Wednesday, May 6, 2020

WW: Wildlife

Working from home has given me a lot of time to observe all the wildlife on our property! (well okay some of it isn't really wild but enjoy the photos I took yesterday with my real camera).
Annie (who is very feral) had another litter of kittens - I need to trap, gentle, and rehome them, and redouble my efforts to catch and spay her. 
Right now she's keeping her litter in DH's old toolshed, which is scheduled to be cleaned out here shortly now that he has the garage. 
They're cuter than shit, so hopefully if I can get them reasonably tame they'll find homes quickly. The last litter was easy to rehome. 
Normally we keep a birdfeeder up in winter and then take it down in the spring, when the birds can fend for themselves. But it's about all the excitement I have these days, so I've decided to start leaving up year-round. On weekend mornings we really enjoy drinking coffee on the porch and watching the birds. This is one of the four pairs of Cardinals that frequent the feeder. 
This woodpecker is also a pretty regular visitor. 
But this guy was new yesterday!
Cheeky little asshole, drinking from the hummingbird feeder. 
My goal was to photograph the hummingbirds, who are FINALLY regularly visiting the feeder. But they're equally as obsessed with my salvia flowers over by the garage :)
The horses were also out while I was taking pictures and I just wanted to appreciate Ruby's dapples for a bit. This is straight off the camera, no editing, and she's had a stiff brush run over her for about 30 seconds once in the last 30 days. 
DELICIOUS
Now that our grass seed is finally growing, the chickens are allowed to free range again. 
When I posted this picture on FB someone commented that they thought cock fighting was illegal, and I said "only if you bet on it?" hahaha. I wasn't too interested in trying to break these two up. They're generally friendly towards people but as you can see, not big fans of each other! And they've got some nasty spurs. 
The deer photos are actually from a little earlier in my WFH time - maybe March?
We have about 8 that like to hang out in the pasture. They're relatively fearless, I walked out on the porch to get these shots and they only looked at me. 
Missouri is gradually beginning to reopen. My office building is open to the public again, but those of us who can work from home were told to continue doing so. I'm still missing the daily interaction with my coworkers, but keeping up a routine is making WFH go a little easier. And spring on the farm means there is a never ending list of things to do. Without my commute, I'm less rushed, reading more, and getting more exercise. So I guess I'll continue to enjoy those things until my life goes back to "normal", whatever that will look like in the future.

12 comments:

  1. Ruby is SO SHINY. I can't wait for about 3 weeks from now when my horses should be completely shed out and shiny, too.

    V impressed by the oriole stealing hummingbird food.

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    1. She and Cinna don't really grow a ton of coat, I didn't really have to shed them out this year (as opposed to the geldings who still look like yaks despite repeated application of a shedding blade lol). Shed out shiny horses in the spring are the BEST!

      I've gotten more good shots this morning, a bright yellow bird I'm not familiar with, so off to le goolez to learn about birds! haha

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  2. So much wildlife to keep track of. I struggled with working from home and now I think I will struggle to go back to the office.

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    1. I think I would struggle if it was just a switch flipped and back to 5 days a week in the office, but I get the feeling that's not what my organization will be doing at least... I'm optimistic that maybe I'll return to a schedule of splitting my time pretty evenly between working at the office and from home, which would be great for riding time! I guess we'll see how it shakes out, maybe I'm being too hopeful, haha. If that's the case though I'm going to have to come up with a better place for my desk than in the living room!

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  3. While in French Polynesia (where the roosters and chickens are feral) I mused to my husband about a way to make "Organic Rooster Fighting" where you just like let them do their thing and just follow them around betting on them. Obviously when one stands down it loses. lol

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    1. Haha that's an idea. It happens pretty regularly here actually -- we have too many roosters! The ones in my photo are really the only ones who get into it on the daily, the rest are pretty chill.

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  4. Okay I have also become obsessed with my birdfeeders. And then I watched a webinar yesterday about composting (Vermont is going to mandatory residential composting this July) and they took a several-minutes long detour into how everyone should have their birdfeeders away so as not to attract bears and now I don't know what to think.

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    1. Oh gosh, really? I guess I could see that. Thankfully while Missouri does have the occasional bear south of me (and my town actually had one DOWNTOWN a few years back!), that's not really much of an issue in my area. So I'll continue to feed the birds guilt-free lol.

      I'm also mildly curious about how mandatory residential composting would even BEGIN to work, but I guess that's what I have Google for, right? haha

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    2. It's been phased in over several years now, starting with restaurants and large food producers and now we're down to residential. Basically - there's not a whole lot of enforcement teeth, though technically there is a fine if you throw away food scraps, so they're focusing hard on the education parts. Hence the webinar I watched yesterday. We've had mandatory recycling for a while now and they do regular spot-checks and people actually comply at really high rates. I thiiiiiink some trash haulers will be offering additional composting pickup, and our "solid waste districts" are offering composting tools at cost for people to buy various systems.

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    3. That's really cool! Our chickens are able to eat most of the food waste we have, so we don't throw much away. And now we have space to do bins we are able to sort and save recycling, although finding places to take it so far has been tricky 😬

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  5. Isn't the view from home way better than the one from the office?

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    1. It sure is! And I still have no "return to the office" date, so I'll keep enjoying the views out my windows :)

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