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.
Other creatures in our world
Having just deployed a trail camera to see what might be skulking about in the middle of the night, this appeared just before the (not fresh) batteries died:
It’s hard to tell with possums, but I’d say that critter is on a mission!
I’m still figuring out proper distances; the possum is about two feet away, which is obviously much too close. Great focus on the water barrels standing by the garage, though.
Another turkey figured out how to get the best seeds from under the bird feeder in the far corner of the patio:
Jake, our affectionate term for whichever turkey is having trouble, eventually walked from right to left closest to the house, down the patio steps, and rejoined the flock. The tip of his “arrow” tracks aims backwards, because all three toes point forward.
It turns out turkeys panic when they’re behind a barrier and see the rest of their flock moving away. A panicked turkey makes a lot of noise while rushing back and forth, the rest of the flock contributes what must be advice, and the resulting tumult suffices to wake the dead.
That would be me, in the bedroom off to the left, but my cold-boot sequence takes long enough that I missed the action.
Some years ago, we discovered how distressed a trapped turkey can get when the flock descended from trees in an adjacent yard, with (a different) Jake landing in the garden, on the other side of the fence from the flock. Over the course of the next several hours, Jake ran back and forth along the fence while the rest of the flock alternated between sympathetic honking and disinterested feeding, until eventually he remembered his wings and managed a short-field takeoff over the fence.
Never a dull moment around here …
The final garden harvest included several carrots minus their leafy tops:
I sliced that top from a rather rotund carrot and the broad tooth marks suggest a large rodent. Mary found and blocked a tunnel under the fence, so we think it was a groundhog, rather than a rabbit, but we’ll never know the rest of the story.
The rest of the carrot was fine, so the unknown critter had mmmm good taste. Unfortunately, it sampled far too many root crops as it toured the buffet, leaving Mary’s root-cellared stockpile unusually low for our winter meals.
Mary persuaded the squash vine to run along the top of the garden fence, where it would get good sun, stay out from underfoot, and produce what we call aerosquash:
That bright green spot is a misplaced tree frog:
Well, maybe it’s the same frog we’ve seen elsewhere; it’s hard to tell with tree frogs.
Not everything green is froglike, though:
That one got dealt with … harshly.
We spotted a large bird on a walk to the Red Oaks Mill dam:
Despite the crappy image (Google Pixel 6a, digitally zoomed as tight as it’ll go), it’s a second-year juvenile Bald Eagle. It followed ahead of us along Rt 376, landing atop successive utility poles as we walked toward the intersection:
It sometimes perched on the (presumably) live primary wires, so a few kV of electric field doesn’t ruffle its feathers enough to worry about.
Its duties included keeping an eye on us down by the creek:
It eventually decided we needed no further supervision:
Earlier this year it swooped along our driveway and landed atop a utility pole in our yard, causing great concern among the songbirds and rodents.
Having an eagle in the neighborhood seems like a good sign …
This year brings an abundance of tree frogs:
Despite the snappy green color, they’re Gray Treefrogs:
Their camouflage works better in the wild than atop a trash can lid:
They are much smaller than you’d expect from their voices in the night:
We think the drought brings them closer to the house in search of water, as Mary collects rainwater in the trash cans where the frogs easily walk up & down the inside surfaces.
Mary decided the second round of sticky traps had collected enough Onion Maggot Flies (and other detritus) to warrant replacement, so this season will have three sets of cards.
The two sides of each card after about a month in the garden:
There are many flies that look (to me) like Onion Maggot Flies, in contrast with the first round of cards which had far fewer flies after about six weeks in the bed.
Some could be Cabbage Maggot Flies, but my fly ID hand is weak.
One of the frames screwed to a fence post suffered a non-fatal mishap, so I made and deployed a seventh trap. We’re pretty sure the garden has enough flies to go around.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 