Leaf Hoppers and Tree Choppers

We had what I would consider a fairly mild storm this week, but it was enough to knock down one of our giant dead trees.  It fell into the pond, taking another tree with it.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but the tree was huge!  It stretched almost the entire width of the pond.  The first few days, the beavers worked on the bark.  Beavers love to eat bark and the soft layer beneath.

Today, we woke up to discover the tree completely gone! 

How they sectioned and hauled off that gigantic tree in one night is a mystery to me.  They are amazing creatures!

Speaking of amazing creatures, Todd found an ant migration this week.  It was at dusk, and millions of ants were carrying eggs from a depressed spot in the ground to an existing colony location by the side of the house, a good 50 feet distance.  Since the light was so poor, I couldn't get a clear picture, but here is the general idea:

We were transfixed by the sight of these tiny, determined creatures, marching with a single-minded focus to their new home.  Today, they swarmed.  This well-established colony of ants produced sexually mature males, which will mate with the flying queen when she appears, and then die. 

More amazing...this ant dragging a lacewing insect three times its size, and so quickly that I was barely able to get a shot!

Spiders are out now, too.  This common orb weaver secures her prey...

...before climbing up to repair a tear in her web.

A beautiful yellow garden spider hangs on our back deck.

 It's an ingenious place to set up shop, right by a set of deck lights.  There's a never-ending supply of moths and other small flying insects.

We're hearing cicadas now, and seeing their discarded shells, too.

I don't usually see post-molt adults, but one attached itself to our sun room screen yesterday:

Right in line with the flowering of our front sun perennials...

...come the leaf hoppers.  Aren't they beautiful?

Here's a velvet buck in the yard, so called for the fuzzy growth on his antlers that will shed by fall.

And there he goes!

Finally, some sad news.  This is the last  picture of Little Miss's cardinal chick.

He was growing rapidly and feeding frequently, and then one day, he was just gone.  It was much too early for him to leave the nest, and I didn't find him on the ground beneath it, so I can only conclude that he fell prey to one of his many predators (snakes, owls, raccoons, etc.). 

I'll keep an eye out for other interesting things around the yard.  There's always something going on.  Have a great week!

Leave It To Beavers

We've had some pretty spectacular downpours so far this summer. 

It's slowed our progress of cleaning up the fireplace area somewhat, but we've entered a relatively dry period now.  The wood is drying and will soon be able to be cut and burned.

The nice thing, though, is that Todd and I have been able to spend some time there, playing Scrabble or chit-chatting after supper.  It was on one of those days when I discovered...we have beavers.

Two adults have set up shop across the pond.  I rarely see the female, but every single day at dusk, rain or shine, the male is out.  He stations himself at the foot of a downed tree and is very busy there, doing something.  He's an amazingly large beaver and we've named him Augustus, a fitting name for such a majestic creature.  Did you know that adult beavers can weigh as much as 60 pounds? 

He works busily at his log for a while, swims a few leisurely laps, and repeats.  Sometimes I'll startle him, and he slaps his tail loudly on the water's surface and dives.  But he's a pretty laid-back beaver.  It isn't long before he returns to work.

Last week, I saw a little one next to him.

That's right...our beavers have babies!  I've only seen two so far, and again, there's one that's much more visible than the other.  I've named her Pepita.

She's very shy, but also very inquisitive.  I just love watching their little faces!

We've discovered other creatures down there, too.  Barred owls have long been making their presence known here, with their "Who cooks for you?" calls.  But they're rarely seen.  However, we have a nesting pair with a fledgling that we've started seeing almost every night!  They've flown right at us and perched above our heads on low-hanging branches.  They seem awfully brazen, and we've hesitated to approach them!  The juvenile is the talker.  I usually hear him first with his loud begging call.  The parents aren't far behind...flapping from branch to branch, perching on fences and posts, and sometimes landing in the yard and surveying the landscape that way.  So many great opportunities, and I've never had my big camera with me when they've been out.  I've gotten a few blurry pictures through glass, though:

The crazy thing is that these big, powerful birds have a much smaller predator:  a mob of crows.  An owl can kill a single crow easily, but just like the case with zombies: one alone isn't an issue, but a big, worked-up group of crows is another story. We have a pair of crows that have claimed our yard as their territory.

They harass hawks during the day and owls in the early evening.  I've seen them chase an owl from tree to tree, then over the pond, until he was out of their territory!  It's pretty remarkable. 

Speaking of remarkable, and birds...Little Miss has hatched an egg.

I wasn't sure at first, but the other egg is still there.  It just hasn't hatched yet.

Hopefully it will hatch soon!

Meanwhile, our more familiar animals have been enjoying themselves at our rodent-proof feeders...ahem...

...and there's plenty of feline relaxation going on in the shade!

Hope you're keeping cool, too, in this hot weather.  Have a great week!

Sarlaac-ing in Skills

I love the dependability of our wildlife friends here.  Several days ago Todd spotted a Southern Toad (Anaxyrus terrestris) sitting at the entrance of his hole down by the pond.  He's there every single day.  I always go down for a peek. 

A cardinal pair is nesting in an azalea under our sunroom.  Every day, I take a peek at "Little Miss" sitting on her eggs...

We are officially forbidden from using those stairs so we won't disturb the expectant parents!

Every day, of course, we see the familiar cast of characters:

The geese swim down to our end of the pond every day, bringing their little goslings. 

I'm following their development with great interest.  Even since last week, they've changed.  They're molting - more feathers and less baby fluff.  Their heads are bigger and are taking on the classic goose slope:

It's such a treat to watch them.

Every time I go down the deck stairs, I see the same Venusta Orchard spider, waiting patiently for her next meal:

They all start to feel like old friends, and it makes me happy to walk around and see them in their daily routines - just like me. 

Borga likes being outside too:

Not the cats, though.  Oh, it's fine for a while, and then it's:

That's what I call a kitten caboose!

In other news, I took my first stab at making a Star Wars cake recently.  This is a Sarlaac.  It's some kind of tentacled worm creature that lives in a sandy pit, catching prey in a way reminiscent of an ant lion (video here).  I got the idea from Yummy Crumble, whose cake turned out way better than mine.  But anyway...I baked a basic bundt cake.

I hand-cut the Sarlaac shapes in basic sugar cookie dough with a knife.

I frosted the cake and coated the frosting with crushed gingersnaps to mimic sand.

I gave the Sarlaac frosting teeth...

...and popped the parts into the bundt cake center, anchored with frosting.

I didn't think the tentacles looked right, so I ate them.  ;)  They were very tasty!

Finally, I went to a flea market this weekend and found this old wooden trough with several holes through its center.  I'm not sure what it was originally used for, but I had some small glasses that fit perfectly into the holes.  I pulled up some of our groundcover for the glasses.  I'm not sure what this stuff is, but it lasts FOREVER and in a darkened room, too.

It makes a nice centerpiece, I think!

Have a great week!