Tag: photography

Triplets Tree Tag

Passing by a second-story window the other day, I noticed this shaggy tree-bush (on the right behind the bird feeder) violently shaking. My mind raced!  What is the cause?  An impending storm?  A possible landslide?  A Brevard Fault earthquake? I took a deep breath and then noticed no other trees on the mountainside shaking.  Averting my eyes downward, I observed our Resident Mama Bear lying on the ground with the bird feeder tipped into her opened mouth!  One of her three (yes, she has triplets) cubs lingered nearby looking upward into the shaking tree-bush before joining his two siblings playing a game of Tree Tag!  Just another day on our small, family farm Wildlife Sanctuary along Cane Creek.

Tree-bush on the right–once a bush, shaped into a tree allowing for easy climbing access!

We received measurable rainfall almost every day during the month of June.  Actually, this began in May.  What a year! Robert and I think it is the worst year for gardening we have ever experienced.  Just to show how much rain we are getting in this part of Fletcher/Fairview, check out the photo below.  The crane in the picture is frequently seen in Cane Creek.  This day she seems to think she might find a fish in the “lake” at the end of the road which leads into our gardens!  Perhaps she is correct?  Maybe I should put a worm on a hook and drop a line into this “puddle” to see what I can catch!

Crane confuses our constant road puddle for a lake!

I went back into my farm notes and records to see if in the last thirty years we had ever experienced a season as wet as this one.  LOL, as it turns out we have twice before found it necessary to skip one or two weeks of CSA Boxes. This time we are facing an entire month! Still even in those bad years, we were able to pull off some reasonable vegetable boxes.  This is exactly why we collect payments in the unusual manner in which we do!  We are grateful to be able to do so.  And we are grateful for your understanding.

Now we are are past the July 4th Holiday. I trust you were able to see some fireworks celebrating the Freedom for which our ancestors risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor! There has been no rain in the last few days. Robert says the soil is actually getting dry! However, this does not negate the excessive rains of May and June. Our CSA box deliveries remain on pause until the recently replanted summer vegetables can grow. All of our CSA Members should have received a personal email from us regarding this break. We trust we will have veggies again by August. Stay tuned, watch your emails, and enjoy the heat and Vitamin D-3 from the summer sun as best you can!

Feathered Friends

During this Christmas Season, I am seeing advertisements for “smart” bird feeders. These devices send pictures of the birds at a feeder directly to someone’s “smart” phone. Sounds cool–right? However, I cannot help but think about how dangerous this “smart” technology exposure might be for birds who come for birdseed. I trust that in their infinite intelligence, they will not go near them!

If you would like to see birds in the wild, I can recommend the YouTube stream? videos? site? whatever it is called . . . where a friend of mine shares the activity of his backyard bird feeders. It is called WNC Bird & Butterfly Buffet .

And if you are interested in reading more about environmental stresses that harm the birds (and indeed, every living creature), you might want to check out this Newsletter by the Cellular Phone Task Force. It discusses the plight of the wild kiwikiu released into the Nakula Natural Area Reserve, on the southern slope of Haleakalā volcano in Hawaii. Kiwikiu, a species of honeycreepers found only on Maui, are critically endangered. They are small, weighing less than an ounce. The birds released were fitted with transmitters for tracking in 2019. One bird, WILD7, removed his transmitter on November 8, 2019 and he was last observed, doing well, on November 12, 2019. Another fortunate bird, WILD1, succeeded in disabling his transmitter the day after his release, and he was observed, doing well, with the harness still attached to his legs, on November 24, 2019. WILD1 eventually removed the harness as well and was observed again, doing well, on July 23, 2021, or 632 days after his release into the forest reserve. You will have to read the Newsletter to find out what happened to the rest of the kiwikiu that were released. I cannot bear to relate the results here.