The weather this week has been hot with little rain. The afternoon/evening thunderstorms seem to be skirting their way around us without leaving any precipitation. Most of the plants are doing okay, but the stress in starting to show in some. There are some new flowers blooming, but the spectacular views of spring are gone.
The bird dramas continue, but have subsided some. Here are the updates. The chickadee box that had two pairs of chickadees fighting over it has been inactive for a couple of weeks. The nest in the wren box has continued to evolve but no eggs yet. If I were a wren, I would think it would be just right to settle down in now. But I'm not a wren, so I'll have to defer to their judgement. And the bluebird box--when last we spoke, the bluebirds and sparrows were fighting over it. The sparrows won. However, I have seen the bluebirds in the front yard, but I haven't located a new nest. I removed the sparrow's nest that they were building on top of the bluebird nest and now it looks like a house wren is building a nest on top of that. For now, that box belongs to the wrens.
And speaking of wrens, I read that the male will build two nests at the same time hoping better to attract a female. So I don't know if the two wren nests are for the same pair or two different pairs. I also read that wrens have a problem with mites and will place spider sacs in the nest so the hatching spiders will help control them. I had seen spider sacs in the nest, but assumed that they just happen to be on the twig the wren was using for construction.
Okay, do you have all of the nest box wars straight? There will be a quiz next week. :)
Here are a few things I saw this week during a
Second Look.
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| We had two new colors of day lilies blooming this week. The first was this red one. |
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| The other new color was this dark pink one. |
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| The first trumpet lily also bloomed. Unfortunately, most of the trumpet lilies were eaten by the deer. |
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| Here's the first coneflower this year. However, insects are eating many of the blooms that followed. |
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| Balloon flower. If you look carefully, you will see a bee at the base of it. |
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| Wren's nest. See the white balls. Those are spider sacs. |
