How cold is it?

Hooray for the time change. 😣 I woke up at 4:30! Gonna be a long day.

I'd washed the bathroom floor, and put the mop out to dry. It froze overnight. That morning it was -6 ℃., no wonder it froze solid. Today it is only 1 ℃.!

The frost on the bird feeders!

I put up our Remembrance Day flag. 

We decided to take a walk along the highway to see the condition of the deer carcass. 

A porcupette also met its demise on the highway. The vultures have migrated. 

There is nothing left except fur. There was a path trod, running up the hill towards our house. 

This is why we thought we'd go look. Joe was doing his regular walkies around the yard, now that his back is slowly improving. Look what he found, the spine and a hip bone. 

 It turns out that the coyote yips I heard at bedtime, WERE in the backyard! The bones were found right out the back, behind the large white pine!

That means they dragged their food selection about 100m to the back yard, away from the highway.

Out and about <= in my first post about this, I didn't realize they were so close. 

Two piles of coyote poop! You can tell it is coyote from the fur embedded in it.

On the hill down to the wetland, beside the shed, lots of deer fur.

And I finish with a funny story. After mom died and we moved into her house, Joe would smell the smells of cleaning products in the air. I am sure it was a message from mom to clean up more! She was fastidious in the era of Cometizing one's house. Germs were feared. A real 50s and 60s woman who kept her home very, very clean. 

Joe and I were sitting with morning coffee, and he told me he could smell cabbage. Then, he said he could smell burned cabbage. (I don't like cabbage much, so it wasn't me!) He left the room, and I could smell it. It was the dead mouse smell. Pulling out my chair, there it was. They are trying to move into the house for winter, and the cats are snapping them up!

We've a rainy day. There is a long storm moving north east up the continent. The US has had terrible tornadoes and thunder and lightning. It peters out as it moves north towards us. 

I must put on my big girl pants and raincoat, as soon as it is light, and take the garbage out. Joe is some better and collected it for us this week. 

 

Sunny days, cooler nights

The weather has been interesting. There are trees that are looking amazing. 

Sunny days, cold night with frost in the morning. 

 

Oct. 2nd I noticed this! 

It had to be a pileated woodpecker, like these.

Setting up the trailcam in front of it, I found Oct. 12th that there was no evidence of a woodpecker, but more damage was done. MYSTERY!

I wasn't optimistic! 

 

I have hung on to these photos hoping I'd catch the culprit, but all I found was a Downy or Hairy woodpecker. Not the Pileated Woodpecker I'd expected.

More walkies in the cold

I covered up my rose bush. We'll see if it makes a difference. 💝 Everything is snuggling in. The insect, reptiles and amphibians are hibernating under leaves, or in holes, or under the mud.

We've come to expect frost in the morning. I played around with the iPhone camera, and it took good close up photos. 

I put on JB's rain boots to skuff about in the forest. On the way down to the pond, it looks like a big pile of coyote poop. Cinnamon was keen on it.

Cinnamon then flung himself up a tree.

He is a happy cat.

Cinnamon from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

He spent a good 5 minutes just sitting on the end of the dock. I kept going, though. I yell, 'walkies' and he usually roars up to me and past me. 

We went on lot #3. Lots of dead and fallen trees about, as well as bright green moss. The birds are fairly quiet. 

Just below this tree, it appears that the coyotes picked up some garbage from the highway, hoping for a meal.

An empty Mcdonald's bag, cup, and crushed chocolate milk box. Some people are pigs, chucking garbage out the vehicle window. It irks me, but this is why I go ditch diving 3 or 4 times a year. The coyotes must have brought it onto our property to eat in peace.

This is our lot #2. 

He was so happy, roaring out of the bushes to roll on the driveway back on lot #1.

 

walkies from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

Speaking of walkies, this isn't our cat, nor do they go out in the dark! That is when the predators are out and about. I've informed our local vet. It has come from a piece away. We're on 16 acres, and no nearby neighbours. 

black cat from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

Frosty morning

 I rolled out of bed Wednesday, and checked the thermometers. It was 1 C., and I'm glad I brought the hanging baskets in. The Weather Network said we were at 0.  Today we are a cold. There is frost out back in the yard. Out front we are good. I remember the year we had a spring frost which took out a lot of the milkweed. 

Thousands of people were without power in the Ottawa. Ottawa Hydro never seems to give totals, but if I click on each red bubble and total them up it looks like 12,784 homes out of power. They came back up shortly, but not a good morning to be without power.

Then there is out west. Wildfires have displaced tens of thousands of people. Climate Change is real, peeps. 

🐻 What else is happening in Ottawa? Well, Ottawa has a bear in Centrepointe, and twin cubs in Bell's Corners – not too far away, where the kids live. Bears are on the move.  I'm glad I put the feeders away. The girls are playing it safe, avoiding the park going to school. 

Ottawa police put out guidelines. This has worked for me the once I came across a bear in the forest.

I brought the plants in, Cinnamon supervised. I put them out for the day.

Caitlin's wool baby blanket worked! 

I overturned a pot on the impatience. They came out well.

Outside the garage, another overturned pot did the trick. You can see the one leaf that I didn't tuck under, and it was rather wilted. I removed the pot, the sun came out, and it warmed up to 12 C. yesterday.

🐣 I did a walkabout, bundled up, for sure. The robin had 7 eggs, I could see two hatchlings, and only 2 or 3 eggs. I wonder what I will see today...

I think the robins will do OK, though. We have many, some have already fledged. Venturing down to the meadow, I encountered a juvenile robin, and its parents. They yelled at me from the trees, afraid I would hurt their baby.

 

Robin family & bugs from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.

The other nest under the deck, the phoebe nest with 4 phoebe and one cowbird egg, is still intact.

I'm wondering if a weasel or the fisher has been about. The phoebes nesting in the shed are missing 2 eggs. There were 4. 

 

I tried to recover my saw, embedded in the tree branch I was trying to cut down, but failed. I'll need a larger ladder. Sigh. Another project for the To Do list. 

If a tree falls in the forest...