Here We Go Again

We had a bobcat posing outside the house this morning. It's the first one I've seen this year - they do like to be secretive. Look at the fancy cheek fur!



Video here:
https://youtu.be/E1lS8VnSvNs

This last Friday, the weather did not lie, it cooperated! Sunny all the way!

( Lake Valhalla )

Something like summer came! It hit 27C/80F today - it's 10pm and the windows are still open, yes!

I went out with a hosepipe to water some plants at sunset. Watched a bobcat stalk a doe and her fawn. Mama deer led the fawn deeper into the trees, then came back and strode right towards the bobcat, who wisely decided to leave, up the hill.

I like living here :-)

Some years, the coyote pack make their den a fair distance away, and we rarely see them. Other years, they're right at the bottom of our garden loudly yipping and howling on a daily basis. This year is one of those years, and last week dad coyote brought two puppies up to visit my ex-lawn, which is now more of a buttercup field.

https://youtu.be/_D94otYbtcg

I was filming these ten minutes before I left the house to go out of town for a long weekend with the birdwatchers, of which more later. But that's why the video editing and posting had to wait until after I got back.

Monday was the Cle Elum Christmas Bird Count, so as usual I headed over the mountains on Sunday afternoon. The weather was glorious, all blue sky and sunshine over the peaks and the expanse of snow-laden trees. When I arrived in Cle Elum, the scene behind my hotel was snowy, in a wonderful late afternoon, with the surrounding roads well compacted.



( The weather forecast made it clear that was about to change. )

Summer is here, and the weather is lovely! The rabbits appreciate the fully developed clover lawn in the early mornings (and the cats are very frustrated that they can't get to the rabbits. Neko in particular is driven mad by them.)



I put some solar powered lights around the edges of the patio. I hadn't been intending to get ones with fancy patterns, but these ones got the best reviews for reliability and for no hassle warranty replacement, so I bought them with some slight apprehension over how they would look. But I actually like the result, and even the SO remarked positively on them.



I also bought a bird bath with a solar powered fountain that floats in it. It doesn't need full sun to work, but on an overcast, rainy Seattle day, it only gives a spurt every few seconds instead of the full sun continuous flow. I've yet to see any birds use it, but it's only been a week, and they're wary of new things.



We had another bat in the house incident last night, so we were up at 4.30am trying to catch and remove it. The sequence of events goes like this:
1. Locate and remove all the cats from the bat room.
2. Open the patio door.
3. Two naked humans holding a large towel between them attempt to use the towel to steer the bat towards the open door (we always try this and it never works. The bat always dodges back past us away from the door again. Next time we should probably skip this step.)
4. Wait for the bat to land somewhere not too inconvenient, put a large sieve over it, slide cardboard beneath and remove from the house.

After that, I was wide awake for another hour. And when I did finally go back to sleep, I dreamed of wildlife invading the house and we had to keep catching and removing them. I recall there was a band-tailed pigeon, and after I took that outside, there was a grouse in the house, so I caught and released that then found something like a big mole with claws for digging. I was getting very frustrated trying to figure out how they were all getting inside...

I was supposed to have gone diving this morning, but two days ago I got an email from my dive buddy saying he'd been in a 'minor' accident on his motorcycle and would have to cancel. I emailed back that even a minor accident on a motorbike is scary, wished him a speedy recovery and asked him to let me know when he'd be up for rescheduling. To which he replied that he's torn all the ligaments in his ankle, has a compound fracture in his tibia and is looking at a couple of surgeries. That is not 'minor', Eric! But hey, he came off his bike and he's not dead, and he's neurologically competent and typing emails that same day, so I suppose by some standards, that's minor...

So no diving for me, and no hiking in this beautiful weather either, because three weeks ago I slipped on the stairs and I'm pretty sure that I have a hairline fracture where my big toe meets my foot. It barely hurts at all just walking around on it, but I'm going to wait for all the swelling to go down before I hike on it. And that's the summary of me!

It’s somewhere between snowing and hailing outside, and the cold opossum is very grateful for the fact that birds are messy eaters and scatter seed everywhere.

We've been back a week and it's photo post time! Not that there are too many land photos, since we spent most of the trip getting wet, but this is the summary:

( Little Cayman and Grand Cayman )

There were three of these in our garden this morning, looking in the windows :-)
I deleted most of the audio because it was wind noise and inane chatter from us, but I kept the bit at the start where one of the cats was going crazy at the windows.

I finally got my 'sponsor a bear' pack from Animals Asia. The lovely iibnf and our wonderful friends lists are sponsoring a bear called Nina.

( Meet Nina )