Because of reports of bees dying worldwide, I thought I should rescue the bumbling, weak insect on my office windowsill.  I offered it a bit of honey (from its own beekeeper's supply).  It responded immediately and after eating a bit of honey, managed to fly off out the open window.

Although there's not a great deal of feed around, the heifers always seem quite happy in the Spring Paddock.  I had thought of moving them, but they stayed happily grazing on the hillside, as I walked down the hill and away again.

Poor Dotty must have been on her back for a while, judging by the flatness of the grass where she'd been stuck.

I finally bought a trail camera, the sort of thing one ties to a tree and sets to capture pictures of passing animals when one is not there.  I need to find out when the pigs come and go, so we can be in the right place at the right times to shoot them, without having to sit and wait for hours in the dark.

Tonight at 8.15pm these two pigs came across the track from Mushroom 1 and under the tape gate into the Windmill paddock.

The pigs obviously spent some time in 5d too, by the look of the holes in the pasture.

Imagen is fat.  I don't begrudge Imagen an easy life, since she had it pretty hard when she was younger.  She's on better feed than she needs while she keeps daughter Zella company.  Zella needs feeding up again after her long milking duty.

I opened the gate for the heifers to move themselves from the Windmill to the Tank paddock, but they ignored it for two days.  Eventually I went out and put up some tapes to create a lane to push them through the gate.  They're a funny mob, disinclined to move from one paddock to another, even when they run out of feed.

The big shiny green-leafed plant growing in this Totara tree is the Shining Broadleaf or Puka, Griselinia lucida.  Usually it grows up in the canopies of huge Puriri, so is rarely close enough to see easily from the ground.

I've been watching this plant for a while and lately it has really grown.

A fern frond, growing on the stream bank in the area recently fenced off from the Back Barn paddock.

Stephan had encouraged me out for a walk to cheer my August-glums brain.  It's a good thing he did, because we discovered heifer 743 standing in the reserve area in the Tank paddock.  She was quite happy, having eaten lots of the long grass and every Puriri leaf she could reach, but we don't want her there.

We went off to collect some electric tape to direct her out and a tool to loosen the fence wire so it could be lowered and she then quietly walked back out into the paddock.  Stephan then checked and discovered he'd never reconnected this bit of fence after the alterations he made to it during the riparian fencing work, so it wasn't electrified.

The pigs are still hitting the Mushroom 1, by the look of it.  We will have to come out and hit them.

I wonder if this duck has lost her mate?  From her location I suspect she's the female of the pair who nest in the Puriri at the bottom of Flat 1.

Only occasionally do we see gatherings of more than the resident pairs of Putangitangi on the flats, but today and yesterday there have been quite a number of them, more females than males.  Perhaps they are youngsters, not yet paired and hoping to find breeding homes?

Zella is a brown-faced cow today, thanks to the clay bank back along the track.  I opened their gate behind me as I went out to check the other cows and all of a sudden, there they were, quite keen to go somewhere they haven't been for a long time.

Imagen had to stop and prove she's still the top cow on the farm.