With last night’s rain, the sand indoor the patio bricks was nice and wet so when the ants dug out from their “flood”, the grains of sand piled high.

The resulting sand castles will not last long but make for an interesting sight.

Simple things to amuse and catch our attention as we consider the start of another day – with an espresso in hand, of course. (hmmm … I wonder what would happen if ants liked espresso ?!

A deer runs away. OK, so what? I’m the one who started the deer but what happened before that was pretty cool …

Zen saw the deer.

The deer saw Zen.

The deer was curious about Zen.

Zen was curious about the deer.

Zen lost interest but the deer kept watching.

The deer lost interest and Zen returned to watching.

The deer saw me.

The deer ran away.

The End.

Since shortly before Ida paid a visit to the Eastern Shore, we have not recovered. The ground was saturated with the 6 to 9 inches of rain that fell and we’ve had another 6 or so since. For the most part, the farm land has managed to break even. The ground was soft but generally there was little standing water.

Last night and this morning brought another 3 inches and it appears to have been more than the soil or driveway could take …

Oh yeah. One more thing …. it went from 42 degrees yesterday to 62 this morning ! I think they call this El Niño

I’ve been watching, and attempting to record, the defensive behavior of the common Barn Swallow. When they feel one of the nests is in danger, all of the swallows take to the air and dive and swoop and make noise. The goal is to confuse the predator and then to scare it away with "attacks" consisting of fast fly bys with screeches at the moment when the bird is closest to the predator.

The video captures a few of these dives and starting at 00:55s you can see a pass in slow motion. This is followed by another pass in slow motion and then still frames.

(note the bird song as it is slowed down)