I waded into the pond to clean and start the pump. While I was there, I captured this video of the ducks swimming around me. Two minutes of cuteness; listen to their quacking!
Ducks
Flock Friday for March 20
This week, the ducks walked across the back lawn to meet me a few times, the chickens got their favorite treat, the heron visited again, and more.
Oh, and for anyone who doesn’t follow my personal blog, Dejus: because everyone could use a bit more joy at present, I’m posting a moment of cuteness every day. Which will include additional duck and chicken pictures not posted here, plus feral and pet cats, our dog Rory, and other cute things from around the homestead. So you might enjoy following the Dejus blog, or its RSS feed, or cross-posts on Micro.blog, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
Anyway, on with today’s Flock Friday. Here are the ducks in their house:
The ducks on a frosty back lawn:
Eating mealworms next to the duck house:
Chickens having a dust bath in the veggie garden:
The ducks on the back lawn again:
Quacking and walking back to their house:
A couple animated GIFs of the ducks on the path to the duck house (different than the one posted on my personal blog):
Chickens staring at me, waiting for treats:
It was worth the wait; rice is their all-time favorite treat, after mealworms:
Another frosty morning, and again the ducks running over the lawn to see me:
Quacking at me by the chicken runs:
Did you see the YouTube video of them following me to the duck house and getting treats?
A heron coming in for a landing:
Heron in the pond, watched by the ducks:
Finally, since Jenn hasn’t been going to work due to COVID-19, and the chickens are laying about a dozen eggs per day at present, we’re accumulating lots of eggs. Here are four dozen, washed and ready to make into a heap of breakfast burritos this morning:
We’ll work on thinking of other meals to eat up the eggs. Let me know if you have any recommendations.
Stay safe, stay home, everyone!
Ducks following me down the path to the duck house, and getting treats
A video of our ducks following me on the path to the duck house, quacking at me for treats, then silence as they gobble them up.
Aerial snow
We recently had a couple days of light snow… a bit unusual for March, but not unheard of.
I always enjoy taking pictures of snow, but now that I have a nice drone, I was able to take some aerial photos of it, too. The only downside was I needed to wait for the snow to stop falling, since the drone isn’t waterproof.
I’m looking forward to next winter if we get several inches of snow, for even better pics, but this is a nice start.
Let’s begin with an angled view of the snow on the flowerbeds, pond, back lawn, and chicken runs:
A top-down view of the field, flowerbeds, and pond:
A bunch of snowy trees in the mist:
Just below the cloud layer:
More snow-tipped trees:
Our tallest tree with the double trunk (as featured in a recent post):
From lower down:
Not from the drone, the gazebo and grove (I love that you can’t tell a difference in quality between the drone and iPhone cameras):
The next day, it snowed a bit more, about an inch, so I flew again to capture that:
Snowy trees:
Back on the ground, walking to the duck house:
The daffodils weren’t enjoying the snow:
I hope you enjoyed those snowy pics as much as I did.
Flock Friday bonus: GIFs of snow on the pond
It’s snowing! Here are two animated GIFs of snow over the pond, the first without ducks, the second with:
Flock Friday for March 13
This week, I bet you could use pictures of cute chickens and ducks, eh?
The chickens going after treats; notice Camilla on top of Merida:
The ducks coming over the lawn to greet me:
Following me down the path to the duck house:
Eating mealworm treats on the bank by the duck house:
Two chickens in a nesting box:
I feel like she’s giving me a disapproving look:
A bunch of chickens in the old coop:
I’ve got a couple months of chicken feed stacked up:
The ducks again:
Flock Friday for March 6
A couple of times this week, the ducks walked across the back lawn to visit me by the chicken coop.
Firstly, you probably saw a couple of posts with aerial shots from my new drone; here’s one more of the pond and ducks:
On Monday morning, while I was doing my usual rounds to give the chickens and ducks treats, and refill the bird feeders, the ducks crossed the back lawn to come see me by the chicken coop:
The ducks by the chicken run:
After I left, they followed me onto the driveway, which is the furthest I’ve seen them from the pond:
I encouraged them to go back to the pond:
A couple of days later, they joined me on the back lawn again:
Did you see the YouTube video of them? Make sure you turn on the sound; fun to hear them quacking at me.
Once again, I encouraged them back to the pond, for their safety:
A view from the hidden path:
Ducks by the chicken run
A couple times this week, the ducks have left the pond to come see me on my morning rounds.
No doubt the first of many posts of aerial photos
As mentioned on my personal blog, I recently bought a new drone: a DJI Mavic Mini. It’s a huge improvement over the old Parrot one I’ve had for years, and a couple of smaller toy ones I’ve tried. I haven’t really wanted to use those, as they lack a GPS to help navigation, so tend to drift away without actively managing the positioning, and the cameras are low resolution and fixed in place, so photos and video are poor quality.
While this new drone is very lightweight and lacks more pro features like course plotting, following, object avoidance, etc, the Mavic Mini does have a GPS to anchor it in the sky and let it return to the takeoff location, a gimbal for the camera to keep it straight and steady, and a camera resolution (4000×2250) comparable to modern iPhones (4032×3024).
See that Dejus post for pictures of the drone while setting it up. Here are a couple of pictures of it in the sky:
I probably won’t keep the blade guards on long-term, but thought that they’d be helpful “training wheels” while I practice flying it.
Anyway, the drone will be fun when we go on trips, where drone flight is allowed (which is quite restricted). But I expect I’ll mostly use it to take aerial photos of our homestead.
So you can expect more posts like this one over time. Let’s take off, starting with a top-down view of our fenced veggie garden and berry cage:
From a lower angle:
The old chicken run (you can see some chickens by the hole in the fence between the veggie garden and their run; I don’t think they were fans of the strange noisy bird hovering above; it sounds like an angry swarm of bees):
Turning a little to the right, the new chicken run and coop:
Top-down to both chicken runs:
The pond:
Another shot of the pond, with the pond deck in the foreground, and duck house on the right:
Another angle of the pond:
Flowerbeds on the left, back lawn on the right, pond in the background:
Flowerbeds, with the white and brown gazebos visible:
Flowerbeds and white gazebo:
Closer to the gazebo:
A top-down view of the flowerbeds (could be useful for planning planting):
I hope you enjoyed seeing this unusual perspective on some of the homestead. I’m sure I’ll show other angles and changing seasons in future posts. Let me know if you liked this!
Flock Friday for February 28
On this Flock Friday, closeups of ducks, aerial pictures of the pond, and more.
Firstly, the ducks in the grasses next to the pond. I’m not sure if they’re rooting for bugs, or looking for places to nest. Probably both:
A couple token pictures of some chickens:
The chicken feeder jug in the new coop, freshly filled:
There are still about seven chickens roosting above the nesting boxes, but recently a couple more have joined Lola on the main roosts:
Colorful boiled eggs in the fridge:
A bunch of pictures of the ducks:
Closeups of Bert:
And Gert:
The ducks roosting on the pot supporting the fountain (which is currently off) at midnight:
A couple aerial pictures of our pond and surrounds:
