A Day of Firsts

Today was a day of "firsts." We got up early and walked down to our neighbor's pasture where we have permission to turkey hunt later in May. We saw a tom with a couple of hens. While we were sitting there a red fox ran past. It was just kind of trotting along till it saw us and then it really took off. This is the "first" fox we've seen in the neighborhood for probably about 4 years. That was pretty cool.

When we were walking back from the pasture, I saw my "first" warbler of this year (a yellow-rumped) flitting around high in the top of an oak tree.

While we were walking the dogs, I saw the "first" June bugs of this year. Yuck.....I hate June bugs.

Later on in the morning I mowed grass for the "first" time this spring. I didn't have to mow the entire lawn -- just around the house and some other spots where the grass is kind of long (over the drain field and all the little spots where the dogs pee). While I was riding around I stopped to check on Mrs. Robin on her nest. The day after I posted the picture of her nest I checked again and she had 4 eggs in her nest. Today there were only 2 eggs left. I'm not sure what happened to them, but I strongly suspect that gray squirrel that visits our yard may have something to do with the disappearance. Sometimes I see the squirrel running down that direction.

We had a nice breeze from the west today and it's still very dry, so I decided it was a good time to do a "controlled burn" on a portion of my wildflower patch. I had used the weed whacker earlier to cut down last year's flower stalks. It's gotten a little trickier to burn the wildflower patch now that the brush pile is there and also there are some shrubs around the perimeter. It worked out pretty good. I had a couple buckets of water nearby and did have to put out a few flames that got too close to the brush pile and around the shrubs where the grass had grown pretty long and never got trimmed. It all went fast -- this entire area was done in less than 10 minutes.

The weatherman is predicting rain for Monday afternoon and evening, so by next week this blackened area should be all green again. I'll take some pictures next week so you can see how quickly this area recovers from being burned. It's really pretty amazing.

Now I just have to wait for a breeze from the south to burn the northern end of the wildflower patch.