PixlBit

I cut my finger badly on the sheet metal vent cap I was installing on the outhouse vent pipe today, so I apologize in advance for any typos. It was serious enough to require medical attention, but not so serious that I needed stitches, my doctor glued the edges together and back I went to work to spend the rest of the day filling out workers comp forms.

Where did summer go?! I've been so busy I hardly had time to enjoy it, and now I have one more week of work left before my seasonal layoff begins. Best be getting to finding something for the winter...

I spent a lot of time this summer running around like a chicken with its head cut off. We've been busy, and there have been way more outreach programs this summer than ever before, and each of those outreach programs takes three staff members out of the park for the day. Luckily, that's over with and August was a bit more back to normal than July was.

Osprey Update: for those of you who follow my blog, you know how much I love the resident ospreys. After the pair on the island failed to produce any young, we'd been concentrating on the pair by the Salt Marsh. They hatched three chicks, one didn't make it (out-competed by its two much larger siblings), but the other two were doing great. That is, up until about 10 days from when they would have started flying. They were attacked by an eagle, which killed one juvenile, and then came back for the second one a day later. Momma osprey flew in to the rescue, and the eagle dropped the young bird. Andy (my boss) rescued her off the ground, where she fell, and we called Avian Haven, the largest bird rehab center in the state. We all agreed that putting her back in the nest would be sentencing her to certain doom, as the eagle would continue to come back until it finally got her. So off she went for a two week stay until she could fly, and then she was released back into the wild. At least this way, she has a fighting chance at survival. She was the first young osprey of many that Avian Haven received as the result of eagle attacks. Apparently, the big bullies wait until just before the young ospreys start flying and then target them. It was a tough year on both osprey and loon chicks due to eagle predation.

Amphibians: I have a fascination with amphibians that started when I was pretty young. Frogs, toads, salamanders, and newts, I love them all. Between the toads at work and the frogs in the ponds and swamps near my house, I certainly get my fix on a regular basis. We have a large-ish toad that lives in the bathroom building at work. I kept finding it hiding behind the doors and trash cans, and under the covering for the water pipes. It has since gotten used to me, as I would remove it every Friday evening so that I could do the weekly scrub-down of the interior of the building, and then I'd go find it and bring it back. Now, it hops up to us in the morning after spending the night out and about and waits for us to open the door and let it back in. The posted photo is not Bathroom Toad, it's another, much smaller toad that I found up at the maintenance shop. This one was maybe the size of the end of my thumb. Bathroom Toad is almost the size of my palm.

The frogs near my house are a never-ending source of entertainment for me. Especially the green frogs, as I can pick a long-stemmed weed and dangle it in front of them and they'll grab it and I can pull them almost in to shore. I feel kind of bad for tormenting them, so I started collecting the Japanese beetles off the plants in the garden and feeding them to the frogs. They now swim closer when I come along.

One morning a couple of weeks ago, I wandered out to help Michael try to fix his riding mower, and found this little guy on the side of the garage. I'm pretty sure it's a spring peeper. Little dude was less than an inch long.

Other cool stuff: Almost everyone knows about monarch caterpillars and milkweed, but there are other species of caterpillars that depend on milkweed, too. I found this cool caterpillar on one of Michael's prized milkweed plants along with a buddy. Between the two of them, they'd eaten all the leaves off the two plants and had started in on the pods. I did some searching on the 'web and discovered that they are called milkweed tussock moth caterpillars, and they are just too freaking cool. Read this article, it'll tell you all kinds of amazingly cool things about them. Evolution is a strange and wondrous thing indeed.

My finger hurts, so I'm going to leave you with two final photos, one taken earlier in the season, and the other taken a couple of days ago.

It's not everyday you get mooned by a chipmunk...

What I really want to know is just what this guy had stuffed in his cheek pouches: