Friday, June 13, 2014

Around The Farm In June

There's lots of folks around here saying that we jumped directly from winter into summer. Indeed, most spring flowers bloomed halfheartedly and briefly - and then it became hot outside. My little bantams got into the habit of going outdoors at 9:00 every morning and going back in about 7:00 in the evening:

The rest of their day is spent pecking and scratching, looking for food:

The old fashioned Iris around the house bloomed in purple:

And in yellow:

I used my new sprayer, attached to the back of the tractor, to spray the weeds along the fence line which short out the fence. I steered with my left hand and held the sprayer nozzle with my right hand:

I stopped the tractor in the above photo because I'd seen masses of blue flowers along the fence line. They looked a bit like Forget-Me-Nots to me, but bigger and bolder:

So I looked them up when I got back into the house and decided that they were Birds-Eye Speedwell, an introduced species but an awfully pretty one:

A deer carcass along the county road drew both flies and vultures for several days. Only one vulture was brave enough to stay there while I snapped a photo. Several days later, I saw a mature Bald Eagle flying up into the trees from somewhere near the carcass. Was it eating there? I suspect that it was:

I put hinges on a window so the pigeons could get outside and enjoy the outdoors. To make it easier for them, I put a broad sill plate down for them to stand on and a raised tree limb for a perch. Did they use it? No, they did not. They refused to go near the open window or set foot on the sill plate. Yet I kept opening the window every morning, hoping they'd get brave and give it a try:

The window was raised and held open by means of a rope:

I built some shelves for the pigeons and, since they seemed so incompetent at nest building, nailed some kitchen stove plates to the shelves to help them get started:

Here's 30 seconds of fantail pigeon activity. Nothing special happens, they just go about their business:

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