Today's picture was taken in 1936 in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. During a drought, the livestock eat all the grass, and barren ground is left. This exposed dirt is then easily blown away, leading to large dust storms. If the situation gets bad enough, the dirt that is blown up into the atmosphere creates a situation that actually prevents it from raining. So, once things get so bad, it is very hard for the drought to actually be broken. It is believed that this is what happened in the 1930's dust bowl, and also in the 1950's drought.
DOMESTIC UPDATE: The Peacock has Landed, Version 2.0
OK, I had explained how Lovie had stolen Miss Kitty's eggs, and then how Miss Kitty started sitting on top of Lovie as Lovie sat on the eggs, and how they finally ended up both sitting on the nest of eggs. Well, with all the commotion, I was not sure whether these eggs were going to hatch. I am pleased to announce that the eggs hatched yesterday. The large nest had 11 eggs and 8 of them hatched.
This picture shows Lovie and Miss Kitty with 3 of the babies. The other 5 are under the girls. I am not sure how this is going to sort itself out as to which babies belong to which Mama.
So, here is the rundown on the flock population, which some of you had asked about. To begin with, year before last, we had Lovie and her four baby chicks. Then a few months later we got Handsome Jack, the adult male. This gave us a total of 6. Then last summer we had a total of 7 new babies hatch. This gave us 13. I mentioned that Miss Kitty was a terrible mother, and she lost her two babies. One got taken by an owl, and the other she took for a walk and lost. Don't know what happened to that one, but it never came home. So that put us at 11. Now, Elly May hatched 2 last week, and with the combo Lovie/Miss Kitty nest of 8, we have ten new ones, putting our flock population at a whopping 22 peacocks.
No comments:
Post a Comment