Weekly critters

For your weekly critter fix, visit the Friday Ark.

Funky

I spied a funky rock down the slope.



I used max zoom. But the small screen on the camera doesn't show much. Or maybe it's my eyes that don't see much. Anyway, when I loaded the picture onto the computer, I was surprised to see these... seeds.



Or something resembling seeds. I have no idea.



Now I wish I'd climbed down instead of using the zoom. I have a little phobia about steep slopes. But had I known it was a green strawberry rock I might have braved it.

If you have any idea what causes this, please let me know.

Critter Cam update

Not much new and exciting on the critter cam lately, except for this:



How rude!

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Coyote (Canis latrans).

Previous critter cam entries:
Night moves
Say cheese
Ooh, nice...
In the still of the night
More game cam
Bobcat Valentine
Scaredy-deer

We'll try moving the camera over the weekend, but I'm wondering if maybe it just doesn't work as well in warm weather. (It has an infrared sensor = triggers on heat.)

Conversations with flowers

Why can't you be more photogenic? I do love the clasping leaf, but there's this gap where a petal should be. You look like a gap-toothed flower. Snaggletooth!

You just didn't get my good side.

The light's too bright. I had to stand here to shade you.

Not my fault. You could have brought an umbrella or something.

It's hard enough sneaking off without a large curious dog in tow. I didn't have time to pack a lot of photo equipment.

Not my problem. You should just be happy to greet the first bloodroot of the spring.

Well OK then.

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Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis).

The 39 steps

My commute.

Ruh-roh

All that's left of an Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus).

Time slipping

3/1 Update: I said below that we'd be on the Azalea aisle at this weekend's show. To be more specific (since there will apparently be two soapmakers on that row): Azalea 1204.



We've got a craft show coming up and life is hectic, so blog posting may be light or nonexistant for a week or so.



The show is Cottontails, at the Civic Center in downtown Birmingham - come see us! We'll be downstairs on the "Azalea" aisle.

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Check out the Friday Ark for your weekly critter fix.

Sweetest Little Pea

Beaker is our parakeet (budgie). I don't have a lot of pictures of him, because he's usually pretty camera-shy. This past weekend he was in a mood for it, though.



Pretty bird!

Descriptive, but also one of his favorite things to say.



Man oh man, does Beaker love him some bananas.

He's very happy about the banana. Budgies' pupils shrink when they're excited. (Compare with the eyes in the first picture.)



The skin is actually his favorite part.

I am so totally nuts about this bird!

It takes a little while to teach budgies to speak, but it's definitely worth it. Beaker does a few tricks too. "Gimme a kiss" gets you nose kisses, and he'll fly to you when you say, "C'mere". If he feels like it.

I've been bad about not teaching him new things to say lately. But he picked one up anyway. He's got a little Ferris wheel with bells that he loves to throw to the floor. We got in the habit of saying, "Excuse me!" when he does that... and now he says it too!

Notes on parakeets/budgies:
If you ever buy a parakeet, I can't recommend this enough: find one that will sit on your finger in the store. I probably traumatized our first budgie by trying so hard to make friends with an unfriendly bird. There are all sorts of taming techniques, but none worked on poor Mr. Jitters.

When budgies are first delivered to the store, they are usually fairly tame. But it only takes a day or two for them to learn (from the other birds) to flee from the hand. So plan in advance and ask your pet store to call you when the birds first arrive.

How to write poetry

"Once upon a midnight lunchtime dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore blog,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."

"Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven muscovy duck, of the saintly poopy days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above below my chamber door.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas an ancient doormat, just above below my chamber door,
Perched, and sat shat, and nothing more."






(Apologies to Edgar Allen Poe.)

(Also apologies that I could not figure out how to make the line breaks look prettier!)

Looking for spring

Update: Someone wrote me that the comments were not working... I think I've fixed it now. So please do leave a comment if you know what the mysterious grass and/or possible orchid below is/are. (Or even if you don't. I admit that I love comments.)


Odd bloom (?) on grass


Toothwort


Beechdrops with host


Spotted wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata)
The leaves are evergreen... it won't bloom til late spring.


Old foamflower leaf Tiarella cordifolia


I keep wanting to make this into the remains of an orchid of some sort. Any ideas?


Say hello to my little friend


Leftovers

Ducks with short memories

Despite my euphoria last year when the ducks took a dip in the pond, they didn't make it a regular practice. I eventually resigned myself to the fact that they'd never be pond ducks.

It was so dry over the fall that the spring feeding the ditch dried up. Once it started raining, water flowed there again, but the ducks ignored it in favor of their kiddie pool.

At first we just tried driving them into the ditch. "Hey, remember this? You loved it last year!" Even though their feet were wet, I guess they were too scared to realize where they were.

We applied weed-eating and subtle pressure. We moved their food closer and closer to the ditch. Then one day they remembered, or maybe just rediscovered, how much they liked it there.


Happy duck


You've heard that phrase about water and a duck's back...?

One day last spring we saw them wandering towards the far side of the pond. "What in the world are they doing over there?" we wondered, but didn't think much about it. That night they came back to the pen with one less duck in tow... So we're down to seven ducks now. They may forget the ditch, but so far they've never forgotten that there are coyotes beyond the yard.

In which I am a bad influence

Bwa-ha-ha! If it were a crime, I'd be guilty of aiding and abetting. Two of my friends have new blogs.

My friend Annie is a potter, among other things. Many other things. I've never met anyone so capable. (She comments here sometimes as "weldergirl" so that's one clue.) If you're familiar with Oneonta, Alabama, you've probably visited her downtown shop, where she sells her own beautiful creations as well as other Alabama handcrafts. Including some lovely handmade soap, wink, wink.

She and her husband are building what promises to be an extremely cool passive solar house - with a dogtrot! She's started a blog called Edifice Rex to document it.



My friend Grace is a fellow soapmaker who lives a little north of Birmingham. If you wandered the Pepper Place farmer's market last summer, you may have tried some of her scrumptious-smelling soap.

She's a fellow chicken lover, who's good at keeping me up to date on the antics of Sam - the Rhode Island Red bantam game hen who turned out to be a rooster - and his girls. She has started a blog called Roosterhen Diaries, in which she's committing her hilarious paper journals to the blogosphere.



Go say hi!

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Updated: Oops. I was thinking about my own Big Red when I was writing about Sam and called him a Rhode Island Red. Sorry!

Dry pond

After Hurricane Katrina last August, it did not rain until the first of October. Then it was dry again for a long while. The pond shrank.

It's deeper at the far end than it appears, but I had nightmares of fevered fish rescues... up to our knees in muck, trying to corral flopping fish who couldn't understand the concept of their own salvation.

I had sometimes wished for a little mud edge in the summer, which might prove attractive to migrating shorebirds. But that's a lot of edge, and the shorebirds are long gone.



Before the end of the year, it started raining again... better, but not yet normal. I heard it's supposed to rain all weekend, so maybe that will help.

Of course Jasmine likes it dry, since she can get right up to the edge and bark at fish.



In the background is the tree that fell during a storm. Beavers had gnawed all around the base, so even though it leafed out last summer, I suppose it was only a matter of time before this happened.

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Critters at Friday Ark.

Scaredy deer

I guess I'd be nervous too, if I had to live out in the open with all those coyotes and bobcats roaming around.

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Update:
Whoa! Go look at the bobcat pictures over at the Dharma Bums blog. Daytime, in-person, bobcat pictures. Our game-cam is soooo jealous.