Birds, Snakes, Babies, Spraying, Planting and Tractor Trouble

 I had high hopes for tractor work and planting but it was wet.  Last week, both tractors were acting up.  My helper, Ian worked on them and thought he had them fixed. The John Deere (gas) is now running well but the Kubota (diesel) is still dying out.  The guess is water in the fuel - I'm not so sure.  Here's an example of what's going on Kubota Dying When Trying to Rev or Load

The first thing that I notice is a heron camped out at the pond - I suspect to eat my fish. But now I wonder if they eat snakes.

 I walked down to check him out.  The pond was muddy after all the rain.

He busted me and took off out of there - good riddance.

 I do have a little algae bloom going on - not bad yet.  I'm getting a quote for Jones Fish to just manage the pond for me.  We shall see.

 In the meantime, I mixed up a batch of Seclear and went down to treat it myself.

Most of the pond is muddy but not over-run with algae.  But best to stay ahead of this stuff.

As I was circling the pond with the backpack sprayer giving it a treatment, I almost stepped on this.  I've been seeing swimming snakes this year for the first time.  I've assumed that they are northern water snakes. But I'm always on the alert for copperheads.  Here's a post on how to tell the difference.  Watersnakes vs Copperheads  Most of the swimming snakes I've seen were 2 to 3 feet long but I have seen a few babies too.  Video of Swimming Baby Snake  This snake was starting to molt and only its head had bright colors.

Hmm...but it was a copper colored triangular head.  I studied it for awhile trying to decide what I had.  Snake video #1
Snake video #2
Snake video #3

Yep, eventually I concluded that it was in fact a copperhead.  About that time he slithered under the pond house.  Normally, I'm pretty chill with snakes.  Used to collect them as a kid.  But we had grandkids running all around this exact spot last week.  He better do his disappearing act because I'm pretty sure he won't survive our next encounter.  We've had three encounters with copperheads in the last 15 or so years.  Usually see them once and then never again.  Hope so.

Meanwhile the clover plots are showing a lot of weeds.  No tractor to bush-hog with, too wet to plant, so I mixed up some broadleaf weed control and sprayed a few plots.

 Butyrac doesn't hurt the clover.

I actually got three plots sprayed.

Here's a classic case of my handyman abilities.  Joan got a new snap together trash can.  I snapped it together and it didn't seem quite right.  Oops, front panel upside down.  Top doesn't latch.  Snapped together and won't come apart.  I guess that I like it this way.

Cool evening and the deer were out in the fields.  Used my new gadget on the spotting scope to catch this shot.

 Sunday morning - birds at the feeder.  Male cardinal and goldfinch.  Female cardinal has a death wish against our window.

Joined by a red bellied woodpecker.

So it was still really too wet but I went out to work on planting anyway.

Found some evidence of marauders so figured that I better get the tape up.

I managed to get a third of it planted and tape up.

 There are some things up in the few rows that I did last week.

Meanwhile, sunflowers progressing.

 2 week old powerplant field looking good.

A later sunflower field.

One week old powerplant field - some germination.

 Surprise on camera this week - new arrivals.

 A day or two old?

 Some still carrying.

 And the bucks are developing.

I'm always amazed by the ticks on the deer ears.

 Back of a bobcat.

The usual suspects.

Not much turkey activity.

The neighborhood gang.

 And a few more shots from last weekend.

I'm sure that whatever I told them was very wise.