Blackfly Days

They arrived at 13:00hrs on Friday 11^th May, the dreaded Black Fly menace that haunts the early summer of Eastern Canada.  For those of you unfamiliar with these little biting varmints, I’ll explain that the only way to be outdoors is to coat yourself in citronella, tuck your trousers into your socks, wear a bug-proof net shirt, complete with head cover and generally end up looking this:

Since the net shirt is usually black it hints at a fetish garment for a perverted bee keeper and the little devils still manage to get inside resulting in a futile attempt to squash the 5mm bug between finger and thumb while they flit, out of focus, between your glasses and your eyes.  For such tiny things they sure have big jaws.  Having spent the winter unable to go out without a ten minutes robing session with boots, hat with ear flaps, padded coat and gloves, it was a pleasure to be able to saunter out the last few weeks without a care.  But now it’s a production again – citronella round face, wrists and ankles, trousers tucked into socks, hat and net shirt with gloves pulled inside the sleeves.  This is fine if you intend to spend two hours gardening but, if you just want to get the wash in, laziness can result in a dash to the clothesline, a flapping dance to get the unfolded laundry bundled into the basket, clothes pins flying, and a sprint back to the house, all accompanied by a chant of ‘Do please go away you nasty little flies’ or something a mite spicier.

 But there are much more interesting things astir.  An extended friends and family group of seven (not that one) came to stay this weekend and, rising early, as three year olds will, small son Finn attempted to distract his father from his iphone.  ‘Black bum-bum, Daddy’.  ‘Hmm?  What d’you say?’ mumbled Kris sleepily.  ‘Daddy, black bum-bum’ and there she was, a female black bear eating the grass on the far side of the pasture, underneath the poplars.  One by one we staggered out of bed to gaze at our shiny black visitor pottering up and down for 10 minutes or so who eventually climbed the fence and disappeared.  Later we went to inspect her tarry, black scat.  Very exciting.  (We thought she was female because she looked to weigh about 100-150ibs.)  ‘It’s like Disney out here – woodpeckers hammering the trees, chipmunks leapin g over the stones and now bears wandering about in the field’, muttered Kris while taking this lovely shot.

And the hummingbirds – they’ve come!  Jenny thought she saw one Friday evening so we put out the feeder on Saturday morning and, sure enough, within a quarter of an hour there they were – at least three of them, two with the lovely red breasts and one more dowdy, busily chasing each other away from the feeder.  Hummingbirds are unusual in that the female is more decorative than the male, apparently.  Last night the bothersome racoon knocked down the bird seed feeder and drained the hummingbird feeder without damaging it.  How?  Still, I don’t want to have to wash and refill the feeders every morning so they will have to come in at night – which means I need to be up early for the poor hummingbirds.  This morning, as I was carrying the refilled feeder out, I heard what I took to be a large bee zooming up on the other side of the feeder and turned it slowly to see if I was being attacked by a hornet.  There she was – the most beautiful jewel of a hungry hummingbird drinking out of the feeder as I held it, speechless, in my hand.  After about 30 seconds, which is a considerable part of a hummingbird’s life, she spun off out of sight leaving me with my mouth open, too stunned to do anything but mutter ‘How fantastic.  How wonderful.’ for a few minutes.  How did they make it up from Mexico?  Thanks to Kris and John for the amazing photos.

Well, the winds blowing a little so there may be some lessoning of the black fly menace.  I’d better get back to the garden before the mosquitoes wake up as well.

Hope all’s well with your life and we’ll talk soon.  Bye.