Goldfish

All of a sudden my goldfish population has increased. There are small 1 inch fish in there that are black, or gold and white, or just all gold. The larger ones must have had offspring. We have had lots of rain so the water has been clear. That is until I waded in there to remove and clean the filter on the pump. This picture is the best I could do to show how many I now have.

Fox Sighting

On my walk down my driveway this morning I saw a fox ahead of me. He saw me so headed up the bank. He changed his mind and headed down the drive ahead of me and around the bend. When I came around the bend he was waiting farther ahead on the look out for me. He then took off into the woods.

This evening I happened to look out my study window and there was a fox, same one? I don't know. I managed to get these pictures. We couldn't figure out what there was to eat in the gravel. In the grass he seemed to be catching crickets or grasshoppers.

Mystery Plant

Three weeks ago we started noticing a plant blooming in the wetlands away from the driveway. I used my binoculars to look at it to see what it was. We first thought it was a butterfly bush, but realized the leaves and blossoms were wrong for that. Finally my husband waded into the tall grass and briars to spray bittersweet, briars and mile a minute and picked a stalk of the plant.

Does anyone know what it is? Is it an aster?

Birds are back.

During the summer I took down the birdfeeders because the deer were making them a regular stop. As a consequence I didn't see any chickadees or titmice all summer. The woodpeckers flew through occasionally as did some goldfinch. When I put back up the feeders I wondered how long before the birds found them again. They must have been keeping watch because they were back the very next day. So how do they know? Do they communicate that with each other and between species?

This is the nest of the wren who built it in my hanging plant. It's like a little cave.