Take a look at a couple of our late hatch Harris’ hawk chicks! These little grey fluffballs are about a month old and are hanging out in our gift shop so they can get used to being around people. Aren’t they cute?
Sorry for the blurry photos, it was a gloomy day and I didn’t want to use my flash on these little guys.
This little litter of five are just over three weeks old now. They are one of those exceptionally calm litters of bunnies we occasionally get, and we even had a couple of rare colors show up.
Blue otter
I think we might have our very first broken blue otter, I believe all the others turned out to be broken opals in past litters. There is also another stunning solid blue otter, the color that a few families were fighting over last time. The photo makes him/her look a bit washed out but he/she is definitely a blue.
Broken blue otter
Broken black otter
Opal #1
Opal #2
I really like the broken black otters, and we got another one this time as well as two opals, one much lighter than the other. If you can believe it, I even noticed the broken blue trying to hump his or her siblings between takes! Three weeks is now officially the youngest I’ve ever seen that happen, by a long shot. I flipped him/her over for a quick check, looks like a doe but a bit early to know for sure. Hopefully!
Look at that little face!
These cuties were a pleasure to work with today and enjoyed their first nibbles of fresh greens while waiting to have their pictures taken. This litter will be ready for new homes on November 12th and will make excellent pets.
Hive 3, bursting at the seams
Well, today looked like it might be the last nice day for awhile, so I decided to get my hives set up for the cold season. My plan was to move them a couple of feet forward so they would get a little more sun, check for hive health and honey stores, and remove any supers with undrawn comb. Big job!
First I opened my nuc hive. I’ve been a little worried about this hive since the population seems to have dwindled and I sometimes see a wasp go inside. Upon opening them though they seemed like they had pretty solid numbers and I returned the two harvested honey frames I took out in August for them to clean up.
The girls carrying out wax debris from the harvested frames
Hive 2, my split hive that kept the original queen was not doing as well as I thought. Here I was thinking they had so much going on that they were overflowing the brood nest into the honey super, when the reality was that their bottom deep hadn’t been touched all year. What the heck ladies? That will teach me not to check. I removed it and left them with one deep and one medium for the winter.
Both these hives seemed a bit light to me so I decided to start feeding them. I don’t like to feed if I don’t have to, but I would rather feed than lose hives to starvation. Since it’s fall, they are getting a 2:1 heavy sugar syrup which they will be able to store more quickly since it needs less time to reduce in moisture content.
Then we have Hive 3, the one that requeened itself with feral drones. This hive is like a bee explosion went off inside! All three mediums and one deep totally overflowing with bees. Tons of honey and tons of attitude. Working this hive is like dealing with a lion while the other two hives are pussycats. Once I started taking boxes apart they freaked out and all jumped out at me, letting me know how annoyed they were. I didn’t get stung but it was still pretty intimidating! I decided that this hive didn’t really need to be moved two feet and left it in place to avoid total chaos.
It was very interesting to me to see how well this locally queened hive has fared this year. They were the ones with the most disadvantage as they had no queen for weeks after the split. Could their extra defensiveness have anything to do with how well they did? At least I can be fairly confident that this large healthy hive will survive the winter. Of course, it also means that I have to deal with touchier bees in spring. In a way I don’t really mind but I’m not sure I would want to give these genetics to a brand new beekeeper.
During my inspections today, I still did not see a single hive beetle, wax moth, varroa mite (alive or dead) or any signs of k-wing disease. I know at the last bee club meeting some people reported tons of mites while others reported none. I hope I’m not being naive in assuming my hives are relatively clean. I didn’t treat for anything this year so we’ll just have to wait and see.
A few last things that need to be done before it gets too cold are to put on entrance reducers with mouse guards and construct some top quilts to control moisture. All easy and quick projects.
Supposedly there is some very nasty weather headed our way over the next few days that is projected to be as bad as the worst storm in recorded history in the Northwest. Wish us all luck!
One of the jobs our birds of prey have is bird abatement. They work at landfills, airports, vineyards and building sites to move birds like gulls, starlings and geese.
Geese in the distance
Geese hanging out near Shakespeare’s grave (Enoch Shakespeare, that is)
We recently started a contract working at my local cemetery to move the flocks of Canada Geese that like to loiter all day leaving their slippery little gifts everywhere. Our job is to go in, count the geese, record any of the neck tags we see and then encourage them to move along. This can be done with lasers, dogs, and of course hawks.
Getting ready to fly
Today we brought Lulu the female Harris hawk over for our literal wild goose chase. It’s not very hard to convince a group of sixty-seven geese to skedaddle once they see Lulu.
Lulu can be a bit of a talker
The end goal
Pretty much one short flight in their direction was enough to send them packing. We still took Lulu for a walk around the rest of the cemetery so she could enjoy some exercise and look beautiful doing it.
Harris hawk appropriately atop the gravestone of Harriet Harris
Lulu going after a toss-up, see the little piece of meat?
Got it!
There are lots of interesting old tombstones at this cemetery and apparently multiple thousands of people are buried here. Many of the grave markers are very old, and quite a few are for those who died quite young. It’s a beautiful and serene place and I’d like to come back some time with the supplies to do some sketches and stone rubbings.
Someone my age who was “killed in the explosion” in 1887. Likely a miner
Gravesite of a 12 year old boy who died in 1889
You can see that both of these old grave markers have been reinforced with concrete. That’s because they’re carved from marble which is actually a very soft stone that erodes comparatively quickly in the weather. Nowadays most gravestones are made from granite.
It’s quail hatching time again, and I managed to fill the incubator right before the egg laying season ended. A little late this year, but that’s ok.
When you hatch large numbers of quail chicks you will occasionally get deformities. The chances go up if your incubator conditions were not ideal, or your breeding birds are old.
So far, 82 of my 120 eggs have hatched out and for the most part everyone looks good. There are a couple of chicks with splayed leg, which may or may not resolve itself. This always seems to happen regardless of the fact that I offer a surface with good traction right from hatch.
Chick with splayed leg
And there are a couple of chicks with bulging eyes. This also seems to happen every time and I’m not entirely sure why. These chicks look healthy enough for the first few days but in my experience will usually die. You can see in the photos how much larger the eyes are than in a normal chick. It looks very uncomfortable but I always like to give them a fighting chance.
This chick has bulging eyes
Compared to normal eyes in this chick
Today I had a deformity pop up that I’ve never seen before. This little chick has the whole top of their beak twisted into a 90 degree angle from their lower beak. It also seems like they may be missing an eye on the squished side. How on earth did this little bird even get out of the egg?
Anyway, with a deformity this severe, you can be pretty confident that this chick would just suffer and eventually die from hunger or thirst, so I euthanized it. Its little body did not go to waste and was happily eaten by chickens to be converted into more eggs.
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