dendrite

Nice. We have a pileated around as I hear him daily. My orioles haven’t arrived yet, but based on your photo I should probably consider putting the oranges out.

Mine wait for me every morning to put the feeders back out. They love the berry blend mix. Beautiful bird although the female is kind of a drab brown. Not her fault though.

We 44F

Yeah we talked a few times when I was starting out. Seems like roos are more likely to have sudden heart attacks. Makes me wonder if it’s from the layer feed. I assume excess calcium gets deposited into the arteries and calcifies. I probably should’ve used a grower or starter feed high in protein and lower in Ca and just let the hens supplement with oyster shell as needed. He was from a breeder and was a month from being 3 y/o so I suspected he would be fine for awhile. We often joked that he’d be the last one standing.

Yeah. We just don’t display it. We don’t have a lot trying to get in...yet. The coop is elevated off the ground 2 1/2ft and we have hawk netting over the run and coop down to the ground. Anything trying to get in risks getting tangled.

He showed no signs of anything. I think he just had a heart attack or he got something down his windpipe. He was in o ne of the many holes he loves to dig. He would nestle himself in there and chirp to call one of his girls over. Maybe he swallowed some dirt down the trachea and got a little too excited. No idea. Just sucks. We never wanted a roo, but he certainly grew on us. He didn’t crow much, was a gentleman to his ladies (minus the Weinstein mounting), and was a good watch dog. He was great with me and Lisa too. The flock must go on though although the dynamic will greatly change.

RIP Little Boy. The flock will never be the same. Went out to the run tonight and found him dead. I had just heard him crowing an hour before and he seemed totally healthy. No idea what happened. Shocked is an understatement.

Never go back?

Headed down the same path as lavarock now.

I just got my 2020 Dirt Doctors NH catalog in the mail and they have this in it... I’m thinking about trying a yard or two and spreading it in a few spots in the front yard and along the driveway where the grass is thin and the topsoil is thinning.

I had a load of top soil I never used last year next to my run and all of that started growing in it. Looks like it only propagates via seed so it must’ve been in the soil to begin with. Great. Although from what I’m reading it is easy to win the battle with if and when I ever want to. It’s a legume like clover so it’s a nitrogen fixer. I was just really surprised how much the chickens loved it when they tried it. Their reaction may be neck and neck number 1 with plantain on the weed list.

Black medic maybe?

Anyone hot an ID on this weed? My chickens eat it like it’s crack. It looks like a clover, but it appears to be something else. The stems from the previous season are fairly hard/woody. The leaves almost have a fleshy feel about them...somewhere between a clover feel and a sedum feel.

Thought this Lyme story would interest you. A couple years old, but I had never read about that before. Would debunk the conspiracy theories. https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/15651/

Was it wet?

I think all of the recent years are digital, but there's this link... https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html

Will take until June for that here. lol

Does anyone know when I should expect elm (specifically slippery/red elm) to drop seeds in the spring? I know they're fairly early, but I'm not sure how that applies to my climo.

Lawn is finally greening up. It was pretty brown after snowcover from mid Dec through mid Mar.

My exit up here (19) has a pond with cattails between the highway and off ramp. Every spring the same (I presume) goose and gander return to mate and raise their young for a month or two. They returned a couple of days ago. Unfortunately the plows pushed quite a bit of trash along the edge of the pond and no one has been out yet to pick it up. The gander would probably chase them off at this point. He likes to angrily come up to cars that are forced to stop 5+ car lengths back at the stop sign. We had a male and female mallard duck chill in the yard the other day too. Apparently they think our yard is now a pond.

Could just use the April thread. It's doldrum season so it doesn't have to be just disco. We've been posting obs in there for days.

I'd love to cut back on my lawn and do more perennial gardens, wildflowers, and fruit trees.

Probably none

Plenty of snow and moisture up here. It’ll be fun sending backdoors your way through June.

CON had some VIRGA obs in the remarks around that late aftenoon time. Maybe they reached the ground up here like in ORH. But I do like the weenie 29F -SHSN ob to finish off September. There's nothing on the Franklin Falls COOP forms for 9/30 or 10/1 so the observer apparently didn't see anything during the day, but I'm not sure they were looking for flurries up there at the dam back then either.