Queen Ellie (alias Eleanor Rigby) and Hostess Emma in the family room.
The golden-crowned sparrow and his girl are having an adventure on the feeding station roof. They are observed from a distance by a fox sparrow and his friend.
What a grand winter home Crispin has!
His bedrooms are deep in the middle of the woodshed. You can see that the Scotchman (that pink float hanging on the left side) is still there. He hasn’t frayed quite ALL of the rope that’s holding it up … yet.
His kitchen and dining room are in the center of the house near the middle post. Zoom in if you want a better view of what’s cooking.
Lately it’s been the same old boring diet of walnuts, but at least they are pre-cracked to save on teeth.
Click on the video for a few shaky seconds of dinnertime.
Bon appetit!
It’s a changing season and the squirrels are feeling the need to make a warm, cozy nest to curl up in for those chilly winter nights. They have spent weeks harvesting hazelnuts for food and stashing them away. Now they are working on their next priority – shelter.
The rope you see the squirrel chewing on is holding up a float used in fishing to mark where a crab pot or a prawn trap is located under the water. Or it could be used as a bumper between boats that are tied up next to each other.
I don’t think the squirrel cares what the float was used for. It is only interested in the fuzziness of the rope, that makes it perfect for adding an insulating factor to the nest of dry leaves it has stashed away somewhere in the middle of the woodshed.
But how to get the rope away from the float? The squirrel has been working on it for days and days and days. It is almost ready to let go; only a few strands are left holding the fuzzy ball of rope to the rest of the line. Watch how he keeps rolling up the fuzzy fibers and pulling to try to get it to let go of the rope.
So far, it hasn’t worked. Just a few strands left to rip off. He’s pulling with all his might. It might be just a matter of more muscle.
He must be so frustrated. Watch his new trick where he approaches the problem from another angle. He’s quite the acrobat, holding on with his back feet.
Now you must be wondering if he ever got that piece of rope. Well, this morning when I went out to look, the fuzzy part he had chewed on was gone. The line holding up the float is getting thinner. One day both the squirrels and I will be surprised to see the float on the ground.
My sister-in-law’s dog, a Coton de Tulear, would like to introduce herself to you.
Remember us?
We’re all grown up now and we’ve learned all about getting ready for winter.
The hazelnuts are falling off the trees and it’s important to get as many as possible and hide them away for the winter.
But Anneli has raked up a whole bunch of the leaves and the first hazelnuts that fell because they’re mostly the bad ones. She’s put them in this wheelbarrow. But maybe she accidentally raked up some good ones. Better check out the wheelbarrow.
What do you think? Is it worth rummaging through all that debris in case there’s a good nut in there? Oh! Wait! I think I see a good one on the ground over there.
Ahhhhh, yes! This is more like it!
Nice of Anneli to share the hazelnuts, don’t you think? We’re not greedy. We’ve left her a handful.
The critter in this post has beachfront property – as much as he wants.
Monty the Mink has his own wading pools which sometimes do double duty as dining areas.
He prefers to sit above the high tide line when he’s eating at his own High Tide Restaurant. He’s very tidy about his dishes, leaving them all in one place for the next tide to rinse. The seagulls sometimes help out with the leftovers.
So who is this rich guy who dines on seafood by the seaside? No, this building is not his restaurant, although he has the free run of the property. He’s a very small guy, smaller than many cats. See him in front of the log that has the “No Parking” sign on it? He is just about five feet from the left end of the log, a tiny fellow who can move very quickly, especially when he knows someone is trying to take his picture. He’d rather be blurry and incognito.
Thinking he’s safe, he sneaks up to the rock garden of the people’s restaurant (bottom left). I’m sorry he was feeling so shy and elusive today. He moved very fast and I had little chance of focusing. Maybe another day we will get a better picture of Monty Mink, a Pacific Northwest coast mink.
I’m pretty sure this is a bobcat (not a lynx – which looks very similar). If you see one of these fellows in your neighbourhood, make sure you keep your little dog or cat in the house while the big guy is prowling around.
This guy was NOT in my yard, and I’m thankful for that.
If you have Bob visiting your neighbourhood, be sure not to leave pet food outside, or have a lot of birdseed lying around your bird feeding station. You may find them interested in your fruit trees when the fruit is ripe. A healthy bobcat probably won’t attack you. It is more interested in your favourite squirrels that live in your woodshed.
If you’re out for a walk in the woods and you see a bobcat, it’s probably a good idea to pick up any small children you may have with you. We can never know how desperate a bobcat may be.
If you love fishing and camping in solitary places, you might want to scout out your surroundings, before you go too far afield.
This mama grizzly and her two cubs (probably last year’s) like fishing and hanging out in solitary places too.
The fact that she still has both cubs could possibly mean that the fishing has been good and that mother and cubs are healthy and doing fine. However, people and grizzlies in close proximity to each other are usually not a good combination. I hope, for the grizzlies’ sake, that there is no interaction that will cause them to be trapped and “dispatched.”
These bears are on Vancouver Island where grizzlies are making an appearance in the last few years. They swim over from the mainland, island hopping to shorten the distance they need to swim. It’s possible that in this case the mother is trying to keep her cubs safe from male grizzlies who would be a threat to them. In some species, the male would kill the young to gain access to the mother and “have some fun with her.” The big cats are another example of this.
This photo was taken by a friend of the Captain near a favourite fishing spot. Sometimes, discretion is the better part of valor, hence the blurry quality of the photo. If the photographer had gone closer, the picture might have been clearer, but he might not have been around long enough to send it.
I think the friend probably decided to take a raincheck on fishing that day.
wordsfromanneli 