The busy season nears an end for the herd!  About this time of year, you can read the fatigue in the faces of the horses as they come to the close of the busy guest ranch season. In these northern climes, it seems both humans and horses furiously work during the long days of the "snow-free" season and feel a sense of relief when late fall arrives to signal the beginning of the season of rest. Whew! We made it once again through the season of "no rest" and are ready for a long winter's night's sleep. The first signal to the horses that they have reached the end of their summer's work comes when Dunrovin's farrier, Calvin, shows up to pull their shoes off. Sure, he comes often during the summer months to trim their feet and replace their shoes, but when he puts their feet back on the ground without a new shoe attached, they know their work is over. Look for Calvin at Dunrovin this coming Thursday and Friday to perform this seasonal ritual.

The DIVAS, of course, don't do any REAL work. They do, however, get their hooves regularly trimmed throughout the year, and they are of the belief that Calvin is there solely to give them a pedicure during their regularly scheduled spa days. Our good friend and wonderfully artistic photographer, John Ashley, happened to be here during one of their pedicure sessions and took some fun photographs.

The seed and suet eaters have found the nest feeders!  The word is out among the local avian population that the feeders at the ospreys' nest are up and ready for business. Our experiment with redesigning and re-positioning the feeders is teaching us some lessons that will inform the next version of the feeding station. On the positive side, the seeds scattered from the feeders are falling on the nest itself instead of the ground below and encouraging the birds to forage on the nest in front of the web camera.  Also, the trees visible behind the feeders make a lovely background for bird photos. On the negative side, the web camera will not move high enough to catch closeup photos of birds that land on top of the structure. Dunrovin plans to reconstruct the web camera support system this spring and will take that issue into consideration when positioning the webcam.

Naturally, the most common birds at the feeding stations are the most common birds in the area. Duh! While starlings and sparrows are some of the most common, that does not mean that they are not beautiful, especially when we can capture the details and colors of their feathers and slow them down in mid-flight. The series of photos below show the white tips and brown edges on a starling's green, blue, and purple feathers along with some stop-motions images of a sparrow coming in for a landing.