animals in your life

[billy rubin]

that is fantastic. i ve heard mockingbirds and grackles mimic here in th estates, but never anything that good

[billy rubin]

three of tbe five queens were avcepted. one hive was queenlrss, and another had raised tbis beaitiful italian on tbeir own.

i put two frames of open brood into the queenless hive, and they can see about raising tbeir own queen. she ll be late, but all i need are bees to draw comb

[billy rubin]

there always seems to be more going on. theres a scarlet tanager hanging out in the elm tree above the old carriage shed. cant get a picture because the bugger is up in the treetops, but they look like this:



they sound a bit like a robin, but not as long  or complex a song.

[billy rubin]

and then while i was feeding the bees on the back porch, i looked down and the cat was messing with this





thres a lot of different snakes around here. this one is a Thamnophis sirtalis, a ribon or lines snake. gets maybe a foot or so long. family colubridae, which is the common non-venomous snake family in north america. i say they dont bite, but when i showed my daughter one when she was about ten, it promptly bit her, so im mre cautious now handing sakes to people

[billy rubin]

did i mention that the lightning bug larvae have come out? they crawl around and glow in th egrass in the late summer, and then disappear. into the leaf litter, i suppose. then in th espring they come out and metamorphose.

the larvae light up in long constant glows, unlike the brif flashes when theyre adults. maybe i cnaget a photo. theyre not very bright right now.

[MarcusA]

There's certainly a lot of life in your life, billy.

[billy rubin]

theres all sorts of things goibg on here

[Tank]

Fascinating. As always

[MarcusA]

Not bad for a bloke stuck out in the sticks.

[billy rubin]

the sticks is where all the interesting stuff happens.

about time to catch some new fish too

[MarcusA]

The sticks is where nature is.

[billy rubin]

got home from work. eating dinner

what are those sparrow hawks upset about outside?

went and looked. discovered offspring number two



the parents were savaging the cats when they got too close

so i caught it. got bit some but not more than a pinch

and since it had new feathers and presumably can thermoregulate we stuck it in the cherry tree over the old chicken coop

they can take care of it themselves iover there

[billy rubin]

lol

bird update

th efledling sparrow hawk has survived and calls to its parents out of the cherry tree. ill get a picture maybe this wekeend. the little falcons are beautiful bord. 8 x human visual acuity, if  remember correctly.

the lttle starling has graduated from amusing to hilarious. my lovely wife has been teaching it to fly around the house, which it will happily do, so today she took it out into the hayfield, where it could fly free, as a bird, so to speak.

and it did. it flies from her head to the cherry tree. from the cherry tree to her head, where it begs for food. from her head to the elm tree, where it seacrhes the branches for things. then it flies to her head to beg for food. so she works out in the fields, and the starling flies around until it gets hungry. then it comes to her to beg for food.

i told her, go buy some crickets or meal worms, and teach it to eat something besides cat food from your fingers. and she will eventually.

but int he meantime we have the archetypical teenage bird:

youre unnecessary. i can do just fine. leave me be . . .

will you drive me to the mall?

[billy rubin]

pitchers, just in general from th enet

sparrow hawk



starling



you brits have the same falcon there in your woods. i dont think its was introduced to oz.

the american starlings were introduced to america about 1890 by bible society people who wanted to bring over ever animal listed in christian scriupture. 90 pairs releasd in new ork. have spread across the country

[Tank]

I have a cheeky Robin in my garden at the moment. I'll be sitting reading and it'll hope about a couple of feet from me with a 'Feed Me!' look in its eye