It's a Boy! or maybe a girl.....

Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Bluebird!  Proud parents of these newly hatched babies.  I think there might be a third one underneath, but I didn't want to mess around with them too much on this chilly afternoon.

I'll check back in a few days to see how these little ones are progressing.

Memorial Day Holiday Weekend

Looks like summer has definitely arrived in time for Memorial Day weekend here in Minnesota.  It doesn't seem very long ago that we were wondering what happened to winter and now summer is here.  We had storms on Saturday that dumped quite a lot of rain (which we needed) then a nearly record-breaking warm day yesterday (high of 89 degrees). 

Today has turned out to be a perfect day and I'm taking a break from getting my gardens in shape to do this blog post.

It's really nice to hear all the birds singing in the backyard again and I have some birdies taking advantage of the houses and nesting material I put out for them.  Here's the cozy little nest the chickadees made with moss, grass and some of the alpaca fiber I provided for their use.  There are 6 little eggs tucked into this fuzzy nest!

I took a look yesterday and here are 3 little baby chickadees almost ready to fledge.  They are just the cutest little things!  I'm not sure why the other 3 eggs didn't hatch, but 3 babies will be more than enough for the parents to take care of.

Mr. & Mrs. Eastern Bluebird also moved into one of my Peterson nestboxes.  They built a nice multi-layered nest with alpaca fiber on the bottom, then some grass and lastly a good layer of white pine needles.  This is the first time I can ever remember the bluebirds using white pine needles, but it definitely makes a nice, substantial nesting material for them.

There are 3 pretty blue eggs in here.  They should hatch sometime in the next week.

I've been working on getting some more native flowering plants added to my butterfly and hummingbird garden.  I bought this Golden Alexander plant at the garden center a couple weeks ago.  On the plant info card, it said Golden Alexander is a host plant for swallowtail butterflies.  I was happy to find this little swallowtail caterpillar on the plant stem.  Now I'll have to be really careful when I plant it so I don't dislodge the little bugger! 

I'm starting to see lots more butterflies in my yard already this season and I'm hoping that all the new flowers I'm planting will encourage them to stick around for the summer.  I had a nice Question Mark on the hummingbird feeder yesterday and also saw a couple of Mourning Cloaks earlier this spring.  Quite a few Monarchs are already flying around and the milkweed is coming in nicely, so there will be plenty of food sources for the monarch caterpillars.  I bought 2 new milkweed plants for my butterfly garden too -- one has orange flowers and the other has yellow flowers.  Probably won't be long and I'll have to think about getting the monarch ranch up and running again too......



The Wren Family

Underneath my deck, I have a little wren house (shaped like a mailbox). Every year since I put it up, the wrens have had a family there.
Since there's no way to look inside, I have no idea how many babies are squished in there, but I do know there are at least two.

And they're very noisy babies!
All day, every day, Mr & Mrs Wren spend every waking hour searching my backyard for bugs to feed these noisy babies. Sometimes they find bugs in the garden......

They perch on the clothesline before feeding the bugs to the babies (because their house is right below the clothesline).

But they really like to perch on the edge of the hanging basket holder that's right next to their house.

Their babies hear them chirping when they fly home with a bug and since those babies are always starving(!) the parents never get a rest.....

"More please, NOW, Mom!" ("Sigh," thinks mom)

During my photo session yesterday afternoon, one of the wren parents arrived with this epic-sized grub!

Let's see how the baby likes this treat......

Mom obviously considering whether to eat this tasty morsel herself or try to fit it in Junior's beak.

OK, let's try it again.......open WIDE!

Much wider, please!
That's good, you've almost got it!

OK, now get ready to swallow.......are you ready? I'm going to let go.

Oh No! YOU DROPPED IT!!

And Mrs. Wren goes back to searching for more insect treats in the backyard.

Watching these birds feed the insects they find is the main reason for never using pesticide sprays of any sort in my backyard. Having once inadvertently killed a family of bluebirds by spraying tent caterpillars with Raid, I learned a difficult (and valuable) lesson. Now I rely on the birds to do all the insect control work in my backyard and they seem to be managing the job very nicely.

A Couple Photos

Thought I'd check in with a quick post of a couple photos I've taken recently. First is the little family of house wrens who recently fledged from a nest box in the front yard. I love this little house because the roof is hinged and you can get a really good view of the baby birds. There are 6 baby wrens in there! #3 arrow is pointing to a baby that's hiding under #2 and the #4 arrow is pointing to a beak of another baby squished between #2 and #5. These little wrens sure made a lot of noise and kept their parents busy from morning til night finding enough insects to feed this hungry brood!

I also managed to capture this Cedar Waxwing who landed on one of the perching branches on my deck. This isn't the best photo of a Cedar Waxwing that I've ever taken, but I thought it was neat because you can really see the red "wax tips" on its wing. I've got a lot of these in my backyard now because all the berries are starting to ripen. I'm still hoping that some day I'll be lucky enough to find one of their nests.

Happy 4th of July to All!!

Baby Pictures!

Bluebird babies started hatching today! In the nestbox by the driveway, this hungry baby was already hatched at 7:15 this morning.

And in the nestbox at the far end of our backyard, Mr. & Mrs. Bluebird had 2 new little babies as of 3:00 this afternoon. Don't you just love their fuzzy feathers!

It will be a busy time for these bluebird parents and hopefully the rainy weather predicted for the next couple of days won't have any adverse affect on these new hatchlings. Maybe I'd better think about purchasing some mealworms to help these bluebird parents who will be busy trying to keep their hungry babies fed....

Miscellaneous Stuff & Some Knitting

I got an e-mail notice from the owner of my LYS (local yarn shoppe) this afternoon saying she had just given away the last chemo cap and it was time for us to make some more. The challenge thrown out to us rabid knitters was 30 caps in 30 days and I've decided to accept the challenge. So in order to get my 30 caps done, I'm going to have to take a little break from blogging (and probably Facebook too) and concentrate on this knitting challenge and also some other home and garden activities. Before my break though, I'll share some of the miscellaneous stuff and knitting that has been occupying my time these past couple weeks.

We moved the deer hunting ladder stand last weekend in anticipation of the upcoming archery deer season opener. (Actually we had to move it off some private property where our hunting privileges have recently been revoked.) Anyway, Mr. Johnson had this tree in mind and the ladder stand worked perfectly there. In this picture, he's cutting off a large grapevine that's grown up on this tree. This is a perfect spot right at the intersection of two heavily used deer trails, plus not much underbrush in the woods, so it should be good for birding if the deer activity is slow.

I picked the first zucchini from our garden. They have a somewhat stunted shape, but were very tasty nonetheless. There are plenty of blossoms and more little zucchinis on my two plants. I like this golden variety because they're easy to spot (not like the green ones that sometimes grow to the size of a baseball bat because you couldn't see them under a leaf!)

I'm finally starting to see more juvenile birds around the yard. Here's a cute little cardinal who visited the birdbath on Sunday afternoon.

This juvenile Red-Bellied Woodpecker easily figured out how to get inside the cage to the suet log. This is the first one of these youngsters I've seen this summer too. The adults have also been noticeably absent from my backyard--although they were regular visitors during winter and spring.

And now on to the knitting projects. I've been looking for this book ever since I saw it on another knitting blog and last week I found it at Michael's. There are so many cute patterns in here, so I also picked up three balls of cotton yarn to try some of the designs out.

I don't think I have to tell you what this design is.......

This butterfly turned out really cute too.

Sunflower

Leaping Frog

Hummingbird

I'm still working on the square lace shawl, but have finally gotten to the edging. Here's what I've managed to complete this week for the edging. I know this shawl will be much more impressive once it's all blocked out. I'm still not liking this pattern very much--the written instructions aren't very clear and I wonder if the person who wrote it was a really experienced knitter or expected only advanced knitters would be working on it. I've spent plenty of time re-reading sections and scratching my head trying to figure out what she's doing. The real challenge will come when I get to the first corner with my lace edging, but I'm hoping that once I'm there the written instructions will make perfect sense and the chart will correspond exactly to the number of stitches I'm working (I would hate to give up now that I'm almost done!)

I've also been whipping up some of these "coffee cup sweaters." Aren't they cute? And a good way to use up some of my leftover yarn scraps.

Here's a couple more pairs of the knitted half-mitts I've finally finished too. I love the colors in this self-striping yarn.

This color is called Pink Camouflage. (I honestly don't quite get the pink camouflage thing......but I thought the colors knitted up rather cute for these half-mitts.)

Most of these knitted items are destined for my Etsy shop, which is in desperate need of restocking, so between knitting chemo caps, watching birds, pulling weeds and all the other fun stuff going on around here, I hope to get the Etsy shop "shelves" full again.

I'll be checking in with occasional posts when I can and hoping to stay caught up with everyone's activities. In the meantime, I hope you all have an enjoyable summer!

Random Friday

Happy 3rd of July! I hope some of you are enjoying this day as a holiday from work (I sure am!) It's been a while since my last post, so here's a potpourri of observations from the past week.

A look in the garden the other day revealed that some thing were missing--like beet tops.......

and pea sprouts!

Since I'm reasonably certain Peter Cottontail and his buddies can't access the garden, my immediate suspect was Bambi's mom and sure enough, after very little searching, I found her hoofprint (several, actually!)
Obviously the greens provided a tasty diversion from the usual nightly feast of corn and birdseed and my 3-foot fence was no obstacle for Mrs. White-Tail. Liquid Fence to the rescue! I mixed up a fresh batch of this horrible-smelling stuff and applied a liberal dose to all of this tempting salad bar. And it worked! Here's some of the beautiful fresh lettuce and peas I used to make us delicious salads for supper last night. (those peas were so sweet--no wonder the deer liked them!)

There are lots of flowers blooming all over the place right now. Here are some of the sweet-smelling blossoms on the staghorn sumac bushes. This busy little bumblebee was loving it! See all the pollen collected on his/her back legs?

I'm starting to see some butterflies, but the butterfly activity seems slow this summer. I think this is a Pearl Crescent.

The common milkweed in my yard is starting to bloom. I actually saw a couple of monarchs checking out the flowers for nectar. The monarch numbers seem to be down this year too and I have yet to find any eggs or larvae on any of my milkweed plants.

Hopefully there's just a delay in their migration and things will pick up soon--I've got a brand new monarch ranch on the kitchen counter just waiting to be populated with caterpillars.

Two of my neighbors have beehives now and I'm guessing this might be one of their honeybees checking out the milkweed blossoms for nectar too.

Did you get your new "license to bird" yet?

The new duck stamps are available at your local post office and you don't have to be a duck hunter. "Federal Duck Stamp Dollars are used to purchase wetlands and other valuable habitat for the National Wildlife Refuge System, benefitting many different birds and other wildlife species."

Another plus: your duck stamp can be used as a season pass to any National Wildlife Refuge! (where you might be able to see the really neat Long-Tailed Duck pictured on this stamp)

I saw this inside my compost bin the other day.......

Thanks to Susan's post a couple weeks ago about slime mold in her yard, I was pretty certain that's what this was. So instead of being grossed out, I was pretty excited!

Two of the baby chickadees have fledged and have been seen hanging around the yard.

A nest box check last evening revealed two little ones still inside. I don't know how those overworked parents can manage it, but they're looking pretty frazzled when they stop by to pick up some mealworms.

Thus ends another nerdy post from the Nature Knitter. Since you've read this to the end, you may be a nature nerd too--check out The Nature Lady's blog and take the quiz. (I believe I answered "yes" to 15 of the 16 questions.) It's time to come out of the closet and declare yourself as a Nature Nerd too! Finally it's cool to be a nerd! Woo-Hoo!

Have a great weekend everyone!