Nature

by

Our new kittens

We got two new kittens from Patches! (if you did not read the blog “Our Cats” or “Kittens” click on Patches for “Our Cats” and click Kittens for the blog on our Kittens.)

We named one Oreo, and the other is Hiccup. We picked the name Oreo because she is black on the ends and white in the middle like an Oreo. We picked the name Hiccup because he looks a lot like the dragon from the movie How To Train Your Dragon but acts like Hiccup in How To Train Your Dragon.

Oreo’s personality is:

  • always wanting outdoors
  • always attacking her sister
  • running over and scratching my brother’s face at night
  • more of a hunter

Hiccup’s personality is:

  • more of a house cat than an outside cat
  • defending against attacks from Oreo
  • a protector
  • not so much a hunter

Thats all for now!

by

Kittens!!

We had a litter of five kittens three weeks ago:

Screen Shot 2015-05-04 at 10.53.40 AM

Screen Shot 2015-05-04 at 10.53.31 AM

Screen Shot 2015-05-04 at 10.54.17 AM

Here they are – sleeping or nursing

Screen Shot 2015-05-04 at 10.53.58 AM

We have two “named” so far.  One is named P.J which stands for Patches Junior because she looked a lot like her mom (who is named Patches).  The other is named Dozer because he is huge and pushes the other kittens out of the way to nurse.

Here is Dozer, P.J, and the others sleeping:

Screen Shot 2015-05-04 at 11.04.35 AM

P.J. is on the top left and Dozer is the one closest to the camera (that looks like a tiger).

They all have their eyes open now, but unfortunately they were mostly sleeping when I took this picture:

Screen Shot 2015-05-04 at 11.04.21 AM

What should we name the other three?

by

We saw four geese… and first snow!

We saw four geese on our property the other day!  Maybe we should tell them they are late in flying south  :)

IMG_7336

Here are a few facts on geese.

  • Geese are a type of waterfowl belonging to the group of Anserini.
  • Geese mostly eat greens vegetation and grains.
  • There are three kinds of true geese gray geese, white geese ,and black geese.

Some Geese do amazing things while they are migrating.  There is a species in Asia, Bar-headed Geese (Aner indicus), that migrate over the tallest mountain in the world (can you guess?) in the Himalayan Mountains.  The air temperature is as low as -60 Degrees F.

Now that is a “wow”.

References:

  1. Wikipedia contributors, “Goose,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Goose&oldid=633827032 (accessed November 19, 2014).
  2. “Migrating Geese”, Chipper Woods Bird Observatory, http://www.wbu.com/chipperwoods/photos/geese.htm (accessed November 19, 2014)
by

Our Cats

We got two kittens in the beginning of summer, but  they are teenager-cats now.

This is Shadow, who is a very good hunter.  She only likes to go to places her sister has already explored.

This is Shadow holding a chipmunk that she caught!

aaa

This is Patches, she is the explorer. When we first got the kittens, Patches explored the house. I guess that after a while Patches must have told Shadow that it was safe because Shadow started going with her everywhere.

This is Patches exploring our brush pile.

IMG_6933

That’s all for now!

by

We found a big spider

Here is a big spider that we found while raking leaves today.

IMG_7041

Spiders are air-breathing arthropods.  They are found in every continent except Antarctica.

Spiders mostly prey on bugs, but few large species prey on large birds and lizards.  Argh, that is scary!

To find out more about spiders click here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider

That’s all for now.