Fall Strawberries

As if trying to make up for a poor Spring showing, our strawberries are coming back with gusto!

A Mother & Child, the Bruins

Actually bruin refers to brown bears but I couldn’t resist. I’ve been concerned about our drought conditions as it has decimated the wild berry crop, a favourite for bears at this time of year. However this mother and cub look to be in very good shape with long shiny fur and seemingly quite portly. They came by for a quick visit but weren’t very interested in the few remaining walnuts. All our fruit is picked so they moved off to the next feeding station.

Party Poop

The past few days the yard has been full of robins who are flocking together to begin their migration south. Things went very quiet when this Cooper’s Hawk showed up on Beulah the Chicken’s house – not a robin to be seen.

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Cookies Marching Off Into Infinity

Walking to Town (3 photos)

The road in front of our house was originally an old logging road. If we turn right at our driveway and drive into town it is about 3 miles (4.8 k). If we turn left and walk we can use the old logging road that is more like a trail nowadays. The first 2500 feet (762 m) is through beautiful coniferous and deciduous forest. At the end of the road/trail we hit pavement and another 2500 feet (762 m) takes us into the center of town.

Shrew(d) Hunter

I found this shrew hunting in a rotten stump. One of it’s favourite food are termites so this is a great time of year for this guy. Shrews are very hyper animals and always on the move. They don’t sleep more than a minute and their heartbeat is about 1200 beats per minute. A formidable four inch hunter!

Final Nesting Place

At dusk at this time of year we see lots of flying termite queens coming out of the forest and looking for a place to start a new nest. They will fly around for only a short time before landing and dropping their wings. Unfortunately these queens chose our birdbath as a landing spot. Termites are poor swimmers so all they accomplished was producing interesting patterns and texture on the water surface. Thanks to ‘hernibs’ for pointing them out to me!