Dec. 12, 2017
Hello again! I have just returned from nearly three months away in beautiful New Zealand. There are many photos and stories to share, but I have to recover from the journey and make some room on the computer to move the shots from my good camera onto my computer. I wish you all the best this season has to offer and encourage you to make time for your families and not get caught up in the panic of buying stuff. The important gifts can't be wrapped. Thank you for visiting this site.
Late Summer 2017
This was the summer of quail. I had two show up in the yard with their one surviving baby, so I put the cats on lockdown and photographed the family whenever I had the chance. Pretty soon their cousins moved into the yard and started spelunking in the straw bales in my carport. Dustbaths were a common pastime and there were occasional fights, but mostly they scratched and foraged. They tended to follow me around whenever I weeded an area, so there were many photo ops. I even caught one of them at his morning speed-skating practice. Here are some of my favourite photos of our time together.
Aug. 20, 2017
The young male hummingbird has gotten very good at feeding from all sorts of flowers. He is zooming around, getting as much variety as possible before the cold weather limits his menu. Every so often he rests and watches all the action in the yard. Sunflowers are plumping up their seeds now and that's bringing a variety of songbirds back from their nesting grounds. Not a moment too soon, as I was about to start lamenting the loss of the flowers and mourning the summer before it is even finished. My seasons will be pretty mixed up this year, as I will soon be heading to New Zealand. Jumping from autumn to spring to summer and then back to winter can be confusing. It will be lovely to see my family again and I will depend on the birds to reset my seasonal clock in each place. |
The goldfinches returned yesterday, their sweet chatter inviting me to peek through the window at them. They are so shy that I had to take the photo through the screen and a gap in the glass railing of the deck. The father is in transition to his winter plumage and was flanked by one of his grown chicks. Each seed he plucked was expertly cadged from him.
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Aug. 15, 2017
"Psst... hey, deer! Come here for a second. Do you have any idea how this happened?"
"Nope!"
July 18, 2017
This is the year the chickadees finally moved into the chickadee house. (Not the bumblebees, as I had intended, but this was fun too!)
June 1, 2017
With lots of food growing everywhere, we get some pretty spectacular visitors. So far it's just one deer, but he does the random landscaping of three. A stellar year for inchworms means we get to see more of the fancy songbirds for the first time in ages.
May 31, 2017
The mother rabbit finally stashed a successful brood in my neglected veggie garden. I stepped through the gate to check on my peas and tall plants started wiggling all around me. I experienced velociraptor fear for the first time in ages. There were at least three bunnies in there, so I put some wiring around the pea plants (which had only been slightly nibbled) and left the bunnies alone. Apparently they could move easily in and out of the garden and were quite happy until my cat got out one warm afternoon. (I had been keeping the cats in the house to let the various fledglings safely learn to fly.) I found one little body and the other bunnies decided to move on a few days after that. I would probably be up to my ears in bunnies if it weren't for the cats and owls around here but it's nice to see a few get away once in a while. |
May 28, 2017
Last week, a double-decker hummingbird zoomed past me. At first, I thought they were performing a strange mating dance. I was wrong. A mother hummingbird was helping her baby with its first flight. She was above it, hanging on somehow with her feet. They were both flapping their wings, and she was doing her best to steer. She must have been tired, because she took them toward an easy perch. The little one missed the landing and ended up dangling. The mother tried to help but had to go catch her breath. The baby stayed quite still, but every once in a while it tilted its head to take in a different view. I wanted to help but didn't want to approach and panic it. Then the mother returned and managed to encourage it to fly and land properly.
The little one seemed happy to be looking at the world from a familiar perspective once more, but too much excitement can make hummingtoddlers sleepy and the sunlight was so warm. It couldn't hurt to just take a little nap, could it? As the baby snoozed, one of the ants from the hill below the fence decided to check out the intentions of this possible intruder. After all, the ants had had enough of birds messing with their household. When the ant first touched it, the little bird jumped awake. Without hesitation, the ant marched right up the belly feathers. The hummingbird jumped off the wire, flew for a second then forgot to flap and plopped onto the ground near the ant hill. It got its wings working very quickly and hovered beautifully above the fence before trying its luck at an evergreen perch. It soon moved to the top of a wooden gate, where it resumed its basking, though it kept an eye out for the approach of anything else. Life out of the nest was a bit complicated. |
Later, the fledgling discovered a magical diner. It bobbed up and down like a woodpecker, enjoying its first meal out. By the next day it was a pro at the feeder and casually snacked there in between learning the flavours of flowers in the neighbourhood.
April 29, 2017
The garden's gift of entertainment for me this spring is the ant hill. I noticed it at the end of last summer and as the weather warmed, the ants started emerging and attempting to reconstruct their home after the beating it took from winter wind, rain and snow. Their presence drew a lot of attention.
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The winter was unusually snowy and long here, so I had started to put seed down for the little birds that can't comfortably feed from suet cages. One morning I noticed a junco behaving strangely near the food. It looked like it was having a bath in the grass. By the time I realized it was near the ant hill, it had flown off. I had heard of birds taking ant baths, so thought that might have been what was going on. A few days later, I saw a robin doing the same spectacular dipping and fluttering on the ant hill that I've seen them do dozens of times in the bird bath. That confirmed the first sighting for me.
When attacked, some types of ants spray formic acid on the intruder. Birds provoke them in order to elicit this response and any mites, fleas, or other annoying bugs that live in their feathers get fumigated. It's a public service, really. Having birds flopping around and pecking all the time does considerably slow the hill reconstruction effort, though. |
Soon the bigger birds got in on the action. I can't tell crows and ravens apart unless they're right beside each other, but I think these were crows, standing tall, but not enormous. They were very cautious when they came in, each taking turns while the other played lookout.
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I had to take this "ant bath in progress" photo through both my window and a gap in our deck railing so that I didn't disturb the crow. You can see the ants rushing up its body. The crow hunkered down as if nesting on the ants and moved them with its beak to the areas that most needed attention. Then it flew up to the gate posts, stretched out its wings, and picked off any ants still clinging to its feathers.
These two crows dropped in for another bath a couple of days ago. The customers at the bath house get steadily larger, so it won't be long before the eagles drop in for a wash. I just hope all the extra work doesn't bother the ants so much that they move the hill. I've been supplying them with dried bits of grass. When dropped onto the ant pile, they sink beneath the constantly moving bodies. I am so fascinated with these creatures, and just a little afraid of putting a foot too close to them. The benefits of having ants in the garden are many. They are constantly cleaning up dead things and apparently their burrowing is even healthier for the soil than that of earthworms. There are many species of ants, so it's important not to think that they all want to move into our houses and cause mayhem. Watching ants can give us the sense of what is possible when we humans work together toward a common goal. I might not be able to heft and carry something double my weight, but I can make changes to habits that are out of keeping with the natural world. Those small changes, as they catch on with many people, will add up to massive ones. No more plastic in the oceans; biodiversity in forests and on farms; clean air and fresh water for everyone. It all starts with ants. |
New Year 2017
It's well into February and at last I'm posting about this year. I'm obviously hibernating. During my long winter's sleep, I've been dreaming of the new things I'll be adding to my garden this year and I've been building the intention of becoming consistent in the small tasks that bring larger benefits. I think I pondered the same concept around this time a few years back. Funny how we spiral back to things, gleaning a bit more of the lesson each time we explore the same ideas. With any luck I will learn enough to take better care of my body as well as my gardens. Access to clean water is wonderful, but I have to remember to drink it too. In my short bursts of wakefulness (to check if the seasons have changed yet), I've been finishing the manuscript for a book that's been written, piecemeal, over the past ten years. If I'm inconsistent on these pages, hopefully that means I am consistently showing up to those ones. It still needs a lot of sculpting, but it's nice to see the big pile of words manifesting on my desk. There have been a few necessary excursions to photograph birds too. I usually feel as if I am sleepwalking this time of year so it is good to enjoy the sun when it does emerge. The apples I left on the tree last autumn have sustained many creatures through a surprisingly large snowfall recently too. I have frequent daytime visits from the deer now which, as a gardener, I shouldn't be so happy about. I just noticed yesterday that he shed his antlers some time during the past week. He roams a lot, but maybe I'll find them somewhere nearby. Ah, yes... I'm rambling. I tend to talk a lot in my sleep. I wish you all the best for the year ahead. Please take time to recharge your joy in nature whenever you can. We need light to return to us in many ways at this time and we can help it along by sharing our own wherever we are able.
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