November 3, 2010

Who knew poop was such a popular search term?

Posted by Morning Bray under Farm | Tags: , , , |
[30] Comments 

Technology allows us to see which search terms folks use to find us online at Morning Bray Farm. There are the usual and expected terms and phrases, such as “morning bray” and “the morning bray farm blog,” and terms and phrases generated by earlier posts we’ve done, such as “hummingbird moth…”

…and “stuffed jalapeños.” 

But who knew “poop” was such a popular search term? Because of our post on “toad poop,” “poop” – in one form or another – has generated a total of 345 visits to our blog so far this year.

We’ve had visits from folks who searched on the following phrases: toad poop, skunk poop, poop, skunk poop pictures, frog poop, skunk scat, toad poop picture, what does toad poop look like, toad scat, toad poo, toad feces identification, raccoon poop, what does frog poop look like, frog feces identification, poop in my garage, toad poop pics and identifying toad scat.

If you do a search on Yahoo! for toad poop, our toad poop picture comes up first. I suppose there are worse things to be known for, right? ♥

 

July 13, 2010

Don gets into blogging with Mothra

Posted by Morning Bray under Friends and Family, Insects | Tags: , , , , |
[23] Comments 

Leave it to something like Mothra to push Don over the edge and officially into the blogosphere.

We were hanging out with my dad and the boys on Sunday afternoon when Don went rushing past me and into the house to get the other camera. He came back out and rushed straight back into the barn. I walked in to find this:

Me: What’cha lookin’ at?

Don: Look at the size of this thing!

Me: Wow, honey. That's awesome.

Here’s my perspective of what Don was looking at: 

And here’s Don’s perspective:

Don: This sucker is huge! This is going to be a perfect blog post!

Me: Ok, hun.

I was sure Don had entered the blogosphere when he insisted I climb up on the hay bales with him to take this shot:

 

♥

 

July 10, 2010

Saturday Stuff – A new dove to me

Posted by Morning Bray under Birds, Saturday Parts & Stuff | Tags: , , , |
[20] Comments 

We have a dove nesting above one of the light fixtures in the barn. Not surprising due to the fact that we have a plethora of doves here.

One of the things I’ve come to love about blogging is that I learn so much – not only because I’m always looking things up to be accurate in my posts, but also because I’m constantly learning new things from all of you.

I found the screeching calls of the  doves in Albuquerque very strange until I took the time (only yesterday!) to identify our barn dove. She’s not a Mourning Dove. She’s a Eurasian Collared-Dove and has a very different voice than a Mourning Dove.

Some interesting facts about Eurasian Collared-Doves from whatbird.com:

  • The Eurasian Collared-Dove is one of two species that have been argued to be the wild ancestor of the domestic Barbary Dove.
  • Their scientific name, Streptopeleia decaocto, literally means a collar (streptos) dove (peleia). In Greek mythology, Decaocto was an overworked, underpaid servant girl. The gods heard her prayers for help and changed her into a dove so she could escape her misery. The dove’s call still echoes the mournful cries of her former life.
  • Introduced into the Bahamas in the 1970s, some migrated to Florida in the 1980s. They went unnoticed at first because they look much like the Ringed Turtle-Dove. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that ornithologists realized the suddenly prolific and quickly spreading “turtle-doves” they were watching were actually Eurasian Collared-Doves. Their impact on native species is unknown; some have suggested that their spread represents exploitation of a niche made available by the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon.
  • A group of doves has many collective nouns, including a “bevy”, “cote”, “dole”, “dule”, and “flight” of doves.