Insects Aplenty
I’ve seen reports that our insect population is plummeting around the world. It makes me sad to contribute to the decline by way of my summertime driving.
There was a particularly large visual of carnage on the front of my car before we even started our drive north yesterday.
On the bright side, it shows that there are still enough flying insects in our area to make a mess of our vehicles.
I can report no shortage of mosquitos showing up at dusk at the lake place. We went for a walk with Paul and Beth after dinner and paused at the tennis court to gaze up at one of the pair of eagles who nest in the large pine tree there.
After standing still to take that long-distance picture with my phone, I looked down at my legs to find them dotted with many feeding insects. Ended up doing the awkward dance the rest of the way on our walk, goose-stepping and swiping arms and legs like a madman.
Despite the bugs, we enjoyed eating on the deck under the open sky, I snuck in a short bike ride before guests arrived, and Cyndie and I swam in the lake. The days of high heat are softened greatly by proximity to large bodies of water.
On tap for today will be more miles on the saddle. Hopefully, with no bugs in my teeth as a result.
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Self Taught
The Buffalo gals taught themselves to climb their ramp into the coop at dusk! I had just arrived upon the scene as Cyndie was working to find a hole in the netting that would explain how one of the Rockettes ended up hanging out against the outside of the courtyard fencing. I did a quick head-count of both sets of chicks and walked around to where Cyndie was working.
The next time I looked in on the Buffalo gals, they were gone. All 12 had headed inside by their own volition.
That left the Rockettes to be tested with our new idea of herding them to their ramp to see if they would take the hint to climb up on their own. Very quickly half of them did take that hint, but the rest were a harder sell.
They seemed much more interested in cowering underneath their ramp and unleashing a cacophony of chirping. A modicum of hands-on support helped convey the intent and soon all birds were cooped for the night.
I think they will catch on to the ultimate routine soon, but further lessons will be delayed until after the weekend. Our trusty animal sitter is on duty starting today as we are off to the lake for a few days again. My birthday buddy, Paul, and his wife, Beth, are joining us up at Wildwood. There’ll be some biking happening, as I need to put on some miles in preparation for day-long riding beginning in a week on the 2021 Tour of Minnesota.
I wonder where I stashed my tent two years ago after the last Tour.
That ability I have to forget stuff… self-taught, I’m pretty sure.
I can’t really remember.
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Sweaty Horses
We are on our umpteenth day in a row of high-heat weather and the stress on growing plants is getting visible. Overnight Tuesday we were awoken by a brilliant flash of lightning with its associated crack of thunder that one would assume to equal rainfall. We received no noticeable moisture from the atmosphere.
Where we haven’t kept up with watering, our plants are suffering.
Our animals all seem to be tolerating the heat, but the horses are a sweaty mess. They almost look like they’ve just finished running a race. [slight exaggeration] To add a little flamboyance to their appearance, they take turns rolling in the dusty dirt to create a little mud pack that seems to provide some protection from the hot sun and biting flies.
The chicks don’t seem to care about the heat because they have those fabulous grassy courtyards covered by shade where they can romp all day long. We are in the phase of chick-rearing that requires forcing them back into the coop by hand because they haven’t properly developed that natural instinct of going inside on their own for the night.
Chick wrangling is not one of my favorite tasks. They don’t make it easy.
When we finally got to the last couple of the older bunch, they actually chose to run up the ramp themselves instead of succumbing to the grasp of our scary hands. It inspired me to next time devise a method of corralling them into an ever-shrinking space that funnels directly to the ramp so they can practice getting back inside without being grabbed.
By the time all the chick chasing was done, it was the humans who were sweaty.
We chose to pass on the rolling in the dirt thing.
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Other Waves
I have no idea how individual feather coloring can appear so random yet collectively they create a wonderfully distinct pattern.
Case in point: our Barred Rock breed…
How does she do it?
Those black bars look like waves rolling down her body.
Speaking of waves, I believe this toad was climbing the fence in order to wave at someone or something.
I was just hoping he wouldn’t catch the attention of the chicks. He was a heck of a lot bigger than an insect, but not so big as to guarantee the insatiable curiosity of the chicks wouldn’t lead to potential carnage.
That would cause me a wave of nausea, I’m afraid.
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Sky Waves
These are all from the same night when we were out in the back pasture with the horses, just a short distance from the chicken coop where we had spent the day working on fencing two courtyards, one on each side. The waves of clouds and the low-angled sunlight glaring through the hot horizon haze seemed to change by the minute.
They could each provide ample opportunity for a “Words on Images” feature, but since that inspiration has yet to wash over me, the wordless images get featured today, as is.
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If I was a skyscape painter, these are some images I would be pleased to compose. I don’t think I would ever imagine the wild pattern of “shadow” ripples visible in the center-left portion of the last one if I were attempting to paint a version of how it looked to me.
Mother nature painted them. I captured the views with my digital camera.
I reserve the right to repurpose one or more of these should fitting words show up unannounced somewhere down the line.
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Chicks Grazing
For your viewing pleasure, hang out with our chicks for a couple of minutes and get a sense of how much fun it is to watch their methods of exploring the courtyard we fenced in this weekend outside their coop door.
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Aah, but they grow up so fast. In no time they will be free-ranging chickens devouring acres of insects.
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Heat Advisory
With the pressure of multiple days of excessive heat driving our concerns, Cyndie and I put in extra hours yesterday to complete the two separated fenced-in courtyards outside the coop for the two batches of chicks. Late in the afternoon, our chicks were scratching dirt for the first time in their lives.
While we worked, we opened their access doors, allowing them to tentatively investigate the strange new opportunity in their own time.
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I appreciate their caution. Being cautious might protect them from risks they will face when ultimately allowed to free-range our fields and forest.
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Getting the chicks out of the coop and onto the shady ground dropped the temperature of their environment significantly. Keeping their water sources filled requires extra vigilance in the heat as those little beaks drink a surprising amount much quicker than expected.
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In no time, I witnessed insects being hunted and devoured. It’s interesting to watch the instinctual behavior of scratching the ground beneath them and then stepping back to peck at whatever might have been revealed. I saw a little beetle rushing to move from one spot to another and wondered how that might play out. The keen eye of one of the chicks spotted that movement and raced over to scoop it up in one smooth move.
Then the great hunter needed to fend off the immediate attention of several other chicks who desperately wanted what she had.
If ever there was a version of “eat and run,” the competition of other chicks defines the phrase when it comes to finding the perfect morsel.
It won’t take long for those birds to change their limited landscapes from green to nothing but bare ground.
At the rate things seem to be advancing, they will be ranging free in a blink. The next big hurdle will likely be figuring out how and when we can take out the barriers isolating the two age groups. I expect it will come after the point of development where it becomes much more obvious which of the Rockettes are noticeably roosters.
Let’s hope high heat pressure will have taken a welcome break long before that milestone arrives.
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Rocky’s Progeny
The 13 chicks that hatched from eggs fertilized by our late New Hampshire Red rooster, Rocky, have now developed enough features to better guess at which breed their mothers were. The batch we’ve referred to as the “Rockettes” will be subdivided to break out six pullets who will eventually be “Baxterettes,” reflecting a plan to share them with my brother’s family in the Brainerd area of Minnesota.
That surprise rooster we were blessed to receive unexpectedly in a batch of egg-layers we ordered online during the pandemic will have quite a legacy from his cut-way-too-short life.
The twenty-five chicks currently sharing the “twin-home” coop divided in half by a plastic netting are all doing well during this span of time when they are confined to quarters. We are currently working to prepare the boundaries of two separate courtyards –one front, one in back– where they will be allowed daytime excursions on real dirt with actual green growth to destroy.
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We aren’t sure yet about how many of the 13 Rockettes are roosters in the making, but we are confident it is more than zero. Looking at the images above, we believe we have the following numbers of breeds:
Quantity 6 Barnevelders; two with darker coloring on head and neck (a difference of gender maybe?). One each of these can be seen on the far left and far right of the image on the left.
Quantity 2 Light Brahmas; mostly yellow with white wing feathers and a hint of feathers growing on feet, seen second from left.
Quantity 4 yellow-headed chicks with reddish-brown feathers that look a mix of New Hampshire Red/Barnevelder, third from left.
Quantity 1 Dominique; easily identified for being black head to toe and almost disappears in the image on the right.
Cyndie has reported seeing pairs of the Rockette chicks chest-bumping already but I saw nothing but happy romping siblings in my extended watching yesterday.
We housed the Buffalo Gals on the backside of the coop where the chicken access door is located, but that lacked ventilation in this record-setting hot weather. I rigged a way to temporarily cover the opening with 1/4″ mesh hardware cloth so we could leave the door open during the day.
The high heat will inspire us to hasten preparations to get their courtyards secure so we can let them out into more open air.
The wild pigeons choosing to nest in our barn lost about a half-dozen chicks yesterday that we found sprawled out on the ground in multiple places, so this heat needs to be taken seriously.
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Birthday Treat
I didn’t realize the destination restaurant just a couple of miles from our house closed by 8:00 p.m. on Thursdays. Maybe that’s a function of COVID times. I wanted to surprise Cyndie for her birthday with Shady Grove’s delectable Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart.
When Cyndie stepped out to walk Delilah and check on the chicks in the coop, I raced to phone Shady Grove to make sure they had a tart available. That’s when I learned they had closed half an hour earlier.
Luckily, my request was simple and I promised I was only a few minutes away.
Without saying anything to Cyndie, I opened the garage door and raced off like a crazy man, wondering if she would see me and be concerned about what the heck I was doing without telling her.
Five minutes later, I was driving up our driveway and came upon Cyndie and Delilah. She hadn’t seen me leave, so was completely flummoxed upon seeing my car arriving.
“Surprise!”
And Happy Birthday today, Cyndie. (We celebrated early last night because there was no holding her back from that caramel and chocolate favorite once she found out.)
Go ahead, sing along… “Happy Birthday dear Cyndie, happy birthday to you!”
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Claiming Time
I suspect that our house cat, Pequenita, is the pet that gets the least air-time on Relative Something. As the lone feline around here, she seems to frequently be at odds with the general vibe happening at any given moment. Usually, that is because the dog tends to be the one setting the vibe.
Pequenita occasionally tolerates whatever it might be that Delilah is looking to achieve, but most often the cat is just trying to be wherever the dog isn’t.
When we arrived home from the lake on Monday, Pequenita was noticeably more vocal than usual. I think she was expressing displeasure with our having been gone. Something tells me Delilah was having a field day or days, taking advantage of our absence to mess with the cat more than she is allowed when we are around to interrupt.
There is one thing Pequenita does every day to offset the hours when she might not always be getting what she wants. She claims time with me the moment I climb into bed.
She wants to be scratched vigorously behind her ears, on her belly, under her chin, rolling the scruff on the back of her neck, across her forehead, and over her eyes. When I work her armpits, she stretches her front legs way out and flexes her feet. She also purrs warmly the entire time.
It’s a festival of shedding all the while.
Pequenita gets up and walks away, so she can turn around and come right back for more. She rubs against the edge of my laptop. She tries to stand on the keys. After another round of scratches, she walks away again. The more earnestly I want to write on my computer, the more repetitions she makes to walk away and come right back.
If only I could master the art of typing solely with my left hand in order to give Pequenita the scratches she wants with my other hand and still get some writing done.
Unfortunately, the time I wish to claim for writing before I go to sleep happens to be the exact same time Pequenita chooses to claim for me to put my hands all over her body.
Honestly, it’s not all that unfortunate. We are blessed to have her unique character enriching our lives. I’m lucky to have a pet who shows such deep appreciation for my attention.
The time she claims is not just for selfish reasons. She claims it for both of us.
I just need to remind myself that writing comes second to the art of fulfilling the desires of our cat.
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Relative Something 