Home, home on the range

• 🐣WOOD DUCKS

The wood duck nesting boxes are FULL! Three boxes, three females. Box #3, the one on the left in the photo, has 5, perhaps 6 eggs. I didn't want to mess around in it. The female flew off as she heard me approach.



I figured I might as well peek. I'll use my snake scope a little later. Not today, it is raining.


The frog pond drains into the wetland. Hooper carefully navigated the little stream of water. What a pal.



BARRED OWL

I heard one last night, extensive calling in the dark. Perhaps they are going to nest here, again. They didn't nest here last year, 2018. They did in 2017, when the lone chick was killed by jays. They male didn't hang around. They did in 2016, when they fledged twins, but the male fed them, too.
This is the female just in front of the nesting cavity in an archive photo. 

Yardwork

It's all abuzz on blogs, people getting into gardens, doing work, cleaning up after a long winter. 

I gave myself a non-mental note to move the butterfly, since the tree is dead (Dutch Elm Disease), and has regularly been losing branches. I figured the photo would be my reminder. It didn't work. Over it went. Right on my garden.

It lost some parts, which I popped in.


All cleaned up, repaired, and repainted. I still need to get the tree cut up and moved. I need a lad with a chain saw!

• 🐻BEAR WATCH

I've had word that we had a bear going after bird feeders around the lake [April 18 – Bear trap set up in Otty Lake area. ], they trapped him (a 2-year-old, after he was on a back deck) so we know they are on the move. It was time for me to remove my front yard feeders.


Next thing: to replace the  bird bath, which is about to fall apart.


I've almost got the pump working in the goldfish pond. It needs more work. Long story, best not told!
 A chickadee was having a drink.

Ontario Flooding

There is flooding everywhere in the country. Ontario, into Quebec, for example. Out west and out east. Lanark County has quite a few areas where the roads have been closed.

Lanark village battles early spring flooding along the Clyde https://t.co/ebrDW7qhSQ #ottnews #ottawavalley pic.twitter.com/J0GcDEacQw

— Inside Ottawa Valley (@InOttValley) April 23, 2019

We are up a small hill. For this, we are grateful.