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Here’s Jen out in the woods, stalking the elusive Barred Owl. We had a glimpse of the owl, but we got a much closer look at these ferocious creatures of the forest, who appear to have wandered over from the Vlei Marsh trail.

Sarah, visiting home for the weekend, surreptitiously took this photo when we visited Vlei Marsh this afternoon. We saw a Bald Eagle but it didn’t stick around for long.

The herons have built a nest very near our bank of Vlei Marsh, giving us a good view of what we expect is a growing heron family.

According to the fox, goslings are like potato chips.

Canada Geese are never welcome in the pond, but it’s hard to be angry with the goslings when they are in their maximum tennis ball phase. On Sunday, I looked out the kitchen window to see this fox stalking the goslings near the pond. If I hadn’t gone outside to take a photograph, the goslings […]

Today was our annual sweeping of the barn, in which the droppings of a generation of barn swallows and pigeons are removed to make way for this year’s crop. The barn swallows should arrive any day. The pigeons never left.

A healthy complement of Ring-necked Ducks — maybe fifteen or twenty — has arrived on our pond, sharing space with the pioneer Canada Geese of last weekend. These ducks say it’s almost spring the same way the Salt Point Stewart’s says you’re almost in Rhinebeck.

Last weekend we had first-of-the-season Redwing Blackbirds, and today we had a pair of Canada Geese on the pond. Sadly for the geese, the pond retains its protective ice covering. They made a racket but they didn’t stay long. Similarly uninterested in a human encounter was this deer we spied while looking for owls.

A hummingbird in the secret garden wonders if the dahlias will ever bloom. Of course they do bloom, but only at the end of the summer. We returned for Labor Day weekend from dropping off Sarah in France. We had fine weather here, with a briief visit from Jen’s parents. While we were gone, our […]

Sarah rode both bicycle and horse this weekend. Jen took a short break from jam-making to see what the birds were up to in Vlei Marsh.