Birds, Bugs, Cat, And Tree Trimming

We've found a novel way to get rid of the dead sage rats that Hubby shoots from our deck.  We leave them out in a conspicuous place in the field.  Every morning and every evening one or more crows comes slowly cruising by, scanning the field.

I've enlarged the above photo here.  The crow(s) then swoop down to pick up the unfortunate sage rat and bring it back to where ever he goes.

On this particular day, however, the crow was interrupted by a hawk.

The best I could tell the hawk surprised the crow.  The crow dropped the rat.  The hawk hung out on the tree top for a while until the crow stopped circling and finally left.  I don't think the hawk ever saw the rat.  Eventually he left too.  

The other bird news is the quail are all over the place.  We see them and hear them everywhere on the property.  We haven't seen quail babies yet but they are bound to appear soon.

They've even taken to landing on the deck.  I guess we better get more bird feed for the feeder.

The bugs are these web nests of caterpillars.  There are were several of these web nests in the bushes on the side.  Hubby sprayed them to take care of them.  I hope they weren't good bugs...

Here's our old cat Kneadermeier.  You can see she was recently shaved (like Ollie).  In fact it was done when my sister was visiting.  Anyway, she sleeps very strangely.  She likes to tuck her head in so it's almost upside down.

Maybe this is her way of blocking out the light.

I figured out she is 14 years old now.  I suppose she is allowed to have her idiosyncrasies at that age.

And finally today Hubby did a lot of tree trimming.  These are the trees closest to the house just off the deck on the west side.  While he was trimming I was working the arena.  I dragged the brush hog chopped brush into piles.  Then I did as much ripping and smoothing as I could before lunch.  After lunch I started bringing the trimmed limbs to the arena.  Next time it rains we'll have several piles to burn.

Things are starting to look a bit better.  Like a broken record I have to keep saying, "slowly but surely!"