The Sun! The Sun!

The sun has finally made a command performance and oh! how grateful I am for it too! These were a series of photos taken yesterday of our favorite local friends.

These two eagles. A yearling on the left and a full fledged on the right sat in these tree tops waiting for dinner time. They left as soon as the car headed towards their "table" area. Actually there were many others in the vicinity - along with a large murder of crows!

Above is a closer view of the beauty on the right .

Another eagle waits patiently for the chow line

This guy waited in the tree and then took off when he sensed that food was close
by- what a beautiful, amazing sight!

Our little sweet faced "Blackie".
He's become more gray as the year has progressed
but still retains this sweet, almost wistful look.
All of the fox in the area are shedding their thick winter coats (so are the cats for that matter!) and sometimes you can find large clumps of their fur in the bushes...

Yesterday's Wildlife

I had planned to write about some new projects today but decided that a few of the photos I took yesterday might be more entertaining. This is the 'gal' that I suspect might be sharing a den with the black fox that I have posted about previously. They seem to always be together in the back fields and it is the seasons for kits. Isn't that one beautiful fox?!

This is how feeding time begins. The sky begins to fill with winged ones - yesterday there were about a dozen eagles, some turkey vultures and un-countable crows. They arrive from every direction when the dinner bell sounds (actually they seem to have become accustomed to the sound of the car).

The eagles like to perch in the tops of trees.

Here are three eagles beginning the swoop down for some food.
Tomorrow, I will return to my regularly scheduled 'programming'!

Fox Love

Since I have had a surprising number of questions about the photos that recently accompanied a blog post I thought that I would fill in a bit of information about one of my favorite mammals. Red Fox, vulpes, vulpes. They are amazing. Highly intelligent, beautiful, resourceful and adaptable. Since we are fortunate to able able to live in a rural environment ,we have been able to follow some of the denning pairs for some years & have observed that 'red" fox are often not red. We dubbed the pair above "Dagwood" & "Blondie'. As they have grown they have retain ed much of theie initial, 'childhood' coloring - not having the black 'socks' that are generally prevalent in truly red - red fox. The photos that were in a recent post is a black variation that we called, creatively enough, "Blackie". He has grown accoustomed to the sound of my husband's car & runs along in the grass nearby as a greeting eveyr day when he hears it coming. "Blackie" is a beauty with a silvery 'mask' and a beautiful bushy tail replete with a lush white tip. Fox can, of course, be dangerous, and they can assuredly carry disease. Caution is generally a good idea with wild animals, but we have been fortunate to be able to become 'friend's' with some of these magnificant little creatures. I think that they are more catlike than doglike - I truly admire them and enjoy being able to observe them in their environment.

The following information is from the National Geographic

"....Red foxes live around the world in many diverse habitats including forests, grasslands, mountains, and deserts. They also adapt well to human environments such as farms, suburban areas, and even large communities. The red fox's resourcefulness has earned it a legendary reputation for intelligence and cunning.

Red foxes are solitary hunters who feed on rodents, rabbits, birds, and other small game—but their diet can be as flexible as their home habitat. Foxes will eat fruit and vegetables, fish, frogs, and even worms. If living among humans, foxes will opportunistically dine on garbage and pet food.

Like a cat's, the fox's thick tail aids its balance, but it has other uses as well. A fox uses its tail (or "brush") as a warm cover in cold weather and as a signal flag to communicate with other foxes.

Foxes also signal each other by making scent posts—urinating on trees or rocks to announce their presence.

In winter, foxes meet to mate. The vixen (female) typically gives birth to a litter of 2 to 12 pups. At birth, red foxes are actually brown or gray. A new red coat usually grows in by the end of the first month, but some red foxes are golden, reddish-brown, silver, or even black. Both parents care for their young through the summer before they are able to strike out on their own in the fall....."

Spring is in The AIr

Spring is finally beginning to show. It's been an up and down season so far. Last week and today we have had thunder storms and pea sized hail - both almost unheard of in our neck of the Pacific Norhtwest. Looking at the trees on the way to work this morning though I could not help but think that no one has bothered to tell Mother Nature that it is still too cold & wet to venture outdoors much. The trees are almost in full leaf. The pear trees outside in the yard are blooming. The leaves on the Hazel Nut trees are coming in nicely. The Wisteria is coming back
this year too - despite an almost total decimation at the hands of falling tree a bit more than a year ago. The same holds true for the weeping golden chain that almost was leveled by that same falling tree.

Every year we wait impatiently to see the new fox kits. The photos above are of "Blondie" and "Dagwood" - last year's kits who we suspect may be the parents of a couple of this years pearl gray & bi-colored "kids". They make us happy watching their playful antics. Fox are beautiful smart creatures . No photos of the new kits yet -- they are still very suspicious of venturing too far from the mouth of their den.

The apple blossoms are coming in too - a sure sign of better days to come. I'll continue to wait for the wet and cold to give way to sunshine , blossoms & some lazy days spent sewing, felting & dyeing outdoors ... listening to the songs of the eagles (nowhere is there a sweeter sound), the strident demands of hungry crows, and spirited songs of the red tailed hawk pairs who wait patiently for their daily feast of the meat market's cast offs. My husband is the pied piper that they have learned to wait for and follow. We are already going through 3-4 quarts of hummingbird nectar a day - that's about the average for May days around here. It's always sad when they leave us in July for the trip back to warmer climes. All's well in the world - SPring is almost here !