Flock Friday for October 30

Welcome to Flock Friday. This week, I am highlighting 20 chicken-related pictures plus 12 duck pictures, along with a summary GIF of 59 candidates.

What’s a more fun way to start the week than mucking out the chicken coop:

Mucking out chicken coop

Fresh bedding in the nesting boxes:

Mucking out chicken coop

And a pile on the floor for the chickens to scratch and spread:

Mucking out chicken coop

A duck interlude — Betty in the grasses:

Betty in the grasses

It’s a little warmer now, but earlier in the week it was freezing overnight, resulting in a frozen waterer:

Frozen waterer

The hose wand is actually dripping water to top up the waterer, which is what caused the big icicles (and helps stop the hose from freezing):

Frozen waterer

GIF of dripping icicles (as you may have previously seen on my personal blog):

Frozen waterer GIF

On afternoon rounds, the chickens waiting for me:

Chickens waiting for me

They then all rush into the new coop to wait for treats:

Chickens waiting for treats

Thusly:

Chickens with treats

Ducks in a leafy pond:

Ducks

Also previously posted to my personal blog, photos and GIFs of ducks flapping wings:

Ducks flapping wings

Ducks flapping wings GIF

Ducks flapping wings

Ducks flapping wings GIF

Ducks on the lawn, hunting for worms and such (I like the peek of the white gazebo in the background):

Ducks on lawn

A bunch of pictures of chickens; they’re all pretty much done with their molting and feather regrowth now:

Chickens

Chicken

Chickens

Chicken

Chickens

Pecking at my boot:

Chickens

More pictures of ducks on the lawn (the grass is a bit long, but I’m probably not going to mow again till next spring):

Ducks on lawn

Finally, the aforementioned summary GIF, with the above and lots more photos from this week:

Summary GIF

Maple fall foliage

Fall is a colorful time of year, especially from the various maple trees we have around the homestead.

Here is a coral bark maple by the front of the shop, that turns all sorts of interesting colors; right now a sampler as some leaves are still green, some yellowing, and a few red:

Tree

A big maple near the fountain garden is well on its way to losing leaves:

Tree

Its leaves cover the ground all around it:

Leaves

Plus decorating shrubby trees:

Shrubby tree

An October Glory red maple near the pool area; not a great picture, it can really glow in certain light:

Tree

As a bonus, some non-maple leaves covering the pond for the ducks to swim through:

Leafy pond and ducks

Flock Friday for October 23

Fabulously freezing Flock Friday, friends! (The temperature was below freezing overnight.)

28 degrees F overnight

A shot from the new coop cam of three chickens on their favorite roost by the window:

Chickens

A GIF of a fourth flying from the other roosts, and knocking the camera off:

Chickens GIF

A freeze-frame of landing on top of another chicken, causing that chaos:

Chickens

The camera is magnetically attached to a metal plate wedged under the window screen; here it’s just hanging by its wire:

Camera

The ducks on the back lawn, rooting for bugs:

Ducks on lawn

A time-lapse GIF of a chicken flying up to the roost and back down again:

Chickens GIF

Chickens hanging out on top of logs etc:

Chickens

A bunch more pics of the chickens:

Chickens

Kiwi is still looking quite scruffy, but you can see the new feathers coming in:

Chickens

Ditto with Buffy:

Chickens

I had a cunning idea, to make it easier to see if the pop doors are open or closed in the dark: I added reflective tape on the pop door:

Reflective tape on pop door

And on the outside:

Reflective tape on pop door

The old coop too (the horizontal one acts as an extra indicator, only being visible when the door is closed):

Reflective tape on pop door

Here are roosting chickens again, with the light on:

Roosting chickens

A little spooky after the light goes off (it’s on a timer):

Roosting chickens

As it gets darker, the night-vision of the cam turns on:

Roosting chickens

The pop door closed; now clearly visible via the reflective strips:

Roosting chickens

I can see the state of the door outside too, via the reflective strips:

Coop outside

In the old coop, door open:

Roosting chickens

Door closed:

Roosting chickens

The ducks have recently been hanging out on the bank to the left of the pond deck:

Ducks

It started raining, so the ducks came up to the lawn to hunt for worms that come to the surface during precipitation:

Ducks on lawn

A GIF of a Rouen running up the bank, using her wings to assist:

Ducks GIF

Sassa doing the same:

Ducks on lawn

She kept on going:

Ducks GIF

Exploring more of the lawn:

Ducks on lawn

Aerial photos in October

I flew my drone today; the first time since the end of August. Previous flights this year included June, April, and March. This time, some nice fall foliage.

A view of the shop, veggie garden, chicken runs, back lawn, pond, flowerbeds, etc:

Veggie garden, back lawn, pond, flowerbeds, etc

Closer to the pond:

Pond

One reason for this flight was to get an aerial shot of the path to the duck house; I have a hose used to fill the duck’s waterer, which is also arranged as a possible edge of the path. Hard to see in this picture, though:

Pond path area

Over to the flowerbeds; you can see a fallen tree from the big storm that contributed to the wildfires earlier (we’ll cut it up and remove it soon):

Flowerbeds

Closer:

Flowerbeds and downed tree

Part of the field and flowerbeds. The long grass in the field looks like nice soft velvet:

Field and flowerbeds

From higher up:

Field and flowerbeds

I landed the drone to change the battery, then took off again; Rory wasn’t thrilled about that:

Rory

Finally, a few shots of trees, to capture the fall foliage:

Tree

Trees

Pond and trees

Flock Friday for October 16

Some hummingbirds, ducks, chickens, a jay, and even a cat. Plus some sad news. It’s Flock Friday.

Seven hungry hummingbirds on a rainy day:

Hummingbirds

Did you see the slow motion video of the hummingbirds?

A time-lapse animated GIF of ducks having breakfast:

Duck breakfast GIF

Ducks on the edge of the lawn:

Ducks

Sassa standing tall and stretching her wings:

Sassa

Ducks on the lawn; I love Rémy’s green head:

Ducks

On the lawn:

Ducks

A wide-angle shot of the ducks, with the brown gazebo and two chicken coops in the background:

Wide angle ducks

Sassa flapping her wings again:

Ducks

A cheeky Steller’s Jay in the duck house:

Steller's Jay

Ducks in the pond:

Ducks

Concluding my recent saga on the ChickenGuard pop door opener for the new chicken coop, I bought and installed a replacement unit, so it now works reliably, at last. While this has been quite a hassle, I’m very pleased with the customer service of the manufacturer — they were very responsive in trying to help, and even sent a front panel (with electronics) and another motor, at no charge, even after I told them I replaced it, so I’d have a spare:

New ChickenGuard opener

Speaking of the chickens, here are some pictures of damp and scraggly chickens, still going through their annual molting:

Chickens

Chicken

Chickens

Chicken

Chickens

Merida in a nesting box:

Chicken in nesting box

Back to the ducks; you may have seen some of these on my personal blog:

Ducks

Clara showing off her wing:

Ducks

Ducks on the lawn:

Ducks

Sven stretching:

Ducks

Heading back to the pond:

Ducks

I mentioned sad news… it’s Sven. I discovered him floating dead at the back of the pond yesterday morning. Looking at my cam footage, it looks like he died on Wednesday. No sign of injury or attack, so my best guess is that he may have choked on something. So now we’re down to 12 ducks; 3 male, 9 female. We have that many to allow for attrition, but it still makes us sad when we lose one.

Think seven hummingbirds was a lot? How about ten:

Hummingbirds

A GIF from that Live Photo; can you spot all ten?

Hummingbirds GIF

I moved one of the cameras in the new coop:

Coop cam

Did you see the time-lapse of a day in the coop from that vantage point?

Ducks in the rain:

Ducks

Paladout investicated the duck house:

Cat in duck house

Eww, that isn’t food:

Cat in duck house

The ducks were very curious too:

Cat in duck house

Finally, a summary GIF of 116 photos from this week (excluding the GIFs and a few others). Including as a link instead of embedding, since it’s fairly large.

Flock Friday for October 9: the summary GIF

This morning I included a massive GIF summary of 248 pictures from the past week in my Flock Friday post, but it broke loading that post, so I split it out into this separate post.

It might take a while to load, depending on your internet speed, and at one second per picture, will take about four minutes to play. It includes a bunch of pictures you may have seen before in the duckling posts and above, but also many unique ones not previously shown.

Since the GIF is so large (152 MB), it also seems to break the caching server of my site. So here is a direct link to it, instead of displaying it inline. Click that to view it, if you dare.

(Moral of the story: a GIF with hundreds of pictures is probably not a great idea.)

Flock Friday for October 9: the ducks

Welcome to the first Flock Friday with all of the ducks together! I have so many duck pictures, there aren’t any chicken ones this time — I’ll make sure to include some next week.

There were 248 pictures this week… so I picked 30 not-previously-published ones to highlight in this post, and included the rest in a big summary GIF at the end, if you’re interested. (Edit: I’ve moved the GIF to a separate post, to avoid loading issues.)

As mentioned in the last daily duckling post yesterday, you can review the duckling posts in chronological order via the tags “ducklings 2020” and “ducklings 2020 again”, if that’s a thing you want to do.

As a brief review, we started the past week with the new ducks still enclosed in the duck house and run:

New ducks

A week ago I removed the fence, allowing them to join the older ducks in the pond:

New ducks

Which they did very quickly:

New ducks

Here’s another shot of their first swim in the pond:

New ducks

Sassa and the older ducks:

Sassa and older ducks

Betty and Sassa, back before she cleaned herself up:

Betty and Sassa

Some ducks by the (currently off) waterfall:

Ducks by waterfall

At the edge of the lawn:

By lawn

The two groups of ducks are becoming more integrated over time, but started out mostly separated:

Two groups

Betty and the new ducks enjoying leafy treats:

Leafy treats

The old position of the food bowl, before I moved it into the duck house:

Food bowl

I added a new island to the pond, and cleaned the fountain; I captured a few pictures while standing in the pond (see the GIF for more, including a couple selfies):

In the pond

I mucked out the duck house; now that they’re only going in there to eat, I shouldn’t need to do that as often:

Mucked out duck house

The boys:

The boys

I discovered that the fake heron that was on the bank went for a swim; someone must have knocked it off. It was supposed to discourage the real heron from visiting the pond, though didn’t really work:

Fake heron

Sven flapping his wings:

Sven wings

Relaxing amongst some grasses:

Amongst grasses

The boys again:

The boys

All the islands occupied:

On islands

Betty:

Betty

Rooting in the lawn for tasty bugs; unlike chickens, ducks don’t really damage the lawn, just a nice bit of aeration:

On the lawn

In the pond:

In the pond

Mealworm treats:

In the pond

One chicken-related thing — ChickenGuard sent me a replacement motor to try to solve the issues I’ve been having with the opener on the new coop. But it arrived with a broken wire! Oops. So I gave up and ordered a new unit. This morning, they said they’ll send a new circuit board as a goodwill gesture, so I’ll have a spare. It’s frustrating when a device doesn’t work, but it is three years old, and I’m generally satisfied with the devices and their customer service. For the convenience of not having to manually open and close the pop doors every day, it’s worth it even if I have to replace them every few years. (And their 3-year warranty is very generous, especially when they send free replacement parts when just outside that period.)

ChickenGuard motor

The ducks in the pond, looking towards the hidden path (you can see a peek of the white gazebo; that’s the entrance to the path):

In the pond

The reverse view, from the hidden path:

In the pond

All the ducks:

In the pond

Edit: I’ve moved the GIF to a separate post, as it seemed to cause some loading issues.

More ducklings day 58: one big happy flock

This is the last of the daily posts concentrating on the new ducks. Starting with tomorrow’s Flock Friday post, I will include pictures of all of the ducks together, as one big happy flock.

The older and newer ducks still mostly stick to themselves at present, though do hang out together as well, like this; all 13 ducks in the leafy pond:

All the ducks in the pond

Over time, I expect they will become more and more integrated.

Everyone enjoying mealworm treats:

Mealworm treats

A bunch of pictures of the new ducks from the hidden path on the west side of the pond:

The new ducks

Duck butt:

The new ducks

I hope you’ve enjoyed watching these ducks grow up from one day old to eight weeks old. They grow so fast! Stay tuned for the weekly Flock Friday posts, to watch how they and the older ducks get on, plus the chickens and wild birds.

If you want to relive the fun, check out the “ducklings 2020 again” tag on this blog to view all of the posts for the newest ducklings in chronological order. And if that isn’t enough, the “ducklings 2020” tag will show all of the posts from earlier in the year.