Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Nells












Meet Nellie...or Nell's as she is affectionately called around our house.  She is currently our mascot guinea pig...full of personality!

Before yesterday...she didn't have a bed of any kind...so I made her this one out of a small box...fastened it to the side of her cage and walked away...just to sneak back around and see if she liked it and I was able to snap this photo of her chillaxin in her new crib!  YEAH!

I laugh because now...she sits in her little box...sticks her head out the door hole and can reach her food bowl without ever leaving the box.  I have noticed that she is much quieter now...she seems more comfortable...which makes me happy.

She LOVES celery...and usually doesn't miss a chance to squeal at any passerby in an attempt to influence said passerby to give her a few celery snacks.

Not sure why...but seems like our house is a magnet for pets full of personality.
No...please don't drop your's off...we have plenty.

When things go awry in nature...who do you call?

Enter....Nature's Nursery, Whitehouse, Ohio.

Their hotline: 419-877-0060

It was totally a fluke how I first learned of this local non-profit.  It was Spring of 2014 and I had just raked the previous years dead garden foliage into a pile and lit it on fire...only to my UTTER dismay....there were about 5 baby rabbits hidden underneath.

Needless to say...I felt horrible.  I managed to rescue 3 of them...enter....Nature's Nursery.  We called them up...they said bring em over...and that was that.  Three baby bunnies...nursed back to health...grew up a bit and were released back into the wild.

This is a typical story that comes from what Nature's Nursery is all about.

Chris and I were able to attend an open house they hosted this past Sunday.  My how educational it was indeed. As a demonstration to what Nature's Nursery is all about, they released a red-tailed hawk back into the wild on Sunday after his long recovery from being shot.  Pretty cool to witness...although I think I heard every small to medium sized rodent within a 2 mile radius scream in fear for its life...but...I digress.


Above is one of Nature's Nursery many volunteers talking about the barn owl that she is holding. He among a few other various animals are permanent residence at nature's nursery due to the extent of their injuries and not being able to make it in the wild...so these animals have become educators.




While the photos I've posted here are all of owls....they also assist with possum, skunk, raccoon, turtles...if it's in the wild and it's injured or orphaned...usually they can help.

To learn more visit the Nature's Nursery website.

It's only natural to want to help when we find wild animals that are injured...well finally there is someone we can call.



Birdhouse do-over.

Sometimes the things I create don't quite get it...like something is off with it...needs to be tweaked.  Well, that can be said for this birdhouse above.  The "duplex" birdhouse sat in the yard untouched by any of the nesting songbirds this year...so you don't have to tell me twice...the local birds said, "fail!"  Time for a do-over.

I'd been reading on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website about various important traits of homemade birdhouses...one detail of which has to do with the hole size.  If the hole size is too big then predator birds can get in and kill the littler ones. (I did witness a starling this year trying to wreak havoc on a bluebird pair that claimed one of my houses as their nesting site.)  If it's too small...well obviously there will be no takers.

The other interesting detail I was reading about was to do with not installing perches.  Perches simply create a ledge for predator birds to sit on while poking and jabbing through the hole at the baby birds.

I was also interesting is learning about tree clinging birds that are native to this area...the tree clingers and the bit about no perches then gave me the idea of using a natural bark like front...in an effort to attract these types of birds to nest.

So here's the do-over version.



There have been some clingers come round and check it out...but I imagine that since it's long past nest season...maybe we will have some takers on this one next year.

Time will tell.  And the backyard birding/nestbox experiments continue.

Stay tuned...



Look who stopped by for a bit...

Not sure why...but I really haven't seen many wild turkeys around this year. (besides the male that came around in the Spring)  So what a DELIGHT it was to spot this group of girls hanging out in our yard the other day!


It's hard to tell from this photo...but there are two different juvenile groups in amongst the adult hens here.  A few really little ones and then some that were about twice the size. They were really fun to watch...as they stuck around for about 2 hours or so before skadaddling off into the corn field.  And I have no idea what's up with the whitish one?  Can't say I've seen that before in a wild hen.

One never knows what will come meandering through out yard next.  I'm kind of hoping for maybe a little bantam rooster that needs a home.