Critter Sightings

It's been a while since I posted anything or updated the field guide. So here's some recent pictures of critters.

We have this critter proof bird feeder which is only supposed to feed the ickle birdies. However the squirrels just rock it and rock it and then eat what falls out, similarly for the acorn woodpeckers, so any little birdie that's trying to eat at it will have quite the roller coaster ride. It's fun to watch the circus though.

I think this birdie got too fat at the bird feeder and now he won't fit through the bars! He had an amazing bright yellow bit on his head which of course I didn't capture in the photo. I took the picture through our windows and it was hard for the camera to focus, I should learn how to manually focus I guess.

Quite a nice humming bird picture. They continue to thrive at our house and visit often.

I think this is the biggest king snake we've seen at the house. He must have been at least 2 feet long. This was just in front of the garage and then he slithered over to our front step and snuck into a pipe that leads to our downspout, I bet it was very comfy in there for him. We haven't seen him since, but we did spy a teeny little king snake around the same area so perhaps this big snake was a girl snake and about to give birth? The little snake slithered into a impossibly small crevice under the front step and vanished, makes you wonder what else is living under there. Oh well, King Snakes can eat rattle snakes and aren't venomous so we're kinda happy to have them around.

An adorable deer family have been visiting a lot, eating the ivy off the trees and generally trying o eat everything they can. I managed to catch a picture of these guys on the driveway which I'm pretty pleased with.

and elsewhere...

This is a California Giant Salamander, he was really big and a little grumpy when my wife tried to move him off the trail (we were mountain biking). He made a great hissing growly noise and we left him alone, It was early in the morning (6:30AM) so he hadn't warmed up yet I don't think.

An adorable We also saw a raft (or paddling) of ducks. Check out the last one, he's so fresh he hasn't even turned from yellow yet. Awww, how precious.

More pictures in the ever expanding field guide gallery.

Red Tailed Hawk

Here's a hawk that was on a branch just outside our living room window.

I need to get better at taking pictures like this. We've seen a great horned owl in the morning one time too and I only managed to get half decent pictures of that as well.

Bring on the chill

Check out all the wood we had, ready for a nice cold winter. Well it was pretty mild, rained less than half of what it normally does. We were able to ride our bikes pretty much the whole winter long and only burned half this wood. We're pretty set up for next year (2007) now! Thanks so much to Ag for stacking it all while we were busy working on the front garden/driveway. Sorry this post is so late, it was all drafted up here and never posted.

When I'm cleaning chimneys

Well this was a long time ago! but I cleaned the chimneys myself this last summer. It was a pain cutting a round brush to fit in our oval chimney insert. But now it's done it'll be a doddle to do every year and we can be safe knowing we have a clean chimney and save a bunch of money doing it ourselves. The chimney for the studio apartment was much easier even if it was two stories in the air.

Another yard work project finished!

The past two weekends we've been hard at work with tons of help from the In-Laws and my mom landscaping the small patch of yard in front of the pool. This area has always been consumed by weeds which isn't really a great first impression when you drive up to the house. With our baby's arrival, I've been really pushing to simplify yardwork. So instead of Hubby having to weed whack this section of the yard, we've planted drought and deer resistant plants and installed a drip irrigation system. It will be awhile before the amount of time this project has consumed will actually pay off since it only took him about 30 minutes to whack the weeds in this section versus the 2 three day weekends that were just used. However, at least the yard looks much more presentable. Now if the plants can survive the deers, moles, and gophers, we'll really be making progress!

Eww

The water heater in the garage has been off for 6 months and when that happens the water normally smells pretty sulfur-y and we want to steam clean the carpets and the last thing we wanted was them to be even worse afterwards. So I set out to clean the water heater. Last time I just threw some bleach in the water inlet and ran it through, it seemed to help. This time I was going to put some vinegar in there for hopefully a more mild approach. However I had one of those element removing tools that I had never managed to get working on the old water heater in the house causing me to just cave in and install a new one. So I drilled some bigger holes in the tool closer to the hex part of the wrench and it worked a treat. I didn't like what I saw inside. Each element was pretty caked but what was worse when I stuck my finger in the bottom element hole I could feel what felt like gravel ewww.... What followed was a lot of flushing water through, rocking the water heater and poking at it with various spokes and long screwdrivers and you can see the pile of gunk that came out. It was all scaly flakes and took ages to come out. That pile's not even all of it. Think about that next time you think about using hot water to clean your teeth or for cooking (ugh!). If you haven't flushed out your hot water tank, perhaps now would be a good time?

Updates

It's been a while since I posted here but that's not to say I haven't been doing a lot.

First off the Field Guide got a major reworking and it's now prettier, more compact and has better, bigger pictures, so go check that out and then come back.

I've also finished the garage, I installed trim all around the windows (using my nail gun, yay for power tools). I also installed wire mold power strips under the windows and put in some slick lights all along the wooden beam that spans the length of the garage. It was all finished off with a cambridge soundworks so I can listen to my iPod while I work on stuff. All that needs to be done now is I need to sort through the mountain of crap that's piled up outside the garage and work out what is going to the dump and what is going to be allowed back in. Oh and I need to build my own bike rack since the metal one I wanted was going to cost $400 in shipping costs and it only cost $200 to start off with :(

I also made some rather spiffy street number signs so people can find the house easier, it's just corrugated plastic sheets with stick on reflective vinyl numbers and arrows, they were kinda cheap, but look great. Top tip: use liquid nails to glue the sign to the pressure treated lumber you're hammering into the ground, it works a treat and looks great from the sign side.

I continue the battle with the rats/mice in the guest house. I think I may have it nailed now. The wiley meeces had gotten wise to the have a heart traps, then they got wise to the snippety snappy traps so I finally lamented and put out poison, and then they go and steal the stuff and hike off with it! We put the cats in there when we have guests or a party so I was worried the cats would find the poison we couldn't so I went full Jihad on the little furry buggers (the mice not the cats!) and tore the kitchen apart in there, it was old and crusty anyway and I think I found where they were coming in, there was a huge hole in the drywall where the pipes for the kitchen sink come in so I patched it up and then spackled it all smooth(ish) and put a small kitchen cabinet (the only one not really demolished) over the pipes. It looks a whole lot better now but there's no kitchen sink. We decided to leave it like that for now, but if we ever do finish it off, we're going to put in laminate hardwood floors on the ground floor and get some IKEA free standing kitchen stuff for it. It'll look really great, but we're trying to cut back on spending right now, so just having it rat free will be nice :)

I've also done the usual yard work and trimmed all down the driveway, but as always there's lots more to do.