Sunday, May 10, 2009

Bird and Snake, 2009

We found the two baby wrens--they WERE still in the bag of wool, buried deep down, miraculously dry after several intense thunder storms pouring on the bag that had been casually thrown out the door to clean for the Soil Quality Workshop. We found them by following the cheeping. They seemed unconcerned to be rousted out of the bottom of the sack and exposed. They are each about the size of an English walnut--so tiny! We arranged the top of the sack to shed rain yet allow the parents to enter. I later saw them duck into the pile, unconcerned by our meddling. Wrens are much more tolerant of human neighbors than other birds.

While we were cleaning, we also found a black rat snake that was preparing to shed its skin--it was coiled under some other bags of waste wool, with milky eyes. We just left those bags in place and put something on top of them so that no one would disturb them. Moulting, the snake is likely to not go very far.

How lucky for the baby wrens that the snake was in a different wool pile! J. found a black snake with "lumps" in the hens' nest box the other day. The hens are laying better, but we have to check for eggs frequently in order to get them for ourselves.

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