COUNTRY LIVING IN GEORGIA: Baby Blue Birds and flowers

This is a photo of the babies 8 days after we first found they had hatched. They are at least 8 days old and just getting feathered out. I think they are due to fledge at 14 days, so they have a long way to go.

Blue Birds on day 8

We put up a wooden blue bird box complete with a baffle to keep predators out. It has a locked hinged roof that we can open up to see the birds. It's okay to open it as long as you don't open it too close to fledging. You don't want them to fledge early. You need to know how old they are before you open the nest. We're very careful not to do anything to harm them and we always let mom or dad know before we open the box, so they can have a chance to fly away. Our baffle keeps snakes and raccoons from climbing the pole and killing the babies. It also has metal hardware cloth to make sure there are no small holes a snake could get into. On our first house, there was a very small hole that a snake evidently got through and we lost the eggs. We vowed to never let that happen again if we could control it.

The babies are right in there

Blue Bird house with baffle

We have had rain and cloudy weather every day for about 2 weeks. It is finally supposed to be dry this weekend and lower humidity. We are considering a short camping trip to Reed Bingham State Park, but may cancel as we have friends coming from Tampa and need to tidy up.

This is also the beginning of Blueberry season. We found a u-pick blueberry plate in Wakulla Florida. We may head there.

We decided today was to be a day of work. Eleven acres of land means there is always something to do. We started out triming trees and bushes. We finally were able to get a burn permit so started burning all the yard debris we have collected all winter and spring. There was a LOT and we didn't get finished. Al watched the burn while I worked on mowing the pasture. It's about 4-5 acres and when you start, it seems like you will never get done. I got about half done before we quit. Al caught the pasture on fire (a little bit). Hopefully we can get another burn permit tomorrow and finish up. We had a lot of stuff to burn. We were told if you burn without a permit and the fire gets away from you then you are charged by the fire department for their services. We also feel safer getting a permit, if they don't feel it's safe to burn we don't want to. We're new to this country living and burning our trash.

The yard is getting pretty, everything is green, blooming and growing.

Here are some picures from around the yard.