Hankster, interesting perspective, still figuring out what direction is up!

Adriaan, nice stained glass!

I can't seem to get pics to post right-side up. Maybe it's a reflection of our current situation. But I'll take the country sideways or upside down over the city this spring - no contest!

 

The view from our balcony this morning.


Peter

Peter; that looks like winter.

Yeah, it did; about 3" accumulation overnight.  But it's all gone now.

Peter

In the James Taylor song "Copperline" he mentions "Hercules and a hognose snake"... hognose snakes are plentiful in that peidmont region of North Carolina, not nearly as commonplace here in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, and usually only seen at nightfall. I chanced upon this grumpy little guy in the yard Wednesday afternoon. Hognoses are funny. They will pitch quite a fit, somehow having adapted this defensive strategy of imitating dangerous snakes, but they absolutely will not bite. If you corner them for long enough or touch them, they will go into convulsions and feign death. It can be hilarious the trouble they go to at convincing you they are dead. If you turn a 'dead' hognose right-side-up, he'll immediately flip over again. As soon as you leave, he checks to see if the coast is clear, and slithers away. Where did they get that!?

And my Bluebird hen returned and laid 6 eggs. (a new record) She's going to be mighty busy this year if all these hatch. I have seen 5 eggs before, but I don't recall more than 4 chicks.

All very cool !

Indeed!

How long was that particular hognose? 
Do you have a bluebird box set up or just a couple that keeps returning to the same spot?  Hope the extra egg(s) is not a harbinger to our end of days...

Up at the farm, the bluebirds nest get pillaged on the regular. 
Not sure who is doing it but there is a good balance of avian species there.  Perhaps the extra eggs are just a necessity.

   

I reckon the hognose snake was maybe 2 feet long. They don't get much longer, so this one was adult-size. Usually they are more colorful... the last one I saw here had lots of oranges and yellows, and a black hatched pattern, (pic added)  but this one was predominantly a dark grey. He blended right in with all the sticks in the yard.


I'm going with the bluebird is just extraordinarily fertile. The birdhouse she nests in was a gift from the janitor at the Spring Hollow Water Treatment Plant, he befriended me when I took a 2nd shift position up there way back in 2002, my first posting as an Operator at a big treatment plant. Courtney "Corky" Old. (isn't that a great name?) Corky was a retired firefighter, who just couldn't sit still. Rode BMW motorcycles, and worked part-time at the Water Plant cutting grass and keeping the place 'hospital' clean. Corky had birdhouses stationed everywhere up there, and built one for me when I bought my place here in Masons Cove in 2005.

Fun with mirrors (except the cellphone got in the way)...

View from Cape Cod

Weather looks nice on Cape Cod!

The view of Active Pass from the park at the end of our road. Yesterday morning, our first morning on Our new home Galiano Island.