Empty Nest Syndrome

Well two out of the 3 Bluebird nest boxes are empty.  One just has one baby left in it. I expect he'll fledge any day now.  We hope they all made it out successfully and are thriving.  We did all we could to to protect them, but once they are out of the box, it's out of our hand.  I think this will probably be the end of the nests this year.  I think they hatched around July 22nd, so they were due to fledge.

Al was pretty upset a few days ago.  He saw the Red Shouldered Hawk sitting right on top of the nest box in the pasture.  I had horrors of the hawk reaching in there and pulling the babies out.  Al scared him off and checked the box. It was empty, so we think they may have fledged.  I just hope the Hawk wasn't there when that occurred.

Al saw the baby fox one time only and hasn't seen it again.  In fact until yesterday we hadn't seen any foxes at all.  We're still feeding them every day, but it seems now the only one that is getting the food is the raccoons.  We don't really want to feed them and encourage them to hang around but we want to keep the foxes fed so that they won't raid the chicken coops and end up getting shot.  I hope that's not what happened to them.

We still see our baby bunny frequently. He's growing up.  He hangs around close to the shed, so he's pretty well protected.  We try to watch out for him when we're mowing.

The lawn mowing has been slowing down due to the heat and drought.  We have had a little rain the past few days, so I suppose it'll start growing again.  It's time to mow the pasture again.  There is always grass to mow somewhere!