HARVEST TIME

Harvest is well under way here.  We've had unusually warm weather for September, with one day this week predicted to go over 30ºC (close to 90ºF).  That, combined with very little rain the last month, means that everything is very dry.

When my friend and I were going to a walk recently two huge combines rumbled up the road.

She snapped a picture of me to give some idea of the size of this equipment.  We should have one of her standing beside the wheel.

Here's a field of swathed canola across the road from our place.  Last Saturday evening we had a time of heavy winds and that really messes up these nice neat swaths.  I wrote about canola a few years ago back in '11.  You can check that out in two posts, one on July 8, 2011 and the other on September 6, '11.

Here's this year's harvest of canola, swathed and ready to be combined.

 

Yesterday afternoon we had a visitor.  We've seen him several times recently.  He's quite at home here but will quickly disappear if he notices us.  He's in the driveway just outside the back door and I took these photos through a window.  In the first photo he checks his surroundings while eating a mouse he found in the shrubbery.

He then goes back to see if there are any more where he found this one.  It was a dead mouse that I had thrown out earlier.

Nothing there.  If we catch a mouse I usually throw the body between the spruce and the rosebush just behind him.

So he gradually moves off.  He went down into the garden area, scratched himself leisurely with his hind foot and then trotted away.

He's not very red, but you can tell by his tail and also his size that he is a fox and not a coyote.  We're hearing their choruses most nights lately.  Sounds like at least six of them out there.  We do enjoy the wildlife that takes advantage of all the food available here, both the berries and the small critters.  This is the time of year when the mice are trying to find a warm winter home and we appreciate the help of Mr. Fox in keeping the mouse population in check.

Some years ago we had two young fox kits that came and played on the bark chip pile in the parking lot every morning around 5 to 6 a.m.  What beautiful animals they were!  And what a treat to see them grow that summer.  I posted about them also, but will just repeat one of the best photos of them: