The past few days have been sunny with temps reaching into the seventies. I have been busy tending seedlings in the greenhouse and repairing trails and steps that were damaged by our string of cow invasions. I also removed 7 chipmunks in 5 days from the greenhouse. Well, actually 6 because Daisy nailed one and crunched it. The others I took down the road and let loose. The Have A Heart Trap and peanut butter are a great combination!
Gail, Daisy, and I usually do a 4 mile hike up the hill and back and we did do a beach walk on Wednesday. I did a major food shopping journey to the Fred Meyer in Newport on Tuesday. I was disheartened to see most of the checkers and stockers not wearing masks. There were no plexiglass partitions separating the checkers from the customers, and no disinfecting going on. After leaving, I felt like I probably have about 2 weeks to live. On the plus side, they had plenty of toilet paper!
Well, we never saw another goldfish in our pond for months after the heron cleaned them out. Then last month while I was suctioning excess sediment from the bottom, I was surprised to see a small dark brown fish zoom by. Then the past week we have noticed 3 swimming together.
After doing some reading, I learned that goldfish can take a year or two to change from a silvery brown to gold. They also need light, preferably 12 hours a day, to attain their bright colors, although some never do, or change to black. I also learned that goldfish have acute vision and can see 4 primary colors, ultraviolet being the 4th. They can distinguish between humans. I suspect that these fish were small fry that the heron didn't eat last summer due to their then tiny size and drab color, and now they are larger and beginning the process of changing color. They take a year or two to become adults.
Also sharing the pond are a whole bunch of small bullfrogs.
The swallows are circling around our yard grabbing insects. This Violet-green Swallow is starting a nest in one of our birdhouses. Good thing I recently cleaned out all the bird boxes.
Goin' in.
Northern Flickers are beautiful birds, but I have terrible luck getting close enough to them for a good picture. We've had one or two drilling on the side of our house early in the morning, lately. It sounds like a machine gun.
This was from down by the river this morning from under our big spruce tree.
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