Bluebird Oasis

A few weeks ago while we were eating supper, some migrating bluebirds showed up at the birdbath on my deck.  It was still warm and dry then, so my birdbath was getting lots of use and had gone almost empty while I was at work. You could almost see the concern on these bluebird's faces when they realized how low the water was. 

"Good grief, there's not even enough here to make a splash!" they seemed to be saying.....

"We might as well leave now if this is all she's got for us!"  "Wait, don't go yet," I pleaded from inside the house.  "I'll leave my supper to fill the birdbath for you, if you'll just let me take a few more pictures!"

So I grabbed the water jug and slowly stepped out onto the deck and of course, they all flew away.....

But almost before I got back into the house, the bluebirds were back again!

"Oh, look how nice and full this birbath is now.  Let's get cleaned up a little!"

A bright sunny afternoon turned the splashes into diamonds. 

And even bluebirds can share a few cross words when it comes to sharing the bath!

But hey, that birdbath really is big enough for both of you, isn't it?

Super Splash!!

House Finch thought he needed to join the pool party, but look in the background -- more bluebirds!

And even MORE bluebirds!  There were a total of 6 on my deck for a few minutes.  I'm guessing it was probably a family group on their southern migration journey.

A few more splashes with chickadee enjoying a sidelines shower, and then the bluebirds were gone. 

Farewell Bluebirds and safe travels to you.  I'll be looking forward to your return next spring....

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.

Monarch Ranch 2010

It's official! Ruthie's 2010 Monarch Ranch officially opened this evening! As I was mowing the lawn yesterday afternoon. I noticed an abundance of monarch butterflies flitting around the yard and hanging on the underside of milkweed leaves appearing to lay eggs. So tonight when we got home from our after-supper walk with Sophie, I checked a few plants in the front yard to see whether I could find any caterpillars or eggs to stock the ranch.

I found these 2 already hatched caterpillars. I'm betting the big one will probably go into chrysalis stage sometime this weekend.
I also found 12 caterpillar eggs! I like raising the caterpillars from eggs. It takes a little big longer, but I have much more success with raising them to butterflies because there's no chance of any of the caterpillars being parasitized by wasps or flies when they grow up inside my house. If you're wondering exactly what I'm doing with these eggs, it's a moistened washcloth in a pie plate. I just cut off a small portion of the leaf where the egg is laid. The washcloth will keep the leaf moist and also from curling up. Plus, it's much easier to monitor how close the eggs are to hatching when they're visible like this. Once the tiny caterpillar hatches, I just put it (and the little leaf fragment) on a fresh milkweed leaf and the caterpillar will be ready to start eating and growing.

This last picture has nothing to do with the monarch ranch, but when I was editing the photos I found this one on the card in my camera that I had taken a few weeks ago. It's Mrs. Bluebird peeking out of the door of her house. Isn't she cute? Four bluebird babies were successfully fledged from this house.

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....

Springtime Backyard

I mowed the lawn on Monday afternoon, so that gave me a good opportunity to see what kind of "nature" events were occuring in the backyard. First and foremost, I wanted to check on the progress of the bluebirds because there was only 1 egg in this nest when I checked previously on Saturday night. Wow! 4 eggs! That's exciting and hopefully there will be baby bluebirds hatched in this nextbox in about 2 weeks.

There are several pairs of tree swallows in the backyard this year. The thing I really like about tree swallows is they're not shy and will let me get really close for pictures before flying away. Right before I snapped this picture, the female flew out of this nest box, but when I checked it, there wasn't any evidence of nesting materials inside the box yet.

It's a different story in this super gourd though. I always put a layer of white pine needles in the bottom of these plastic gourds and when I checked inside, I could see that the swallows have hollowed out their nesting spot on the back wall of this gourd and started adding more grass. In fact, the orange arrow in this photo points out that Mrs. Swallow had another piece of grass in her beak to add to this nest.

I tried really hard to snap a picture of the swallow in the gourd doorway, but I'm just not fast enough! I thought this shot of her soaring towards the entrance was pretty neat though. I really enjoy watching these swallows flying around in the backyard for a few months each spring and summer. The backyard is definitely a much quieter place once these swallows and their new families depart at the end of July.

In the wild lower part of the backyard, I discovered some wild plums blooming. I didn't remember these from previous years, but the plants were pretty big, so obviously they've been growing here for a while. I just LOVE the scent of these blossoms and can't resist stopping to inhale deeply every time I pass one of these trees. Someday, I know I won't look close enough before sniffing and inhale a bee or bug......

These 13-lined ground squirrels are taking over the backyard. Cheeky little buggers sit right outside their holes and watch me on the lawnmower. They drive Sophie nuts too. They dive right into their holes when they see her coming and she will stand by the hole forever waiting for them to come back out. Of course, they never do..... (Well, sometimes they do, but I won't share any details of that story except that it involves Mr. Johnson and a 5-gallon bucket of water and a not-so-happy ending for the critter, but lots of satisfaction for Sophie and Mr. Johnson.)

This year, I also have another lovely crop of dandelions for the honeybees visiting from my neighbor's hives. He always shares a quart of golden, delicious honey with us each year and I'd like to think that the flowers in my backyard have contributed to that bounty.

Lots of wild strawberries blooming again this year too. As usual, I'm sure the brown thrasher and robins foraging on the ground will quickly eat any of these fruits before I have the chance to sample them.

Well, that's about it. It's been pretty dry here with more rain in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow, so hopefully there will be some new flowers blooming the next time I mow the lawn.

Project FeederWatch Season Concludes

April 9th marks the conclusion of the 2009-2010 Project FeederWatch season. I haven't been very faithful in my FeederWatch activities for the past few weeks, but decided since I was off work yesterday I would make an effort to watch for and document the birds visiting my backyard birdfeeders. I even filled the peanut feeder for my bluejays who rewarded me with their presence less than a minute after I'd hung the peanut wreath back outside. I know there are some people out there who like bluejays as much as I do, so enjoy these photos!

One of my fondest wishes would be to have a bluejay take peanuts from my hand, but my bluejays are much too shy for that. I even have to be careful to avoid any sudden movements near the window when I'm taking pictures from inside the house.

Although I'm not a fan of the Common Grackle, they find my backyard habitat and food offerings particularly appealing, so unless I stop filling my birdfeeders and cut down all the evergreen trees, I just try to tolerate them for a few months. If nothing else, they're interesting to watch.

And I'm always on the lookout for something unusual to show up, like a Rusty Blackbird or Brewer's Blackbird. The blackbird on the right side of this tray was a little bit different looking than the others on the feeder at the same time, but I think it was either a late juvenile or maybe a "bronzed" Common Grackle. And as much as I hate to admit it, the iridescence of their feathers is really quite beautiful.

Cardinals continue to visit the feeders throughout the day. I haven't noticed any males and females paired up yet and there still appears to be quite a lot of territorial battles taking place among the males. Fortunately (for me and my camera), this handsome male was able to enjoy a few minutes of peaceful dining at the feeder outside my dining room window.

I haven't had a chance to clean out my little backyard pond yet, but the leaves and debris still in the pond doesn't seem to bother the birds. I was delighted to see Mrs. Bluebird stop by for a visit to the pond (apparently she hasn't noticed the 6 other clean birdbaths strategically located throughout the backyard!)

The nice thing about the long FeederWatch season is that there is usually some overlapping between the winter and summer birdie visitors. I saw the little Red-Breasted Nuthatch at my feeder yesterday morning and still have a few Dark-Eyed Juncos hanging around too.

Red-Winged Blackbird is also a summer bird for us here in Minnesota. I previously recorded my first one for Project FeederWatch on March 10th. I usually think of them as grassland and wetland birds, so I'm always happy to have them come to the birdfeeders close to the house. I never get tired of hearing their pretty call and seeing that showy patch of color on the male's wings.

The Goldfinches are really starting to show their summer colors again now. He's especially beautiful in the sunshine, don't you think?

When I was editing the pictures for this post, I found this one I had taken last week when we were out looking for ducks at the reservoir. There was a Bald Eagle across the lake that had just caught and was eating this huge fish! We could see through the spotting scope that the fish was still alive and squirming around, so the eagle was really having to hold on tight to the fish and the branch at the same time. It was really neat to see this and the eagle managed to eat that entire fish in about 10 minutes.

Cute Birdorables

Here are some more pictures of the baby birds in my yard. The little chickadee chicks are growing so fast. This picture is from last night. I'm a little concerned about the chick on the left--it appears to be a day or two behind the other ones. Even though this is a pretty poor picture, you can see that its wing and tail feathers are not as fully developed as the other 3 chicks. It's still alive but I don't think it will be strong enough to leave the nest box when the other 3 do. I wonder if the parents will still feed it in the nest box if the other 3 chicks leave earlier?

Chickadees are the sweetest little baby birds. This one sat so quietly in my hand--no loud chirping like baby robins. This little one didn't even poop on me when I picked it up.

I got these pictures of the tree swallow babies the other day when I was mowing lawn. This is the nest box that had 6 babies in it. I can't even imagine how crowded it is now that they're all about ready to fledge. The parents are coming non-stop with food for all these hungry beaks. This little one was almost up to the entrance, waiting for another food delivery.

A little bit higher now. I wonder how many of its siblings it was standing on top of to get into the entrance like this.

And here comes mom......just in time with another insect to fill that patiently waiting little beak!

Here are the 5 little baby bluebirds. Sorry about the blurriness of this picture too......I was trying to take the picture as fast as possible because I was being buzzed by two angry bluebird parents! (It was a good thing I was wearing a hat--I could actually feel the wind from their wings because they were flying that close to me!)

Isn't it amazing how bright the inside of their mouth is? Shows up really good--even inside the darkness of the nest box, so the parent birds know exactly where to stick the food! Nature is sure an amazing thing.

Father's Day Weekend 2009

I hope you all had a nice Father's Day weekend. We had a little rain today, but that didn't ruin our traditional Father's Day picnic at Forestville State Park. It was a good celebration for Dad/Grampy and a fun day for all of us.


Here are some pictures from the backyard. The bluebird babies just hatched and as near as I could tell, all 5 of the eggs hatched. As you can see from this picture, one of the babies is still a little damp from being newly hatched.

The wrens have completed their nest and Mrs. Wren has laid 2 eggs so far. I really like this house that allows me to view the birds via the hinged roof.

Here's a look at the baby chickadees. They're starting to get pinfeathers on their wings and tails. I couldn't find information close at hand to learn how many days until they fledge, but I guess I'd better find out so I know when to watch for these little guys making their way into the real world!

The weather has finally warmed up and according to weather forecasts we're looking at 80's and 90's all next week. The garden is really starting to grow. I'm even starting to see blossoms on many of the plants. Here's one of the tomatoes.

The peas are flowering too.

I'm also starting to see some blossoms in the wildflower garden. This is a Daisy Fleabane.

And the first Purple Coneflower is blooming.

I have one giant Common Mullein plant in my backyard. I read that this plant is a biennial and takes two years to reach maturity. Last year was this plant's first year in my backyard and it got pretty big then, but it's twice as big this year.

I've been waiting and hoping that it will produce a tall flower stalk (birds and insects love them!). On closer inspection when taking this picture, I noticed the beginning of the flower stalk. I can't wait to see how big it gets and look forward to watching birds taking advantage of it this winter.

I'm starting to see a few more butterflies in the backyard and more perennials are starting to bloom too. Here's one of the daylilies.

And this new poppy plant I just planted this spring has lots of flowers on it.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and I hope you all have a good week.