My Boring Life
I just realized that I’ve been neglecting photos this summer. Other than the garden I’ve not been posting (or to be honest, taking) much of anything.
So this is going to be a picture heavy post. I’ll put them below the fold, so the folks on slower connections can decide if they want to bother or not.
We finally figured out what was wrong with the one camera. Apparently one or more seals gave way, allowing water into the unit. Put it into a sealed storage tub with some Damp Rid seems to have dried it out. A piece of duck tape across the top in an attempt to seal the most obvious spot for rain to penetrate seems to have kept it from having more problems. Cross fingers!
A quick selection of the pictures taken in the last few months. First time I recall seeing a skunk back there, oddly enough I don’t recall smelling him. Not as many deer as usual, but our apple trees basically didn’t produce anything last summer, so not a huge surprise. Lotsa fox and coyote.
I keep forgetting to post this. The last time I checked the trail cameras we’d had an unexpected visitor (note, this particular camera keeps resetting itself. Not sure why, so date/time are incorrect, all photos taken within the last month).
There’s video too, but I’m too lazy to upload that at the moment. But that folks is a Barred Owl! We’d been hearing them fairly regularly, but never ever expected to see one on camera!
And it puts me in a bit of a dilemma.
I’ve been wanting, for a while, to put up a Screech Owl nesting box, with the understanding that its the same size as what Kestrels want and either was fine. We know there’re Screech Owls in the area, their whinny like call is very distinctive, and I’ve seen Kestrels within a couple mile radius.
But the tree where we planned to put that box is just out of the frame on those pictures.
And we now know for sure that the Barred Owls are hunting there.
And it is possible to build a Barred Owl box.
And with a Barred Owl box we wouldn’t have to worry so much about the squirrels maybe taking over the box as the Barred Owls eat squirrels.
Choices choices…..
Husband commented that he’d not heard all that many coyotes this year, and I have to admit that neither have I. Usually we hear them several nights a week by summer time. Certainly we’ve had a bunny population explosion this year. Not sure if someone did a big hunt, or if the pack has just moved around for some reason.
Although I’ve been seeing one on the trail cameras occasionally, I’m pretty sure it’s only one, and it appears to be a youngster. I caught a daylight look at him not to long ago, apparently hunting bunnies in my neighbor’s back yard. Pretty sure he’s (or she, can’t tell from a distance) not mature, got a skinny gangly look to him, like you see in not yet mature dogs. Course, I didn’t have my camera on me at the time, dammit.
I’m thinking this is the cantaloupe thief, as I got a very blurry shot of a coyote checking out the garden the night after someone stole the cantaloupe, and, other than the bunnies munching around the edges, nothing else has even approached the garden.
A note for everyone who says that “Well, I have a big dog, so X wildlife don’t come into my yard!”. I got news for you. Chances are good Apollo is quite a bit bigger than your dog, AND he’s an intact male. And he pees all around the yard, and around the garden in particular. We actually encourage him to pee around (around, not IN) the garden in hopes of driving off some of the munchers. Not only has it not appeared to make any difference in the quantity of wildlife we see, he and a couple foxes ended up in a “My Tree! Peeing Contest” last winter!
The old trail camera finally gave up the ghost just over two weeks ago. We knew it was coming but were hoping it would hold on for a bit longer. Doing a bit of shopping and looking around and we found the Moultrie M-880 Gen 2 on Amazon for $89. We bought two.
Is it my imagination or is that deer on the small side for a critter that ought to be pushing its 1st birthday??
No sign of whatever produced those tracks I found on Christmas. But I saw on Facebook that someone got a sighting of a Canadian Lynx down in Olean, end of January, which is only a couple-three hours from me……
I’m finally feeling human again, instead of a miserable wad of exhausted snot. Sinus infections suck. Coming on top of the viral stomach bug really really sucked. I was starting to worry about how exhausted I was feeling, but I think I’m finally catching back up.
Course, being sick for most of two weeks means I’ve gotten almost nothing done on the projects I was hoping to get done…..I have the new vinyl tile to go down in the kitchen, got the laundry done before I got sick, but I haven’t touched the kitchen yet.
I need to finish figuring out what, if any, seeds I want to order, and start figuring out the starting order and how I’m going to do all that this year.
And I need to prep a new location for my little greenhouse, cause the wind this winter shredded my old one, so the former location won’t work. Oh, and yup, set up a new one, since the old one was shredded. I’d hoped to have a more permanent structure for my greenhouse this year, but life conspired against me last summer. We just had a major thaw though, so if I can get the energy this weekend I ought to be able to at least get a spot figured out and cleared of debris.
Ran across this video on Facebook yesterday, take a minute to watch, its fricking awesome!
In other news, I found the political platform I want to vote for:
(Links out to Amazon in this post are via my Amazon Associates account, if you buy something after clicking through these links I might earn a few pennies. All linked to merchandise was bought with my own money.)
Since I put out the trail cameras, half the point was to watch the deer, and the deer have been elusive, a few here and there, but not regularly.
But they appear to have discovered my fruit trees and the feed block, and are here to stay now!
After that visit, which appears to be the big guy from the last post and some friends, I moved the camera and feed block closer to the big apple tree behind them.
It appears to be two groups of deer, the 2nd group contains less fat and more obviously pregnant deer.
They’re spending so much time infront of the camera that the batteries keep dying on me!
I did have a laugh though, its not just the deer enjoying the feed block.
Had a bit of a surprise when I checked the trail cameras this morning. They sure don’t look like the White-Tails I’m used to!
Edit: I have a vote for BIG mature White-tail buck who’s dropped his antlers a little early, if thats correct then thats one of the biggest bucks I’ve seen on camera here…..
We’ve still got the trail camera’s up, there was a pretty slow period where we didn’t see much, but when I checked them yesterday….
…..Guess that explains why Apollo has recently been so very upset at the scents around the apple trees….
(The time stamps on these are an hour behind, which I didn’t notice till today, so if it says 1am its actually 2am)
