At 4 weeks
The ponds of Sunsport will soon be populated by 10 ducks raised with the help of the Sunsport kids. The ducks have been eating voraciously & growing at a phenomenal rate. At one month they’re nearing adulthood. At 6-8 weeks, they will be released into the ponds that wind through Sunsport Gardens. The ducklings hatched on March 23, so release will be mid-May.
Getting acquainted
Morley Schloss, Sunsport’s venerable leader, funded the project suggested by Ted Johnson. Grey Vanaman built a fabulous enclosure to protect the ducklings from predators and provide them with space to grow. Sandi Reamer, who heads Sunsport’s home schooling project, has helped the kids learn from the project.
Duck love
The ducks are Runner ducks, known for their egg production. Each female can produce as many as 300 eggs per year. Maybe we’ll find more eggs on the menu at the new Dolphin Cafe.
Residents who remember previous duck projects have expressed concern about the ducks’ fate with all the critters that reside in the ponds and in the jungle around Sunsport. There’s no guarantee, of course, but these ducks will be fully capable of flight, can run like hell (they’re used in some places to train dogs to herd), and will have a floating nesting place to escape to. At 6-8 weeks, they will be fully adult and will have at least an even chance at survival.
One of the ducklings injured it’s leg at about 2 weeks. It was taken to Folke Peterson Wildlife Center for treatment. This wonderful organization has cared for the duckling and is using it in their educational programs. They will let us adopt it when fully recovered.
If you’d like to contribute to the cost of feeding the ducklings, see any of the people listed above.
Gray's incredible enclosure
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Check out the newest addition to the gallery: 2009 Midwinter Naturist Festival 2009 – Friday. This is a shorter gallery and highlights body painting and several children’s activities.
If you would like copies of these photos suitable for printing please let me know. It is hard to choose from the hundreds I receive and I will probably have several similar pictures that are not posted on the web. If you send me the url or title of the gallery page and the captions of the pictures you want I will prepare a zip file of the original images and send you a link so you can download it.
Just email your request to webmaster@sunsportgardens.com!
April Newsletter
The time is now to submit your story or comments for the next issue of the newsletter. Send your submission in a text, word or pdf file to christiana@sunsportgardens.com.
More photos soon,
- John
The newsletter is now available on the website and should be arriving in your inbox! Thanks to Becky, Christiana, DJ, Carl, Kathy and eveyone who helped make it possible.
Find the new newsletter in the library: The Sunsport Report March 2009
I have to catch up on some other projects next week but I will try and get another photo gallery up. Let Christiana know what you think of the newsletter.
- John
Comments Off
I have started the process of making photo galleries of the Mid-Winter Naturist Festival for 2009. Morley has given me hundreds of pictures to comb through. I will select as many as I can and display them in albums. The first contains photos from opening day.
Go to 2009 Mid-Winter Naturist Festival – Thursday gallery to see the first album!
More photos soon!
- John
Thanks to everyone who provided me with corrections for the site. I have taken care of several problems with the events. I even had to change the time zone. The news blog now passes XHTML validation. I am aware there is a missing tags page here in the blog and I will fix that tomorrow. Taking the rest of the day off to go get some good food at the Beach Party!
Have a great weekend!
- John
Hello everyone! I have finally enabled the web log application. The site conversion has taken a little longer than expected but I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Over the next few months I would like to add more pictures, stories and other information to the site. If you have suggestions, comments or corrections for me please send them to webmaster@sunsportgardens.com. If you have a correction please send me the link to the page where the error is found and the correct information where possible. Contributions are welcome and will be posted on the web as they are approved.
This week I will begin work on the photos I received today from the Naturist Festival 2009. Look for them in the gallery soon!
Some might have noticed the W3C labels at the bottom of each page. They will link to validators to check the page for correct coding. If you push the button and don’t get a green ‘Validated’ message please let me know. I will try and correct it. Ironically this page doesn’t pass. Something to do for tomorrow!
The site is coded in an original php web application I designed over the years. It is still currently table based but I plan to convert it over to a pure css scheme in the next year. It features easily edited pages and the ability to integrate with many other applications. The events schedule is database driven with WebCalendar as the database manager and original formatters for the database display.
That’s all for now, time to go swimming!
- John