Moving turtle eggs.

The other night I saw a painted turtle laying eggs in our volleyball court. Being only an inch deep and in the right front position, it was guaranteed that these were going to get trampled, so I decided to move them to a corner of the beach where they wouldn't be disturbed. Dad came up with the idea of digging down around the nest, and picking up the whole clump of sand, eggs and all, in one lump. So that's what we did. Dug a moat around the nest, pinned a towel around the lump to hold it together, and then slid the big square shovel under it. We dug a hole down at the beach where we've seen turtles put their nests, and carefully tucked the lump into the hole, filled the sides with sand, and pulled out the towel. For now we have some cinder blocks around it to keep the raccoons from finding it, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so once the smell of human and turtle is gone, we can remove the blocks and just let nature take its course.

Second hummingbird nest

I am not a morning person. It takes a few cups of coffee and some time to pry my eyes open. This morning, I was sipping my coffee, standing in front of the window, and peering sleepily out at the landscape, when what to my wondering eyes should appear? A hummingbird. I watched her land on a birch branch about 15 feet from the window. She wiggled, adjusted, and settled, and it took me a few seconds to realize that she was settling onto a nest. She's been on and off, looks like she may just be completing construction. I showed Dad, took a couple pictures, and now we're staying away from the front windows, we want her to settle in comfortably. All these years of checking trees by the house, and now we've finally got one that we can see from the comfort of our livingroom.

Snowshoe hare

A couple new pics of one of our residence bunnies. They're pretty bold, pretty much ignore us. Got this shot of Dad putting the new tire on the wheelbarrow, you can see Bun sitting right behind him about 6 feet away munching on the clovers, couldn't be bothered. In the second shot you can see that there's still a wee bit of winter white fur on the legs.