This update has a wildlife theme:
Attached is a photo of one of the barn owl nest boxes I put together on Wednesday. A barn owl female will continue to lay eggs while incubating so will have different size owlets in the nest with her. The male may need to catch up to 25 mice to feed her and her young during the peak time she is still in the nest box. We’ll be fortunate if a pair of barn owls choose to move into our nest box as we’d minimize the number of rodents around and mice are a major host of the tick that carry the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Owls, like some children I know, generally swallow their food whole without chewing so our poultry and other farm animals are to large for them to bother. I’ll put one of the boxes in the far end of the indoor riding arena.
We’ve been hearing the “zeet…zeet….zeet…” call of male woodcocks every evening lately followed by the sound of their courting flight. You could probably hear and see this display and still observe safe social distancing if you parked on the road near the fields on Muschopauge Road over by our orchard/bee hives before dusk some evening.
The coyotes have also been howling lately. Their mating season should be ending soon with pups being born in April and May.
I’ve also attached a photo my trail camera captured last week of a deer down by Muschopauge Pond across the street. I can’t tell if it is a male or female because the bucks lose their antlers due to day length and reduced testosterone levels in late winter and won’t have started to grow back yet.
Lastly is a photo of my favorite wildlife, Ann, bright and chipper working at her dining room “office” desk at 7:30 this morning.
Looks like a sunny day today. Should melt the rest of the snow we got on Tuesday. Time for me to go out and spend time socially distancing doing chores…
