This year, 2018, will go down in Hall family history as the summer of broody robins. Back-to-back-to-back-to-back broods. It’s July 1 and we are on the third round of egg-laying already! Another short 5-day break between broods, and we are on batch #3 of the summer. We couldn’t believe it when we saw the new … Continue reading
Tagged with garden …
Eggs of common Nova Scotia birds
The top three birds found in Nova Scotia are red-winged blackbirds, American robins and European starlings. I was curious what the nests and eggs looked like of these and other common garden birds, so I collected some images. Blue is a common theme: check out all these shades of blue! And speckles. But my favourites … Continue reading
June bugs
The June bugs are out in our part of Nova Scotia. Seems we’ve had an early spring this year. I haven’t kept track of the June bug dates with the same dedication as the spring peepers, but here’s what I’ve been able to find in the archives. 2013 – May 23 -(missing a few)- 2016 … Continue reading
Back-to-back robin broods!
The American robins have returned to their favourite nest just outside our back door. Although everything I’ve read says that robins build a new nest for every new brood, this is not the case at Casa Hall. They come back time and again to the same nest, and don’t appear to make any upgrades or … Continue reading
Winter 2017/2018
We’ve had a super weird winter this year. We’ve weathered several storms bad enough to lose power. We were in the dark for 5 or 6 hours on Christmas Day evening but can’t argue with the timing — the power went out just as we lit the Christmas pudding at the end of dinner. But … Continue reading
Noisy raccoons
Every night it seems I capture the nocturnal wanderings of our locals raccoons on the trail cam. So I know they are out there somewhere, sleeping, as we walk through the woods to school and back. But we don’t see them very often during the day. Today, Lily spotted a large one walking up the … Continue reading
The robin is back!
After two years without a nest in the corner of the eaves, I am really happy to report that we now have a nesting robin again! Although we nearly didn’t… This robin (I like to think she might be one of the babies from this post from 2014 or even this one) had a rocky … Continue reading
January 2017
Winter has been way too greenish brownish so far. January was more or less snow free which felt weird and wrong — we had a fairly big dump at the beginning of the month (Jan 8/9, see the photos above) and then nothing. Just mild drizzly weather for weeks. The photo of the flock of … Continue reading
Trail Cam, October-November 2016
My mum and dad visited for Thanksgiving in October (spent as always at Milford House). While they were here, Dad bought us a trail cam and he installed in out in the woods behind the house with the help of Milo. Since then, I’ve moved it several times. We’ve caught lots of deer, raccoons, domestic cats and … Continue reading
2016 — driest summer on record
Summer 2016 smashed all the written records in Nova Scotia according to the media. Not only was it the driest on record, it was also one of the warmest. “From June 1 until Sept. 18, the region received only 90 millimetres of rain, far less than the normal 315 mm… Other dry periods don’t even come … Continue reading
witches whiskers 