My Little Snack Bar...

I've got some "new information" on who really is dining there.

Without spending a dime....

My daycare lady took the day off on Thursday of this last week, which turned out to be beneficial, because Kase was under the weather and I'd already planned to be at home rather than at work.  Soo, before  he took a nap, we went out and "played".  

That more or less put us outside around 10:00 am.

I haven't seen the hawks or the eagle in about a week or so, but the crows are active almost non-stop.  They are always moving around, squawking and doing their thing.

I can only assume that they have some sort of route that they fly as I see them coming and going from basically the same areas.  But I could be imagining things also...  Trying to be all sooper sloothy in my spare time.

Anywhooo, we were filling our water bucket with rocks and water when the couple of love birds came flying in...  What I decided was the male bird in first with what I decided was the female bird coming in behind him...

I gender assigned them this way, because the first bird was being berated by the second for some wrong doing...

The second bird was so mad at the first that it was hop/flying up to the eye level with the first bird that was on the fence post, squawking at it, then landing and repeating the process. (Imagine someone so mad they are jumping up and down yelling at someone.)  It really did this about 5 times, then Seven charged over there to see what was going on.  

The birds left when the dog invaded their space.  Once they left, the dogs interest did not, the dog just kept sniffing and circling the post, so of course I had to investigate.

There it was.  A lovely snack.  Kind of.

It was some nasty, smelly, half rotted piece of hide with flesh still attached to it.

It smelled REALLY bad...

So I guess that Mrs. Crow really didn't like the dinner that Mr. Crow had brought home.

On the flip side, it was ALL gone when we came out to feed the girls after Kase's nap.  (0:

As a side note, Seven found a deer hoof on the side of the road yesterday, Friday, while we were driving the tractor up and down the road.  So maybe they are related...maybe not.  Kase and I also spotted a chicken wing with a spine attached to it on the side of the road, only farther down.

So maybe we live on the death road... 

Or the eagle is eating the neighbor's chickens and various other small birds- but probably not the deer, as it was too big to be a fawn, or the coyotes in the area are actively hunting anything that they can, or maybe it's an owl who also would not be taking down a deer, but would be hunting.  Everything dead could have definitely been brought in by the crows including the deer pieces as it could have been a road kill.

No matter how you look at it, someone or some thing is hunting, eating, and leaving parts and pieces behind.

Pieces like these.
Not sure what kind of bird this one was, but it fell at some point today.
And Jack-Jack was pretty darn interested in the feather pile.
Poor little bird, little bits and pieces of him left all over the place.

Chad's supposed to help me measure the distance from the nearest anchoring point for a camera to the dining post to see which one would be able to get the best pictures or any pictures at all as they all need some sort of trigger, and although I haven't read up on it, I think that they are all motion activated.

On the horse front, I finally got a hold of the shoer.  

Jake had to have surgery on both of his eyes for cataracts and is just now back to work.  So he is really, really, really behind.  He is supposed to be out on Monday around 4 to get everyone done.

Fiona will be the only one getting shoes.  It's a trim for everyone else!

I wormed everyone the week before last, and gave everyone a tetanus shot.

I am not sure who will be leaving the property for group activities yet, if anyone.  So I am not going to worry about the flu and all that other jazz right now.

But if we decide to haul out this summer, I'll worry about that then.

I kind of gave up on the west nile stuff after 15 years of vaccinating for it.  Not sure if that's good or not, but haven't heard about a breakout around here so I'm just going to skip it too, until I hear of a reason not to.