Adventures at 27 Lubberland

I haven’t blogged in quite a while. Usually by this time of year I have upward of twenty thousand pictures. It has been a slow year and I probably only have about a thousand pictures so far. I have started three blogs but never finished them. It is difficult to restart blogging after a long layoff such as this. Well here goes:

Birds

We had our usual spring visitors but I didn’t get any pictures. We had a clutch of teen baby turkeys, but none of them survived. I think the hen survived this year, but last year the hen was killed when babies were half grown and eventually they all disappeared.

Predatory Birds

We had a red tailed hawk nest on the north end of the property. I guess it was chosen to be close to food. During the nesting season, red winged blackbirds are effective at keeping the hawks and crows out of the yard. Since nesting season the hawks have convinced the smaller birds that it is not healthy to eat at our bird feeders. The squirrel population has also been effectively suppressed. Hopefully the birds will be back after the hawks migrate south.

Deer

We had very few fauns this year. Given the over population of deer in the area, this was not necessarily a bad thing. The deer we had managed to do enough damage to the foliage.

Mammals

Pond

Wink would go out every afternoon and feed her pet goldfish. We got down to about eight goldfish and so added sixteen more. It was delightful to watch them feed.

Mark told the gardener (the gardens became too much for us to take care of alone) that he wanted all the flowers, maybe ala Giverny or Versailles. Wink was surprised by the bill but happy with the end product.

The Zen Zone is situated where you can hear the pond and is sufficiently isolated to be peaceful.

Oh! Snap!

We cant seem to scare this guy away. He keeps coming back. We will try to repopulate the pond in the spring and take remedial measures to protect them. It took several years for the goldfish and frogs to get this big. At this point we have put 120 goldfish in the pond. The frogs were voluteers.

Well I have broken the blog ice and maybe I can keep it going.

Mark and Wink