A bald eagle visits

This is pretty cool! The eagle flew down and made a pass over one of the ponds, then sat in an oak for a while. Then it reversed and did the same thing in the other direction. There were a couple of angry geese that it might have  have been interested in, but it more likely was the dead goose we found just up from where the beavers had dammed the overflow for he pond. Which I cleaned out. As soon as I pulled the goose out of the water a couple of vultures showed up & sat in the tree the eagle had left. Pretty poor photos, because the wife only had the point & shoot. I cropped it pretty severely.

See him?

Removing the dam on the side overflow ditch, as it is the water is pouring through the hole the beavers have made in the center of the dam. This will lower the water back below the breach. A temporary fix.

 The beaver had included an old fence post and probably a couple hundred pounds of 4 & 5lb rocks. One or two really heavy rocks they somehow managed to get in there to hold the big stuff down.

Kind of drizzily here, so I shot another little spider.

This is another small kind of unremarkable little lady. True Spiders (Araneomorphae) » Entelegynes  » Pimoidae »      Pimoa ,  probably  altioculata.

I damaged her egg case & you can see some of her eggs. She has since repaired it. 

She is about 5 or 6mm long.

Click to enlarge.

In the meantime, the bees are resting during the rain. They have been bringing in tons of pollen. Everything is blooming 3-4 weeks ahead of schedule and somehow winter passed us by here in the PNW. The plums are about finished blooming and the pears are starting as will the maple very soon. Some folks are having to put on supers & I am way behind setting out my swarm traps as they will also start swarming earlier this year.

March wildlife on the Farm

After  shooting these, I returned home to discover I had left my camera settings on the smallest size and least resolution settings and had forgotten to change them. A bit disappointing.

Western pond turtles sunning themselves

 Distant shot of the elk herd by the North pond

 3 photos stitched together of the herd. Elk from left to right. Kind of hard to see the elk.

Taking it easy & eating Budde's next hay crop

The spike on the right in the panorama above

Dung fly

Surprisingly colorful little fly. He (or she) is partaking of the maple sap on the tree where the honey bees were also drinking.

Click to enlarge as usual

It's 62* and all the bees are flying

These ladies are partaking of the sap from the maple tree in front of our house. A sapsucker was kind enough to open up the bark for them. Click on the photo to get up close and personal with them.

Lots of trees and flowers blooming. The wild plum trees as well as the Satsuma in our yard are blossoming. This is a strange winter, I'm not sure what the outcome will be. 

The policeman at work

British humor! Love it.

Stolen from somewhere on the web.

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The problem with heavy equipment

Is twofold. For starters, it's heavy.  Then it breaks and reminds you that (a) it's heavy (b) It waits to break until all it's bolts & nuts are pretty much rusted into place (c) those bolts & nuts are going to be stronger than the tools I pick for my first choices.
The whole thing was too heavy for my trailer, so I decided to remove the part that needed repairing.
The only wrench I had that looked like it would fit was about 1/32 too small. Resisting the urge to fix the wrench with the grinder, I grabbed the tool of choice. A big pipe wrench.  With liberal shots of "Blaster" and an 8 foot pipe for extra leverage,  it took all I had to move it 1/4" at a time. And that was at the very end of the pipe.
An hour or so later once I had the big nut off I realized that there were two more underneath on a plate that wouldn't allow the assembly to drop free. I bent one rather (cheap, but Japanese not
 Chinese) and a ratchet (Chinese) 
 I found out that the sk ratchet had been previously broken (by someone else) and only tightens. The air impact wouldn't budge one of the bolts, but the other came out. I used a 5lb hammer and a drift to swing the plate out of the way. 
The blade came apart at last.
The trailer had flat tires, I pumped them up. I loaded the blade on the trailer.

 I unhitched the Jeep as I am going to use the truck to take this to the Lazy Farmer's shop to burn out the other broken bolts & get it repaired as my driveway is washing away & has ruts deeper than I want to get stuck in.

The Jeep stalled & wouldn't re-start. I covered it with a tarp for later. The trailer started rolling & was kind enough to run into my scrap metal pile instead of the Jeep.
Actually this doesn't really qualify as heavy equipment, but I'm figuring that Budde would rather work on a small project like this as a welcome break from his tractor which is currently misbehaving again. He should have it all apart by now and will no doubt  be happy to pretend to start working on this as I drive away.