Gas Pains

Tom grew up in Milwaukee, bartended in Wauwatosa in the '70s and moved here in 1984.

Commentary, observations and musings about the outdoors, life in general and maybe Tosa politics and personalities will be the order of the day. He savors a lively debate as much as terrific cooking.

Walking the Dog

Critters, Girlfriend, Just For Fun, Outdoors

This is my Labrador retriever - Girlfriend.

She's my constant companion and hunting partner - she is purportedly a purebred black lab.

Do you notice anything amiss?

Nope.  Looks like a perfectly normal chocolate Lab to us. 

Hey, wait.  You said she was a black Lab didn't you?

Yep.  But she's fading and turning brown.  This happens every summer.  I believe it is called rusting.  I figure it is the equivalent of a dog suntan.

Girlfriend and I frequently go for long walks on the farm.  And more often than not, if we are observant, we encounter all sorts of cool things.  

Like this.

A couple of weeks ago we found this wild turkey nest.

Anyway, the other day we caught a break from the hot weather and ventured forth to more closely examine some dead trees that were strikingly noticeable amongst all of the summer foliage. 

Yep - they were dead alright.  And we're going to leave those snags to stand as home for the woodpeckers. 

Continuing on our way we made a circuit of the trail where some nest boxes were located and found both good and bad news.

The bad news is that marauding raccoons had killed and eaten the occupants of several boxes.

The good news is that most of the boxes we checked had growing families of song birds.  Some of them were the second brood of the season.

Like these house wrens

And these tree swallows

We also found this patch of bare dirt in the forest - a place where wild turkeys dust themselves.  A dirt bird bath so to speak.

There is more that we encountered and if you care to read about it and check-out the pictures you'll find more over at the other blog.

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