Spring’s been fairly eventful around here. We had Paige visit for about a week which was great as we focused on eating and relaxing. I’m not going to elaborate as I have a lot to cover in this post and we didn’t do any big special outings or anything. Oh, except that we picked out 3 pullets at Callahan’s! One of them is a Barred Rock (a breed known for being less shy of people), and the others are Wyandottes- a silver-laced and a gold-laced.
The pullets had been living in the chicken tractor that Rob made out in the front yard for quarantining and just today we moved the tractor to the backyard. Now all the chickens can see each other. In a few days we will let the pullets out to hang out during the day with the other chickens. Supposed to do this gradually to minimize in-fighting. It worked with the last round so hopefully this will work too. This batch of pullets is a little older than the prior set we got. As for names, the Barred Rock goes by Rock Star and the other two are named after NBA players, so the gold-laced one is Jimmy (Butler) and the silver-laced is Jokić.
We set up this chicken memorial honoring the chickens we’ve lost.
On the naturalist front, we’ve had some field trips including one to Spring Lake Park in San Marcos. We rode in glass-bottomed boats and viewed the action of springs from below and saw lots of fish and turtles. The history of the lake is hilarious involving weird entertainment with swimming pigs and mermaids.
We also attended the annual naturalist reunion where various business was covered, lunch was served, we toured of the preserve, and door prizes were randomly drawn! I was super excited to get a door prize but maybe that jinxed us as practically everyone at our table got one except us :(
While I was attending a field trip recently (where I learned about brush piles, land management, and wildlife epidemiology), Rob was volunteering with a biologist who set up an aquarium exhibit that had crayfish and fish. Ask him more about that next time you see him!
Another cool field trip we took was to Westcave Preserve. It was a pretty riparian setting with water dripping down cliffside walls, ferns, and real caves!
I am helping out with the social media aspect of the naturalist group. I managed to very basically animate the logo in order to use it in the beginning of the videos in an effort to standardize them some more.
I also am going to help out with the recently released coloring book project. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the group during its development, but they are going to be distributing these books all over the parks and using them in 3rd grader curriculum and they need people to help with the associated projects at the parks. I showed the lady in charge my idea I had which was weirdly similar in that it encouraged people to visit a set of parks and then if that is achieved you can get some sort of “award” or whatever. Anyway, I think that all resumes in the fall.
No shortage of cool pics with the birdfeeder, although a squirrel discovered the feeder so Rob installed one of those lampshade-shaped thingies that has worked to keep him out so far.
The trail cam had mostly the usual things but my favorite set was pics showing an owl hunting rabbits!! Below are the two pics. In first, you can see the owl eyes on the right and rabbits running on the left. In second pic, owl is in flight.
Pangea seems to be thriving. Her growth rate has skyrocketed, and she’s pretty audible much of the day, especially in the morning, as she bulldozes around her enclosure and also rings her wind chime often which is my cue to go find her more food. I sometimes cut her stuff like grass, dandelions, and thistle from the yard, also cut roses and hibiscus flowers, and lettuce and cucumber. She is supposed to like cactus pads but so far she doesn’t seem real keen on those.
We’ve started to go to Ghost Note Brewery a lot because not only do they have good beer and always at least one food truck, but they have live music on Sunday afternoons which is usually something pretty good. In fact, we made it over there when our guests, Chris and Lisa came to visit for a long weekend. We also took them to Jester King and a walk along Barton Creek. It was a very fun time for all of us.
I’ve been temporarily fooling around with Midjourney to make weird pics. Here’s a few I’ll put in a mini-gallery below.
Spring has been seemingly a good season for a comeback for lizards and snakes. Maybe thanks to the rain we’ve been getting? I’m not going to elaborate, but take my word for it. Ask Paige about it too!
We recently competed in the regional Klask tournament at a bar in North Austin. In the qualifying rounds, both of us went undefeated. Then things got serious, and I lost to a nice guy named Isaac, who had driven from Houston to attend the tournament. Rob played Isaac in the finals and also lost to him. So Rob and I got 2nd and 3rd place. Isaac gets to move on to Nationals!! I’m super jealous and hope to compete again next year.
More pics in gallery below.
