The Lawn Llama

 Our Christmas decor llama got tired of spending the rest of the year in a box in the attic. So I began dressing him in holiday clothes for subsequent months, with help from friend Claudia who made most of the blankets and friend Carol who added hats and shamrocks and an Easter basket. But what started out to be a holiday per month llama has morphed into a llama that changes clothes more often than once a month. 

To review, our Christmas decor llama  kept his Christmas decor through January this year... brightly lit on dark winter evenings...

 

 

 And then became a Valentine's Day llama in February...

 

 A St. Patrick's Day llama in March...

 

 

 An Easter llama in April...

 

 

 

 

 

 And a Mother's Day llama in May...

But that's when things began to get out of hand... I started commemorating birthdays of kids who come here with their moms to get milk... (The child's name appears  on the sign below "Happy Birthday")...

 

 

 I couldn't then go back to "Mother's Day", since it was past,  so I created a Spring time Llama with tulips...

June was scheduled to be a Father's Day llama but Father's Day was rather late in the month and it was too hot for tulips anymore, so I went back to roses since June is rose month in Oregon...

 

 

However, I got very tired of continually refreshing the rose bouquet from my own roses before it was time for Father's Day... Carol and I gathered up father toys and tools to fill the llama's packsaddle...

 

Johnny posed with his new chainsaw on Father's Day morning...

 

 

 June is also LGBTQ Pride Month and it occurred to me that I could create a Pride Llama in honor of our many friends and relatives who identify somewhere along that spectrum...  Friend Barb made this blanket...

 

And that is the first half of 2021, lawn llama style. The second half is looking to be just as much fun and just as colorful. Stay tuned!
 

 

 

 

 

Haying Season

We moved the last of the hay into barns just before a record breaking heat wave was due to hit. 

Johnny mowing

 

Johnny raking

 

baling, front view

 

baling

 

Tradition requires Johnny to jump the last bale to prove he can still do that. If he can, he gets to hay again next year. He made it! 

 

 Although Johnny does 99% of the haying work, I do walk around the fields picking up bales and loading them onto the hay wagon while he drives his van and stops periodically to climb up on the wagon and stack bales. Then I load the bales onto a hay elevator that takes them up into the barn loft where Johnny stacks them. The hay from around barn and in orchard went into the llama shed area, which is where the hay in the above photo was going. 

Both tractors were hitched to mowing equipment, one to rake and one to baler, so the trusty old Roustmobile was called in to action. Its engine is only good for short road trips but it made it through hay hauling. Never count old guys (or gals) out.

 

 

A Day on the Beach, Part Two

 Two pairs of Black Oystercatchers, that I know of, nest on Chief Kiawanda Rock, off the coast of Cape Kiwanda. That rock is a mile offshore so it's very hard to see little black birds on that big black rock. Instead, I've found that those birds fly to the cape to forage as the tide uncovers the shellfish they live on. One pair flies to the north side and one pair to the south. If there are others on the Rock, they must forage on the Rock itself. Thanks to the efforts of the Park to keep people from falling off the end of the Cape, visitors are discouraged from going out there. So I can only monitor the north side birds usually. That's okay, the scenery is lovely and there are often colorful paragliders to watch. And such was the case this day.

It was still foggy at Cape Kiwanda State Park when I arrived at the north foot of the cape about 4 p.m. Two BLOY were on their usual foraging rock in the distance (the middle rock).

The camera brought them up closer

The sun soon came out and a little elevation helped ...

When the waves started to get close to the BLOY, they began to move...

... and forage... At 4:18, they called and flew toward The Rock. So not nesting yet. When they are, they will disappear for as long as it takes the eggs to hatch, then only one will come at a time to forage while the other stays with the chicks. If/when the chicks fledge, the parents will bring them to their foraging area here on the north side of Cape Kiwanda. Photos of some of their previous years' fledglings are on my Black Oystercatcher blog.

As I started the walk back to my car at McPhillips Park, a school of paragliding hopefuls was practicing putting their kites up and back down. It looked like a lot of work to learn how to work with the wind.

The tent at the left had the paragliding school's name on it but I did not get that in a photo.

I was home, 35 miles inland, by 6 p.m. It was still hot, but not as hot as before. 

A lovely day on the beautiful Oregon coast.

A Day on the Beach

 Yesterday, June 2nd,I spent the whole day at the coast... at the delightfully cool coast. It was in the high 80s at home and I don't "do" hot weather well. Or at all. Johnny, perhaps because of his mid-western upbringing, loves the heat.  He stayed home and worked outdoors in the heat while I surveyed for Black Oystercatchers (BLOY) on the cool and clear (after the morning fog burned off) and windless beach. Here's my story in photos... First, at the cove at Road's End in a low tide...

The high cliff wall at entrance to cove had these pretty yellow flowers blooming in cracks

Up close they turned out to be Monkey Flowers, a mimulus that likes moisture. Maybe water runs down those cracks.

The rocky and high passage into the cove

The BLOY nest rock in the distance... in the fog

Small black birds would be hard to see on this foggy rock

Up close didn't help. But I heard no sounds for over an hour, which meant they were not there. BLOY never stay quiet that long

Sunshine at last! But still no BLOY

Beautiful scenry even though the birds I was supposed to be monitoring were not present

...Until they were! They called and flew in from some place north and landed in the horizontal crack in the cliff

They hung out here for ten or more minutes, preening and just hanging around

Now the Middle Rock had good visibility, but no chicks were seen anywhere

The adults walked from their horizontal groove to the area where the nest had been (center of photo) and onward to the right and above, below those two rocky spires

They poked around in the grassy area

I hoped some chicks would appear but none did and the parents had no food as they had been preening before coming to this spot

About 15 minutes after arriving, the parents called and flew off northward toward a foraging cove.

My guess is they had lost their chicks earlier and came back to where the chicks were last hidden. I've had pairs do that before. But, of course, I cannot know for sure. Hopefully the adults will nest again, as BLOY who have lost eggs or chicks usually do. And I will make another trek into the cove. 

It was only a bit after 2 p.m. when I got back to the car, so I decided to drive onward to Cape Kiwanda and check on the BLOY who nest on the north side of Chief Kiawanda Rock and fly to the north side of the Cape to forage at low tide. That is Part Two of this day at the beach...