A Backyard Walk With Sophie

Finally we saw the sun for a few short hours this morning (first time since last Friday!) Here's where working part-time is great because Sophie and I got to take advantage of a nice morning and go for a little hike in the backyard. Come on along and I'll show you some of the things we saw.......

In spite of being almost 12 years old, a heart murmur and hind feet with no feeling in them, Sophie still loves to get out and run in the backyard. I don't take her for long walks anymore and she spent the rest of the afternoon napping after this adventure, but I think you can see how much she's enjoying being out here!

There's nothing wrong with Sophie's "sniffer" though. I bet she was smelling a bunneh under this tree.

When we were exploring at the farthest end of our yard, I noticed this fresh deposit of deer droppings.

Very close to where I found these droppings, we have an area of the yard that we've never mowed or done anything else with -- in fact, it's where we dump tree trimmings and other yard waste. It's grown up into a pretty dense thicket, but as you can see below, there's a little path going into this thicket......

and when I followed the path into there, I spotted this fresh deer hoofprint also.

Sophie was checking out all the good scents in there too, but I didn't let her snoop around too much because I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a doe hasn't hidden a fawn or two in that area! Wouldn't that be a real treat to see someday? I'll definitely be keeping a closer watch on this part of the yard now.

I've got quite a few cavity-nesting birds occupying some space in the backyard also. There are three active Tree Swallow nests. This little female Tree Swallow was reluctant to vacate her house, but I wanted to see if her eggs had hatched yet.

Not yet! Just 6 pretty little white eggs in a lovely bed of feathers. I'm always amazed at the variety of feathers the Tree Swallows can find to line their nests. Does anyone know if that stripey feather right down in front is from a hawk? (click on the photo to enlarge it)

I also have Tree Swallows nesting in two of these plastic super gourds, but they place their nests against the back wall of the gourds, so it's impossible to see how many eggs there are and whether they've hatched or not. But I know the nests are still active because I see the swallows going in and out.

Mrs. Chickadee is still sitting on her 5 eggs in this front yard nest box. According to my incubation calculations, there should be baby chickadees hatching by this weekend and I'll keep you posted on any new developments.

I have bluebirds in a nestbox in the backyard too. There was an unsuccessful nesting attempt earlier in the season and I'm not sure what happened, but that nest had been abandoned. Now a new nest with 5 eggs is being tended by the bluebird pair. Another neat thing about this is that I've finally found a nest that incorporates some of the yarn scraps that I put out in the backyard every spring!

Here's a nice shot of Mrs. Bluebird waiting for me and Sophie to get the heck out of her territory!

A quick check on the vegetable garden revealed these broccoli sprouts from the seeds I planted a couple weeks ago.

The garbage can potatoes are doing pretty good too.

Remember the scenes of the wildflower garden that I burned on April 13th?

Here's what it's looking like today. No buds or blossoms yet, but everything has grown back very nicely. With all the rain that we've had recently, once it gets sunny and warms up again, these flowers are really going to take off.

The wild grape vine has really taken over the dead tree in my front yard. Right now it looks there's going to be a good crop of grapes later this summer and the dead tree isn't quite so unsightly now that it's covered with green leaves again.

The house sparrows finally took over the nesting cavity that I showed you in this tree earlier this spring. I wasn't real happy about that, but a windstorm a couple weeks ago blew the top part of the tree off right at that nesting cavity, so the sparrows lost their home anyway. (I'm so glad the bluebirds weren't nesting there when that happened!)

I've got a bumper crop of common milkweed growing next to my driveway this year. I have only seen 1 monarch butterfly in my yard so far this spring, but hopefully when they come back, they'll find this milkweed patch along with several others that are growing in different spots in the yard.

And finally, a couple weeks ago I cleaned out some dead plants and replanted some new perennials in my hummingbird and butterfly garden. One of my new plants is this Foxglove. It's the only one blooming so far, but isn't it pretty?

Thanks for coming along with Sophie and me on this walk.....we had a good time and hope you did too.