We have more wren babies!
nm, sorry.
Today nature is weird.
Behold wolf’s milk slime mold (click for full pic):
I was out with CtE for our daily walk and I saw so many cardinals and blue jays. I’m afraid of birds, but them flying with their wings out, disappearing into the trees, made my heart really happy today. I wanted to get pictures, but I’m too darn slow.
We didn’t get to see much nature today because of heavy smoke. But about shortly before I left work to head for home the sun appeared and the heavy pall started to lift. When I went out to my car, I heard a couple of birds singing away like it was early morning and they were about to start looking for breakfast.
Relocation project. Every few years raccoons move into our barn, partying all night and being generally destructive. I’ll catch and relocate for a few weeks (with permission of the Commonwealth) and then we’ll be good again.
Anyone know what bait I use? It catches raccoons and not possums (who we coexist with peacefully).
Nature fun fact: >97% of all raccoons go by “Rocky”.
Oh what a cutie! As for bait…fish?
We’ve got rats in the barn currently. I’ve been feeding the chickens morning and night instead of leaving the feeder out all the time, and I’ve got a humane bucket trap out there baited with peanut butter, but no luck yet. The game camera shows them climbing all over it and laughing.
No! Everything eats fish. Raccoons love marshmallows. I have old, dried out, jumbo marshmallows and only the raccoons go for them.
OMG! I was just going to send in a pic of my Dog Vomit Slime!! We have a giant pile of mulch from a big red pine that fell this spring during a wind storm. One day I noticed a big yellow splotch of something on it. I went closer and touched it. A yellow powdery substance came off of it. I Googled - soft yellow fungus in MN. And there it was, Dog Vomit Slime! It’s also called Scrambled Egg Slime. It really does look like both. After about a month it turned black-ish.
A couple years ago we had stinkhorn mushrooms in our yard. Very cool fungus that stinks and attracts flies that help spread the organism.
Aha! They were hunting in daytime to raise a new family 
. Great capture.
On the way to work this morning I had to wait for Canada Geese at our friend’s house. This was the third of three groups that crossed.
Nice! We don’t have Canada geese down here so I’m always thrilled if I see them when we travel.
A couple of sandhill cranes in the neighbor’s cow pasture. We frequently see this pair.
It’s funny how one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, because, as much as I enjoy wildlife viewing, if I never saw another Canada goose again, I’d be fine with that.
But I’d love to watch those cranes.
Canada geese are very common around here, and ruin just about any open green space with their poop. I don’t like ‘em.
About twenty five years ago four Canada geese showed up at the pond that’s part of a big cemetery in town. We all thought it was neat, and they even got a picture in the paper. Now so many have joined them folks are likely to say “@#$%^& geese!” And they mess everything up with their poop. The groundspeople hate them.
Oh, geez, I’m lucky to get some of each. I stay away from the places that have lots of Canada geese. They shit everywhere and it makes the grass slippery and gross. The cranes have the good sense to not overcrowd the local lakes and swamps.
IIRC, a few years back Minneapolis, overrun by Canada geese, killed a lot of them and then donated the meat to local homeless shelters.