The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Wildlife

Other creatures in our world

Bird Nesting Boxes: Cleanout Time

Springtime moves the Bird Box Cleanout chore to the front of the to-do list…

Three different species used this box in succession:

Bird box – stacked nests

Those tiny birds haul all this stuff into the boxes one twig / feather / strand at a time:

Bird box nests

The big branches come from a pick-up-sticks session; we don’t have birds that big around here!

One nest sported a decorative yellow plastic ribbon that the bird surely regarded as a rather tough bit of grass:

Bird nest with plastic strand

They could handle this job on their own, but we think we can reduce the number of parasites by airing out the boxes. We should do the cleanout in the fall to provide nice empty cavities that they can use for winter shelter, but they seem perfectly happy to snuggle together atop the nests in the cold and the dark…

2014-04-20
Monster Emerging!

This looks like the start of a really, really bad horror flick:

Chicken Feet – breaking out

Obviously, that shrink wrap was never intended to withstand a direct assault from within, which is usually the situation with horror flicks.

We don’t know what we’d do with chicken feet in terms of food and have absolutely no interest in learning more…

2014-03-30
Squirrel Eating Ice (-sicle?)

This being the time of year when the sap flows, we think one squirrel enjoyed a sweet treat:

Squirrel with ice – 1

He nibbled the ice for several minutes:

Squirrel with ice – 2

… until finally bounding away with the remnant in his teeth. Brrr!

Taken with the DSC-H5 and tele-adapter braced against the back door frame, zoomed in all the way.

2014-03-23
Merry Christmas – 2013

These critters can serve as good examples of what we’re not doing today:

Solitary bee on spherical flower

Beetle on spherical flower

Bumblebee on spherical flower

They span 48 seconds of life on a single flower; just another busy day at Innisfree Garden.

Hoist some spicy grog for them…

2013-12-25
Northern Cardinal: Window Strike

For all the usual reasons, I didn’t hang the mesh netting over the bedroom window when I put up the bird feeder on the far corner of the patio:

Male cardinal – window strike death

That window is far enough away that birds get up to full speed and low enough that they can see through the windows on the far side of the bedroom to the bushes and trees north of the house.

The mesh is up now and I feel like crap.

2013-12-21
Bird Feeder Season

Word got around quickly after I set up the bird feeder at the corner of the patio, one week before Mary’s Project Feederwatch data collection started up:

Nuthatch on patio

You can tell this chipmunk wasn’t at all bothered by my presence:

North end of southbound chipmunk

We call them fur birds, but they don’t count for Feederwatch:

Chipmunk in vacuum cleaner mode

A few days later, I put a casserole of fresh-cooked brown rice on a patio table to cool, only to have a raccoon drag it off. Of course, the Pyrex bowl shattered on the concrete: neither of us got much of the rice…

2013-12-08
Marmorated Stink Bug Sighting

Late in the fall, Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs move indoors to spend the winter; they can infiltrate through the smallest of cracks and seem to show up unannounced in the strangest locations. This one magically appeared on my M2 printer while I was starting it up:

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug on M2 Printer

I unceremoniously flushed its contribution to the gene pool…

2013-11-30