Isn't this cosmo beautiful? And I am amazed at its height! It is a volunteer and just came into bloom around the beginning of October. I love that I can see it from my kitchen window.
We spent some time on Friday morning walking around our area and saw a red tailed hawk, seven turkeys, lots and lots of squirrels. We also visited our animal graveyard (where my husband buries animals who meet their untimely demise on our property) and found evidence of grave robbers. This is a skunk skull, remarkably clean considering it was only buried about four months ago. The kids are trying to dig up more, but the ground was too hard for them to get very far.
And I sure would like to know what this is! My husband found this lower down on our property on Thursday and showed it to me, and I showed it to the kids on Friday. We have found two more in our general area. They all are made on top of fallen trees or stumps, and have at least two entrances, one dug under the log or stump, and one coming up a little distance away. Sometimes field guides are very frustrating! I've had several things I have tried to look up but without any success. And I can't even think of a good way to search for it on Google!
Hey, Amber, my dad's a bit of an amateur naturalist, so I asked him, and he said: "She doesn't say what size are the holes dug into the ground (ie, how wide - 2"? 8"?), but the pile of sticks looks like a pack rat's house. Put something shiny near the pile and see if it disappears - packrat for sure!"
ReplyDeleteHope that helps! :D
I should have taken a picture of that too! I'd say the holes ranged from about 6" to 8". I was wondering if it could be some sort of rat, but there were some pretty decent sized sticks included in the pile and I wasn't sure they would be strong enough to drag them up there. Thanks for asking your dad. We'll experiment with the shiny bit, that'll be a fun test.
ReplyDeleteYou have me completely curious on what is making those nests. Have you seen any footprints? I never would have thought of rats but it would make sense. Pretty cool!
ReplyDeleteWe have looked for prints, but haven't found anything. We went back and investigated one more closely today and I think packrats is correct. When I looked them up online, I realized that I think I've seen a packrat before at least a couple of times over the last couple of years. I caught a quick glimpse and had thought they were just squirrels with pathetic tails. We're going to try the shiny object test tomorrow.
DeleteBeautiful cosmo! And beautiful light filtering through it in your photo. I'm amazed it doesn't fall over, being that tall!
ReplyDeleteMe too! But it has an amazing stem - more like a trunk, really. It grew for about two months before it started to form flower heads. We were all starting to think it wouldn't flower at all.
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