They are really, really smart. Of all the wild animals we have to contend with crows are the most difficult to deal with. Every year it's a battle keeping them out of our fruits and vegetables.
Well, they call where I live a temperate climate as well. I think “temperate” is code for hot summers and cold winters. Our record highs were mostly set in the 1930’s-50’s. The record for the state is 118°F set in 1934. Where I live the summer climate cooled significantly after the early 1950’s when irrigation become common. Summer temps that were commonly 100-112°F dropped to upper 90’s
Speaking of fruits and vegetables, here's a photo I took last Spring of the Forsythia, Quinces and a few Daffodils in our side yard (foreground) and part of our kitchen garden beyond it. The yellow flowers you see in the background are from some collard greens we allowed to flower for the bees and butterflies. I deliberately shot this with maximum zoom to compress the depth of field and bring the background up towards the foreground. Right now those beds are full of various tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and acorn squash. We're also going to have pumpkins this year (!) which is a saga I'll save for another time and post....
Fire ants get into anything. Under boards, in the yard, and they seem to be worse during rainy weather. They can't be drown.
@FatBack, This guy slithered out from under the pipe while I was irrigating about 100 yards from where I killed the rattler the other day. I jumped but came back down quickly when I could see it was harmless. It’s probably eating my baby toads but I let them live anyway. LOL
Speaking of lighting things on fire..... I have an old washing machine drum for a burn barrel. If you use straight gasoline you need to put a piece of toilet tissue on the end of a fishing rod unless you like catching yourself on fire. The thing reacts like a jet engine when the gasoline ignites. But I have found a good use for an empty DEF jug...... Put about 85% diesel fuel with 15% gasoline in it and it makes a great burn barrel starter mix. Diesel by itself can be somewhat of a pain to light and gasoline by itself is too damn flammable and likes to flash.... But a mix like that, easily yet safely lights.
I've seen Farmer Paul kill a troublesome nest of wasps by soaking a rag in petrol and positioning it next to a nest built into a rotten log. If it is just below the nest the fumes evaporating off the rag kill them as they come and go. Normally he will just leave them alone. They kill a lot of pests.
Yes gasoline works better than commercial insect killers in spray cans. I’ve never tried just fumes. I’ll have to experiment with that.
I usually put a little in a can or something and use the can to splash it up into the nest. Great for wasps. I don’t know how that would work out with an enclosed hornet nest. Don’t really want to find out. LOL
There's a 600 year old oak by the gate from this field into the big meadow that's used for the camping events. There was a hornets nest in the hollowed out trunk at the same time as our little jugglers camp last September. They really liked the bright light hanging up in the tent we were using for playing poker in. There was a lot of nervous laughter as we took it in turn to mock each other for shrieking like girls every time one flew clumsily into our face or dropped out of nowhere onto the felt in front of us. It was a memorable night and the gentle giants didn't actually sting anyone.
Nothing creative here, just a photo of the pumpkins we grew two years ago. Three out of the four varieties are culinary pumpkins. The pink ones are Porcelain Dolls, the blue on is a Blue Doll and the brown was is a Musquee de Provence or Fairytale pumpkin. The classic orange jack o' lantern pumpkin. at far right is an Aladdin. My favorite is probably the Blue Doll. The plants are prolific and the fruit (usually 15 to 20+ pounds) are rivaled only by the Musquee de Provence, in my opinion. The Porcelain Doll is very similar, and is a fine cooking pumpkin, but not quite as tasty and prolific as the Blue Dolls. This year we've got nothing but Blue Dolls out in the pumpkin patch. Last year we had a drought early in the season and our crop failed so I decided to keep things simple. This year started just like last year but this time around I didn't plant all my pumpkins at once and held some in reserve. I lost most of the early pumpkins but I planted the backups shortly after we started getting more precipitation and they're all doing great. I've been way more aggressive about watering them between rains and with the temps hovering in the mid to upper 90s and heading for 100 this weekend I've got their hills under shade cloth. Lesson learned, and this year Mrs. Talon will be making her awesome pumpkin pie and I'll be making soups and casseroles with them.
I’ve been seeing this family of coons running around in the weeds every night at the 1:00 am check. Tonight they were in a tree so got a couple pics. There are four or five of them can’t tell for sure.
A photo my father took in about 1958 on his flight back from Japan, where he was based just after the Korean War. He was essentially a medic in the Air Force. It probably had a different title but I'm not sure. One of his missions was a spy mission over the Soviet Union. They were assigned to sneak over the border and get some photographs. But they were intercepted by MiGs. My dad thought for sure they were dead or at least prisoners. But the political situation at that time was in their favor. Instead they were kindly escorted out of Soviet air space. He generally flew in B36s. ...when I was an adult, he confided in me that he had a young women over there. But that was before he met my mother and she never knew. B36
Hey @Montegriffo, Does this answer your question about swallows having second families? I noticed her sitting in the nest a long time while I milked cows this morning so after she flew away I checked and found this.
Seems to be more comparable to women getting tired of men who sit on the couch watching TV and getting fat instead of working out. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2005/09/looks-matter-female-barn-swallows