My posting schedule has been off for a while with trips to see my mother and internet outages. During this time, the yard continued to evolve. More of the summer flowers are peeking out while a few spring flowers still remain.
The birds are in the middle of their second laying. At this rate, there may be three broods this year for some of them.
Here are a few things I saw this week
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| There are a lot of honey bees out. This one on the purple sage moved around quickly because the flowers are not very big. Do you see its proboscis? |
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| The pansies from last fall are still blooming. However, the weather is starting to get too hot for them. |
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Ladybug. It's been a long time since I've see our native ladybugs. Since the introduction of
Asian ladybugs, our native ladybugs have decreased substantially in numbers. While the Asian lady bugs have helped with the aphid population, they have also become a pest as they overwinter in people's houses. |
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| Squirrels are amazing (and frustrating). Notice how this one is holding on by only one toe. It stayed quite a while in that position. |
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| While we see humming birds, they are not frequent visitors to our feeders. Notice how the image of this one is refracted through the glass. |
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| House sparrow eggs. House sparrows are another non-native species that have made things hard for the native song birds. So it is recommended that you remove their nests when they start to build. Well, I did that and hoped that the bluebirds would comeback and nest again in the box. However, from one day to the next, another nest was built and four eggs were laid in it. The nest is not a very good one as the eggs are sitting on the bottom of the box but the parents are doing a good job of sitting and defending. Whether or not I should have gotten rid of them, I don't know, but once the eggs are there, I let them stay. |
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| Day lilies, Stella Dora. These day lilies are a favorite of landscapers since they are supposed to bloom in both shade and sun and bloom all summer. Well, that hasn't been our experience up until this point. However, this year they are getting a good start and have more blooms than ever before. We'll see how they do as time goes on. |
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| Astilbe |
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| The calves have grown a lot in the last few months. |
I so love that picture of the hummingbird with the refraction in the glass (of the feeder!) and the squirrel hanging by one claw! I hate the tree rats but you've got to laugh at that one, lol.
ReplyDeleteI also read the advice about destroying the sparrow nests and I think it's so cruel. I'm glad there aren't any nests near my house so I don't have to take such a decision!
I've seen most birds be very territorial and fight for their spaces. At least here, the sparrows aren't any meaner than the bluebirds. It's a toss up as to who will win when I've seen a fight between them for one of the nest boxes. As you can see, it's hard for me to destroy eggs. The sites I read, said they'll just go somewhere else and lay them.
DeleteI am with you on the nests with eggs. Until they lay i consider it war, but after that they win! My issue is with wrens. They nest right at the doors so we try to get rid of the nests, but they always sneak one in and lay eggs before we find it.
ReplyDeleteWe have a wrens nest too, but it may be a decoy. I can't quite see to the bottom of it to know if there are eggs in it or not.
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