got supper in the oven and the girls were outside doing the burn, I heard a loud bang. It seemed like something hit the house! I even felt the floor shake. I popped my head outside to look and asked the girls about it, but they heard and saw nothing.

I still don’t know what caused the noise. Perhaps something in the basement fell? I don’t know.

Looking out the dining room window, though, I saw this…

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A grouse, under the bushes.

Looking at the tracks, I kinda wondered if maybe the grouse flew into the house, fell into the snow, then tucked itself under the bush to recover.

Or it’s just sitting there, taking shelter from the snow.

I’m pretty sure a grouse isn’t big enough to have made that noise, though. I’m still wondering what it could have been.

Also, my phone camera takes terrible zoomed in shots. At least I had one decent shot I could drop down.

Interestingly, for all the animals I saw today, including the usual birds and squirrels at the feeding station, I haven’t see a single deer. It’s possible I just missed them, but my husband said he hadn’t seen any, either.

I won’t be surprised to find the now-buried-in-snow feed is all dug up and eaten by morning, though.

It was good to get a break from the cold, today. We had a high of -2C by this evening. By midnight, we’re supposed to his -21C, with a windchill of -32C.

Tomorrow, by 8am, it is supposed to be -25C, with a windchill of -39C.

Talk about a severe drop!

Tomorrow’s high of the day is supposed to be -19C, with a windchill of -28C. We need to go into town again for doctor’s appointments in that. :-( That’s the coldest it’s supposed to be over the next few days, at least, but we won’t see temperatures in the single digits again for another week.

I think we’re going to be staying home as much as possible for the next while!

The Re-Farmer

Hello, Deer

January 28, 2018 / Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Today was a very busy bird day! Especially the grosbeaks. So many of them!

At least until the deer came. It was continual back and forthing between the birds and the deer!

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While there were plenty of chickadees, as always, and a blue jay also made an appearance, it was the grosbeaks that really stole the show! There were so many red ones today, too. Constantly flying in and out of the area.

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Also very busy today were the chipping sparrows. Just masses of them! They dash in and out a lot faster than the grosbeaks.

Then, out from the garden, a deer came loping enthusiastically in, and the birds took off. Much to my surprise, it was the little hungry looking one! The other one she usually follows came prancing in some time later.

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He did try to chase her off, but amazingly, this time she just shifted to another pile of feed, and they both ate together for quite some time! A couple of times, she got chased off a bit farther, only to come back again, prancing in quite enthusiastically.

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It was so good to see her getting a decent amount of food, for a change. And to see her being less skittish. I look forward to seeing her get all sleek and fat, like the other one. That one clearly has seen no deprivation, this winter!

I wonder if the little one had gotten sick at some point? Aside from when we had that polar vortex some in, with bitterly cold temperatures, it’s been a light winter, with very little snow to prevent deer from foraging. There is lots of wild food to be had.

Eventually, he chased her off for good. Then ran off, himself, later on. He came back a couple more times throughout the day.

I’m thinking of calling the mean one, Barbecue.

The Re-Farmer

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