GIF

Cat update for week ending September 5

As any good calendar will tell you, the day after Flock Friday is inevitably Caturday. Weird how a day of the week is named after cats, but they were treated as gods in ancient times, so who am I to argue?! Makes as much sense as naming a day after a ball of gas.

Anyway… here’s Porcini:

Porcini

Paladout:

Paladout

Two cats inside:

Two cats inside

Comfy Poppy:

Poppy

Poppa:

Poppa

Spud jumping up to the breezeway cabin:

Jumping up

Porcini relaxing in the kitchen garden:

Porcini

A closer look:

Porcini

A few minutes later, I wanted to go out to close up the duck house, and Porcini was sitting outside the door:

Porcini

(I cracked the door, and she retreated.)

Spud emerging from the breezeway cabin:

Spud

An animated GIF of Spud stretching and heading off to work:

GIF of breezeway

I put a spare camera in the back of the shop to watch Pansy’s food and litter boxes; this is when she first saw it:

Pansy

Poppy:

Poppy

Bella chilling:

Bella

Pommie, Poppa, Poppy, and Bella (left-to-right) by the cat house:

Pommie, Poppa, Poppy, Bella

Pommie, Poppa, Bella, Poppy; Poppa was feeling a bit ganged up upon, but the girls were just saying hi; I continue to be amazed how well they get on with him:

Pommie, Poppa, Bella, Poppy

Queue for food:

Feeder

A GIF of that time, with Bella, joined by Poppa, then Poppy, and Pommie:

GIF of cat house

Pansy waiting for her dinner on the white bed in the center of the picture:

Pansy

Food dispensing, she pops up:

Pansy

And comes to eat it:

Pansy

Finally, Bella and Spud hanging out in the kitchen garden (with some reflections from the window):

Bella and Spud

More ducklings day 23

It’s a hot day today, so I went out to the duck house a few times to refresh their pool water… so I ended up with 40 photos. And just for fun, I’m going to share all of them! But don’t worry, I picked out the better ones as usual, and put a GIF of all of them at the end. So you can look through the better ones and skip the GIF, or jump to the GIF and skip the rest, or enjoy both. Or skip the whole post if you like. You do you.

Leafy treats:

Leafy treats

Leafy treats

As I showed in a video this morning, today I held the kale and let them pull off bits, which worked out well:

David feeding treats

Crouching like that for quite a while wasn’t super comfortable, so on my next visit I added a concrete block with a kneeling pad to sit on, while I refilled their pool and spent time with them (the kneeling pad is mainly to protect my clothing from duckling poop; I don’t leave that in the run):

David filling pool

Ducklings in the pool:

Ducklings in pool

Duckling in pool

Ducklings

A moth on the duck house:

Moth

Lots of splashing:

Ducklings in pool

Later, when the temperature was over 90° F, I used the misting setting on the hose nozzle to help cool off the ducklings, especially the Blue Swedish, who doesn’t go in the pool:

Misting ducklings

Here’s that GIF of all of today’s duckling pics:

GIF of duckling pics

Aerial photos in August

I flew my drone over the homestead yesterday. Interesting to compare to when I did so in June and back in April and March.

Let’s begin with an angled aerial shot of the apple trees in the field, the flowerbeds, pond, back lawn, and veggie garden:

Aerial of flowerbeds, pond, etc

The reverse angle, with the shop, hoop house, veggie garden, back lawn, pond, and flowerbeds:

Veggie garden, back lawn, pond

Closer to the pond, with the ducks visible; they weren’t sure what to make of the strange noisy bird hovering and flying nearby:

Pond

Another angle of the pond and ducks:

Pond

And another:

Pond

GIF of flying upwards from the pond:

GIF of pond zoom

One more from lower down; I think this is the first time I’ve hovered over the pond:

Pond and ducks

The flowerbeds and white gazebo:

Flowerbeds

Beehives, greenhouse, veggie garden, chicken coops, hoop house, back of shop:

Beehives, veggie garden, hoop house

Veggie garden:

Veggie garden

Hops taking over the top of the berry cage:

Hops

The berry cage and weather wind speed and direction sensors:

Berry cage and weather sensors

Mount Hood is looking a lot less snowy at this time of year:

Mount Hood

Zoomed in on Mount Hood:

Mount Hood

Cat update for week ending August 29

Welcome to Caturday! Cuteness! Paladin! Raccoons! Levitating cat! A random GIF! And more!

Dinner queue:

Dinner queue

Porcini:

Porcini

Pommie in her favorite place:

Pommie

Pommie and Bella at the cat feeder:

Pommie and Bella

Paladin watches Bella on the driveway:

Paladin watches Bella on the driveway

Bella is curious, and approached:

Bella is curious

Paladin and Bella curiously watching each other:

Paladin watches Bella

A closer look at Bella:

Bella

Pommie was comfy in her cabin, then raccoons approached; she hissed at them:

Pommie hissing at raccoons

The raccoons circled around behind, and Pommie wisely retreated; you can see raccoon eyes between the cabins:

Pommie retreating from raccoons

There was a mother and at least one kit:

Raccoons

Pommie was happy to go back later, though:

Pommie

On a hot day, Pepper on her non-heated bed on top of shelves in the shop (there’s a heating pad on the nearby blue bed for cold days):

Pepper in the shop

Spud thought he heard something in the breezeway:

Spud

Spud in his cabin:

Spud

Bella walking through the breezeway while Spud is sleeping in late:

Bella and Spud

Levitating cat! A frame of mid-run through the breezeway:

Running cat

Breakfasttime:

Breakfasttime

Dinnertime:

Dinnertime

Sparkletime — a GIF of the dappled sun through the trees by the cat house, which makes it very hard to spot cat activity when reviewing recordings around midday, as the camera is pretty much constantly registering motion (it does look nice, though):

Sparkletime

More ducklings day 17

We had Flock Friday this morning; now it’s time to check on the newest additions, the ducklings.

It’s hard to find a non-blurry picture from the morning, so let’s lean into the motion with a GIF:

GIF of ducklings

Here are a couple decent shots:

Ducklings with treats

Ducklings

Spotted on the cam around lunchtime:

Ducklings

Less movement after lunch, when I went out to open the vent:

Ducklings

Ducklings

Ducklings

Ducklings

Flock Friday for August 28

Welcome to another Flock Friday!

Let’s begin with an animated GIF of ducks and fish at night:

GIF of ducks and fish at night

Ducks on the pond bank from different angles:

Ducks on the bank

Ducks on the bank

Ducks on the bank

Some ducks headed up the ramp to the duck house, even though the pop door is closed:

Ducks on the ramp

You can just make them out from the other cam too:

Ducks on the ramp

Ducks on the pond:

Ducks on the pond

Night ducks:

Night ducks

Chickens waiting for treats:

Chickens waiting for treats

Chickens with treats:

Chickens with treats

Chickens with treats

Chickens with treats

Chickens with treats

Chickens with treats

Chickens with treats

Chickens with treats

Chickens with treats

Finally, the ducks on the opposite side of the duck house from normal:

Ducks

More ducklings day 14

The ducklings are two weeks old today. They’ve grown a lot already, but still have several more weeks of growth ahead of them before they can join the ducks in the pond.

As mentioned yesterday, I introduced them to the paint tray pool a couple of days early, and left it in the duck house full-time, a change from previous ducklings, but I think safe enough.

They took advantage of that with some night wading:

Night wading

In the morning, I refreshed the water, then offered to hand-feed some lettuce. They were hesitant at first:

Treat?

But soon approached, and took turns grabbing it out of my hand:

Treat?

I then tossed in some more, and they enjoyed eating them from the tray:

Treats

Treats in the pool

Everyone in the pool (did you see the video?). They won’t be able to do this for long, as they continue to grow, but in two or three weeks time I’ll introduce them to the more spacious kiddie pool:

Everyone in the pool

An animated GIF of cute little flapping wings:

GIF of flapping wings

Flapping tiny wings:

Flapping wings

Flapping wings

Eating from the EcoGlow:

Eating

Fresh water for afternoon pool time:

In the pool

More ducklings day 11

Today the ducklings figured out the feeder tube; hard to believe that they’re already big enough to reach it. Check out a couple of GIFs of them eating from the tube!

Here’s the first GIF, from the cam footage:

GIF of duckings eating from tube

A cam shot of that:

Two duckings eating from tube

It’s fun to step in the dish:

Ducklings

Watching me:

Ducklings

Eating from the tube:

Ducklings

Some more close-ups:

Ducklings

Ducklings

Ducklings

Another GIF of a ducking eating from the tube while I was there:

GIF of ducking eating from tube

Flock Friday for August 21

For Flock Friday this week, more sad news, I’m afraid. One of the two Rouen ducks went missing on Sunday night. I don’t know what happened to him — I saw him on Sunday, and haven’t seen him since, not even a body or signs of a struggle. So if a raccoon or something grabbed him, it must have dragged him somewhere else.

Anyway, on with the pictures. Here are the ducks messily eating, with one of the Rouens in the foreground:

Ducks eating

Ducks eating

Ducks by the duck house, and (not really visible) ducklings inside:

Ducks by duck house

A GIF of one of the Rouens exiting the pond:

GIF of exiting pond

Splashing to cool off on a hot day:

Splashing to cool off

It was very hot (mid-90’s) over the weekend, so we gave the chickens a frozen treat of corn and peas to help them cool off:

Chickens with frozen treats

Chickens with frozen treats

Chickens with frozen treats

Chickens with frozen treats

Ducks eating again:

Ducks eating

Camilla snuck into the veggie garden when I opened the gate:

Chicken in the veggie garden

Chicken in the veggie garden

Ducks with treats; the last photo of both Rouens:

Ducks with treats

On Sunday, the chickens with another frozen treat:

Chickens with frozen treats

Chickens with frozen treats

Looking at the pond cam, 8 ducks visible on Sunday evening:

8 ducks

The next morning, only 7 ducks; I couldn’t see any evidence of what happened to the second Rouen:

7 ducks

We had two names for the Rouens, Rémy and Raoul, but hadn’t decided on which was which. But now that we only have one, his name is Rémy. RIP Raoul.

Seven ducks eating:

Ducks eating

I went to the feed store for more duckling food. I’m well stocked now; a couple of spare bags of duckling food (the red ones at the back), plus many bags of chicken food, fish food, and mealworms, in the storage area of the new chicken coop (I might need to add another shelf):

Duck and chicken food

Sleepy ducks:

Sleepy ducks

Night ducks:

Night ducks

Ducks on the bank:

Ducks on the bank

This morning, a visit by a blue heron:

Heron and ducks

Heron and ducks