Sad  news today. One of our buckeye hens died over night. We’re not sure what ailed her, but the vet suspects it was septicemia (some kind of bacterial infection). We’re hoping the other hens weren’t affected, but may not know for a while.

Anne startled me out of bed just before sunrise this morning, yelling “the fox is after the rooster.” Amazingly, the rooster escaped by running down the hill and into the pond. The first thing I saw was Rogue (the rooster) standing in six inches of water at the edge of the pond with the fox about five feet away, pondering the situation. On further consideration, the rooster decided he was still too close for comfort, and swam across to the island. Who knew that chickens could swim? It’s a distance of about 40 feet, and I don’t know if he could have made it much further. The fox stared at him some more, tested the water, thought better of it, ran around to the other side of the pond to confirm that Rogue was really on an island, and disappeared.

A half hour later, we paddled across to see if the rooster was still alive. There he was, huddled in the brush, completely unharmed. We paddled back and, as soon as we landed, he flew back after us. I guess he forgot he could fly when the fox came after him. But who’s to judge? He survived.

Here’s Anne’s version of the exciting tale, in poetic verse:

O the fox went out on a sunny morning

And attacked the poor rooster without any warning

Said “the fawns are too big and the bunnies all hid

And I’m in the mood for chicken-0″ [repeat if you feel like singing]

Well the rooster screamed and ran like hell

Across the lawn he scurried pell mell

Said “I forgot to fly but I don’t wanna die

So I guess I’ll swim the pond-0″

Then the fox was stumped as he stood in the weeds

He couldn’t believe what he just see’d

Wasn’t duck nor goose nor a bloomin’ grebe

But a chicken a’swimming in the pond-o

On the island the rooster gave a lusty shout

To that chicken of a fox who just ran about

Fox said “I ain’t beaver, otter or old raccoon

And I won’t swim that pond-o.”

We paddled to the island in the big canoe

To see if there was anything we could do

Rooster said “I’m just fine but I think this time

I’ll fly back over that pond-o.”

 

 

Anne thinks this long-tailed skipper is not supposed to be in our region, but it seems to be happy in our garden!

We drove up to northern Minnesota to visit the new Ellis-Francis place on Deeryard Lake. On the way up, we drove around the north shore of Lake Superior and saw some beautiful places in Ontario. Lake Superior is very big. The air up there is wonderful to breathe.

Here’s Anne looking at some Ojibway pictographs, on a cliff just above the water line on the east side of Lake Superior. Fortunately, the lake was calm.

Anne looking at Lake Superior near the pictographs, in Superior Provincial Park.

This is a sand hill crane, seen on the drive into Sleeping Giant Provincial Park. We also saw something that looked like a ptarmigan or a spruce grouse, loons and bald eagles. Smaller birds were hard to find.

This outcrop in Sleeping Giant Provincial Park is called the sea lion.

Here’s a mom and baby loon we found on Ravine Lake in Sleeping Giant park. Dad loon was fishing the other side of the lake.

This is Kakabeka Falls, just west of Thunder Bay, Ontario. It was a rainy morning, not ideal for photography. Locals told us an Ojibway “princess” went over these falls while escaping some raiding Sioux, and the Sleeping Giant on the other side of Thunder Bay is her lover waiting for her to come through.

These are the falls on the Cascade River, near Grand Marais, MN.

Two canoes and a cayak rafted up for lunch on Echo Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Left to right: Clayton Francis, Sarah Francis, Ann Ellis, Milton Ellis (looking the other way), Margaret-Ann Ellis and Anne Ellis (peeking over her mother-in-law’s hat). We had to paddle into some stiff winds, but a good time was had by all.

We’re getting to be quite popular with the neighboring fowl. You may remember that Ahmed the wandering Americana (see previous post) wandered in a few weeks back. Since he was bothering our hens, Anne eventually handed him over to a nice man at the Southern States coop, who dropped Ahmed into a much larger (and less coddled) flock.

Then, this week, a couple of little black Bantams – a rooster and a hen – showed up. The hen roosted on our front porch last night, leaving quite a large and smelly deposit for us to clean up. Who knows where the rooster hid out, but he was back again in the morning. Anne is of course being very hospitable, chatting them up and providing water and high quality feed. The head momma Buckeye had quite a stare-down with the much smaller Bantam rooster – separated by a fence that seemed to give them both comfort.

Who knows who will show up next? We saw a fox run by a couple of days ago, but s/he didn’t seem eager to take on Ft. Knox. It may be helpful that the fort is surrounded by a lot of grass, making it pretty difficult for sharp-toothed predators to sneak up on it.

Here is Shanks keeping an eye on “his” chickens.

We want our chickens to range, but not too far. So far, we’ve been using metal stakes and chicken wire to keep them in sight. But that’s not very esthetically pleasing, and we want to give them more room. So we’re building picket fence annexes on both the north and south side of Ft. Knox for them. We’re also planning on planting some fruit trees in the north annex and, if we’re really daring, some hostas and other shade plants (deers’ favorites) in the south.

We dug the post holes with a two-person auger — really hard work for us now that we’re a little past our physical primes. You can see it below propped up between two benches. Our soil is extremely hard and rocky, and we had to continually lift the auger and chop away with my rock bar. Did I mention that it was also over 90 F? Ooftah. But most of the fence is in now, and the next step is to build a couple of arbors with gates before closing it all in. Here are pictures of the posts, before we installed the rails and pickets.

This pair has produced multiple sets of offspring in a nest under our balcony this year. They’re leaving a big mess on our patio, but we’re happy to accommodate. They provide endless hours of entertainment (and some frustration) for Shanks — his version of daytime TV.

Here’s the mom in flight — I used a really fast shutter speed and she’s still a little blurry. So fast!

Here’s the latest set of chicks waiting for the yummy bugs to be delivered. Call them Noisy, Grumpy, and Kool.

Or Bastille Day maybe — he sort of hit us half way in between. He showed up in a tree above our pond last night, and I got a semi-picturesque silhouette against the evening sky. Then he helpfully appeared again in the same place this morning, had an argument with the mockingbirds, and went on his way. Very cool!

Here he is having a word with the mockingbird.

And here is the mockingbird having a word with him.

Silhouette with magenta evening sky.

Taken this morning at the pond in the Blue Ridge Environmental Stewardship Center.

We’d heard that there might be some bear in our parts, but hadn’t seen any sign of them until today. This morning, we saw this handsome guy crossing Harpers Ferry road about a mile north of our place. It looked like he was making his way across the valley from the Blue Ridge to Short Hill Mountain. Why did the bear cross the valley? Got me.