Bluebirds

I have to make a correction.  We have 3 nest boxes with baby Bluebirds.  I thought we only had two boxes.  It’s been such a busy season, it’s hard to keep track. 

Here are some pictures of the babies that just hatched.  You can see how much they grew from the pictures a few days ago.  Notice they are starting to get feathers. 

The next picture is of their house. The front door opens so that we can peek inside or clean out the box in case it gets buggy.  It’s so hot, I feel sorry for the babies.  I keep going over and opening the box to give them some air.  Mama isn’t too happy with me though.

The little window on the side is supposed to be so that you can raise it and look inside, but the nest always blocks the window so the only thing it is good for is to give you some light when you peek inside.

This is the box that had 5 eggs that never hatched and them mama laid 4 more eggs.   I was able to remove 2 of the old eggs today.  I’m afraid the babies will break the eggs and have to live in that filthy mess.  I’ll get the others out later if I can.  It depends where the babies are. 

Well, my 2 batches of home made lye soap are made and now I just have to wait for them to harden.  I still have some soap from a friend and the more I use it, the better I like it.  I really do think it is exfoliating my skin.  Last night I shaved my legs and they actually felt smooth like they used to when I was 16 (a hundred years ago)  Part of it was because the soap I was using had a slimy/silky texture to it and partly because my legs really are getting smoother.  I can’t think of anything else it could be, so I’m going to continue to use the soap.  I use one of those net thing they sell at Walmart for about a buck.  It really helps to lather the soap up.

You can buy lye soap on line or at crafty shops.  The kind I have been using (mostly) has olive oil in it.  If you buy some, it should say what the main ingredients are.  Of course, what I am using now has mostly lard, and some olive oil.  I don’t know if its the oils or the lye, but something is helping my skin feel smoother.  Al is using it also, but he hasn’t noticed, but of course a man wouldn’t!

More Babies

We have two nests of newly hatched Bluebirds.  This will likely be the last batches of the season.  We are over 30 babies hatched in the nest boxes this year.

These bald little things probably started hatching yesterday.  Al thinks there are 3 so far.  This is the nest with 9 eggs.  Mama Bluebird laid 5 eggs which never hatched for some reason.  She then proceeded to lay 4 more.  I’m afraid the old eggs will get crushed and cause disease or bugs, so I’d like to get the old eggs out.  I didn’t want to remove them until the babies hatched because I didn’t know which were the old eggs and which were the new ones.  Once all 4 hatch, we’re going to try to take the eggs out….if we can, without hurting the babies.  The nest box opens up for cleaning, so we’ll give it a try.  Here they are…bald and fragile looking.  They are pretty active though, I saw one of them moving around quite a bit yesterday.

We also have at least one baby fox.  Al went down to the pasture to the feeding area and saw a baby peeking out from behind a tree and looking at him.  He said it was about 10-12 inches high, and very cute!  Unfortunately, he didn’t have his camera.  He’s walking down there now so see if he can see it again.

It’s been so unbearably hot here that we’ve had to stay inside most of the time.  It’s been running 98 degrees and the humidity is stifling.  It gets to 95 or so by noon! 

We decided we should put some water out for our little bunny.  He’s in a pretty safe area, but has no access to any water, so we put water out for him.  Also the foxes are now getting water by their feeding station.  We have a pond and there are some streams in the woods, (if they’re not dried up) but since there is a baby, we wanted to make it easier for mama fox. 

This evening, Al was outside and I went out to go for a golf cart ride with him to feed the foxes.  He was out front with both the truck and the golf cart and I knew immediately there was a problem.  The golf cart was leaning at an odd angle right by a little culvert.  I’ve almost run over that darn culvert myself and I immediately knew what happened.  He didn’t want to tell me though and tried to get it out himself.  He was really stuck!

It was sitting at an angle and I was afraid it would tip over.  He finally got behind it and pushed and I pulled with the truck and we got it out.  It appears to be okay, thank goodness!  Part of the problem was that he had the tank in the back full of Round up to spray some weeds.  It was heavier in the back than normal. 

Today, I made some of  Cindy's wonderful southern sweet pickles.  They are very easy and very, very good.  This is my second batch.

Tomorrow, I think I am going to try my hand at making bar soap.  A friend in Tampa made some and sent us a few bars.  I really like the soap so I want to have more for us, so I think I’ll try it.  It seems pretty easy, as long as you don’t blow yourself up. :)

Not really, but you mix water, lye and an oil, stir, let it dry, then cut it and let it sit for 6 weeks.  I plan to make my first batch with coconut and olive oil.  We’ll see how it turns out.

We have a tropical storm heading towards the gulf, so hopefully it will bring us some clouds and maybe some cooler weather. This heat is getting to me!

Can We Come Out?

Another batch of baby Bluebirds almost ready to fledge.

There were 4 eggs in this nest.  This will bring our total to 21 once they fledge.  We have another box with 5 eggs.  It’s been a busy year at the farm :)

I love my Zinnias.  We always have plenty of cut flowers.  Last year I put Zinnia seeds all around the vegetable garden.  I thought it would make it look prettier.  Unfortunately the flowers got larger than I thought and spread a little…Al was not too happy my flowers took over his garden.  I was told NO flowers were going to be allowed in this years garden.  Well I didn’t plant any (honest) but it seems the seeds from last years flowers came up anyway…and you guessed it.  Al has flowers in his garden…again :)

He knows better than to kill them, so he just grumbles a lot!

 

bunny

dinner time

bath time for Bluebird

Yesterday, while I was inside reading blogs, I heard “Ivan the Terrible” squawking like crazy.  He’s our Mockingbird and he was after a squirrel.  It seemed the squirrel was in the peach tree trying to steal a peach and Ivan didn’t want him there.  I was a little concerned that the squirrel may have been after a baby Mockingbird, so I went outside and helped Ivan scare off the squirrel.  Once the squirrel left the area of the peach tree, Ivan went about his business. 

We certainly have a nature lovers paradise here and we will certainly miss it when we go on the road in the motor home.

A fox picture to end up with :)

Bluebirds Everywhere!

We have 5 Bluebird nest boxes that we put up on our property and they are well used this year.

Our 4th batch just fledged which make 17 babies.  There is one box that has youngsters that appear to be about ready to fledge and one more box with 5 eggs.  That same box successfully fledged 5 babies when we were camping in Keaton Beach.  I have to think this is the same parents because they normally don't lay 5 eggs.

So assuming the two nests we currently have successfully fledge that will bring out number to 26, so far for the year!  I think we're doing our part to help bring the Blue Bird population back :)

Birds and Flowers

You can sure tell it's "baby" season here.  We have more nests and baby birds.

We have two Bluebird nests with eggs, and one with 4 babies.  We have LOTS of adult Bluebirds flying around from previous nests. They are getting more used to us and don't panic when they see us.  When we first moved here, we would see them up on a power line and if we got anywhere near, they would fly off.  I think they now realize we won't hurt them.

We have another Carolina Wren (Nancy) nest in a flower basket on the front porch.  When the eggs hatch, we will have to sneak in on the front porch so as not to disturb them, or use the back door!  They are such sweet and interesting birds, we always enjoy having them nest on the porch.

We think there is a Brown Thrasher nest  in the front Holly.  We've seen mom and dad (Ike and Tina) flying in and out a lot, so we think they're feeding babies.  We haven't found the nest though.  The bush is very thick.

Al is back in Tampa for a few days, so I am trying to do some house work and of course my daily mowing.  I usually try to take the mower for a ride every evening.  I enjoy it, but am having to watch my grip to avoid any more issues with my thumb.

Some pictures of my Hydrangea bush.  It's actually about 4 different plants and I guess they are all different because they are different colors.  They are beautiful early in the summer, but as it gets hotter, they tend to droop.

I believe this is a type of Ginger.  The pink flowers just sprout up from the ground and then later the leaves appear.  We have them all over the place and I always forget about them until they pop up!

Cut flowers from my flower gardens.  I love Zinna's and have tons of them.  There are always plenty of flowers for cutting, unfortunately the kitties LOVE to EAT my cut flowers (and of course spill the water), so I usually just leave them on the porch where I can see them!  It's safer that way :)

BlueBirds Fledged Today

We had a nest box by the Rv that had five little eggs in it.  We weren’t sure if all the eggs hatched, but today the nest was empty and there were no eggs left there!  They were there yesterday, but gone today. Another success!

That makes two batches so far this year.  We have two more nests starting, so we should have some more babies soon!  We love them because they are in a nest box and we can open the door and peek in.  The Blue Bird expects encourage you to put up nesting boxes and monitor them for parasites and such.  You are to keep track of when the eggs hatch and not open the next box after day 14.  At that point they are close to fledging and opening the nest could cause them to fledge early.   Just wanted everyone to know that we aren’t hurting them by peeking inside!

The garden is growing well.  We have potatoes, snow and sugar peas that we’re eating already.  We have some green tomatoes, and some small Jalapeno and green bell peppers.  He’s growing cucumbers and dill for some pickles.

Things are flourishing here, between the garden, grass, weeds, and birds!

Blue Bird Nests

We currently have two Blue Bird nests on the property.  There are 4 eggs in one nest and 3 in the other.  I think 4 is their limit, as we’ve never seen a nest with more than 4 eggs. They seem to be able to lay one egg per day, so I expect their will be another one today.

I had forgotten how long it takes for the eggs to hatch, so I pulled out my trusty Blue Bird book.  It says egg laying is 5-7 days, nest building is 1-6 days, incubation is 12-14 days, brooding is 6 days.

I’m not really sure the difference between incubation and brooding, but I think brooding is when the eggs are sat on 24/7.

Here is a picture of “Junior” from last year. He was the only egg that hatched from the 4 that were laid.  He survived and fledged.  He was only one day old here.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Here he is eleven days later.  Notice the 3 unhatched eggs?

He is almost ready to fledge.

It’s Snowing Worms :)

The oak tree out front is shedding “worms.”  We were looking out the window when a gust of wind came up and the worms just started falling.  It almost looked like it was snowing!  I hate those things, they are so messy! I think the pollen is about finished though.

We have our first Blue Bird nest with eggs!  We have 4 eggs in one of the boxes we have in the pasture.  The other box in the pasture has a sitting Carolina Chickadee.  She has been sitting on this nest a while (didn’t mark down the date) so her eggs should be about ready to hatch.

Here’s Daddy.  He just had a bath and was preening.

Spring is Here

I can tell, because it is nearly dark and Al is still outside.  When the time changes and the days get longer, I can’t get him in the house before 9pm.

We went into town today and got some more white millet for our winter birds.  Hopefully it will be the last 50 pound bag we will need for this winter.  We have so many winter birds that we have to use some of the cheaper stuff. We normally feed them the sunflower chips because they make no mess (no hulls or unwanted plants) and the birds love them.


We came home and planted more onions and I tried some garlic this year.  We’ll see how that works out.
We got the leaves raked up under the front tree and the grass underneath was pretty green.  It looks so much better.


I guess because it was close to the house the grass stayed greener.  The outer portion of the front yard is not nearly as green….but it’s getting there.

I did some mowing on my zero turn Grasshopper mower, which I love.  Al was the one that insisted we get the zero turn style mower, but I quickly found how nice they are.  I do most of the mowing…and Al gets stuck doing the hard stuff!
The Blue Birds have been showing an interest in the houses, but so far no one has started making a nest.  They have been hanging around the boxes though.


Miss Kitty watching me from the window.

It was a good day.  We worked hard outside, but got some thing accomplished and the weather was about 70 degrees again.  The next two days we are expecting some rain, so we may get a few R & R days.

Blue Birds

The Blue Birds found their new houses already.  They had been interested in the one by the motorhome, but the pesty Ivan was harassing them.  Al put the 2 new houses a little further away, but of course there is another "Ivan"  that lives by that one also!  We saw  the Blue Birds go in and out of the new house a few times, so evidently they are still checking out all the real estate.  I'm sure Mrs. Blue Bird just hasn't quite made up her mind.

We went to the feed store to get some more white millet for our winter birds and we found a cute little birdhouse for "Nancy."  Nancy is a Carolina Wren. We have quite a few of course, but they are all "Nancy".

She has hatched a few batches in the hanging baskets we have on the front porch and the babies that don't hatch there soon are taught to sleep in the baskets at night.  She calls them quite vocally in the evening and pretty soon they are in their "beds."  Carolina Wrens will nest just about anywhere and are not shy.  We thought this new nest might be something she will like.  Of course, we will hang it up on the porch and secure it so that it won't blow around in a storm.

Another of our regulars are back, they are Ike and Tina.  They are our resident Brown Thrashers.  Tina has used the very same nest year after year and has 3 or 4 batches each year.  She goes away in the winter, but is back and we have seen her a few times.  I'm sure she will make her regular nest in our arbor.  We had to trim it last fall because it was getting a little overgrown.  We couldn't ever get it trimmed, because Tina was always using it.  I was afraid it was going to get too overgrown and collapse.  Anyway, it's all ready for her return.

Ah....spring is coming and we will be having a LOT of bird nests!

Blue Bird Houses

We have 3 Blue Bird houses on our 11 acre property.  They are very territorial birds, so the houses can’t be too close together.

Blue Birds became threatened due to loss of habitat and nesting areas. 

A few years ago, people started building them nest boxes and Blue Bird Trails, in attempt to help them breed more successfully. The birds have made a good come back in this area.

Blue Birds need a certain size box with a  1 1/2 inch diameter hole, which needs to be 8 inches above the floor.  I know in the wild, they don’t always get this perfect of a nest, but we need to give them as perfect of a nest as we can to  help them to survive. 

We always put a baffle on the pole and keep the box far enough away from any kind of trees. This is to keep snakes and other animals from getting to the box.  You sure don’t want the female to be sitting on the nest with only one way out and a snake slither up the pole and get her and the babies.  It happens!  That’s why we always baffle our houses.

Al put his first nest box up a few years ago and it wasn’t a week before they started building a nest.  He was so happy!

We' had several batches of Blue Birds in 2 of our boxes. One box raised a family Carolina Chickadees last spring.

My friend Glenda already has two nests in her yard, so I guess I am behind schedule.

Al is going to put up a new nestbox today down from the motorhome and away from Ivan the Terrible!  He’s pestering the two Blue Birds that want the nest box by the motorhome, so we figure we will offer them new “digs.”  We want to put in a few more boxes so they will have their choice!

Last year we had a fight over one nest box which ended with one male having the other male on the ground.  I finally had to go break up the fight.  We ended up moving that particular box because it was visible from another box that was already being used.  They are sure territorial!

Al got up two new nest boxes today.  I can’t wait to see how long it takes for them to find them.

Good Day for Birds

Yes, we had a good bird watching day.

We were up in the motor home this morning and noticed our resident Blue Bird couple fluttering around.  Al has built them a “house” right by the motor home and they raised several batches of babies there last year.  They were hanging around the house and trying to look inside when all of a sudden Ivan the Terrible flew in and started chasing them away.
Can’t you just see the meanness in this face?  This is a Mockingbird.  We had them when we lived in Tampa and they behaved themselves and didn’t hassle the other birds.

Once we moved here, we found we had a mean Mockingbird.  We have since found out that is characteristic of them.  They are territorial and chase all the other birds away.  Some are worse than others.  Our first one was the devil!  We called him Ivan the Terrible.  He lived up to his reputation and  constantly tried to chase all the other birds away.  Once I saw him chasing another bird and Ivan hit the Oak tree.  There were gray feathers all over, but Ivan was okay.    Once he found a wife and started raising children, Ivan was a changed man.  Mockers are very good parents and their children are very demanding and spoiled.  They keep feeding them long after they are capable of feeding themselves. Ivan and Ivana (his wife) raised several bathes of 4 babies each time.  When the babies are hungry they squall and mom or dad come running/flying :)  They would still be feeding the older babies, when they would have a new batch.  Ivan had no more time that year to hassle the other birds.  I have to admit though, I found a new respect for Ivan.  He may have been the meanest bird I ever saw, but he was the best dad :) 
Once they finished raising their babies for the year, Ivan and Ivana left and the babies stayed.  I know  that because the mockers we had left were nice birds!  We haven’t had any other mocker that was nearly as mean as the first Ivan!  It seems that the babies stake their own territory and now we have mockers all over our property.  They allow the others to stay as long as they don’t get too close.  We have been noticing they seem to be finding their mates because we see a lot of pairs fluttering around.

Anyway, we have an Ivan (they are all called Ivan) up by the motorhome blue bird house. Blue Birds are known to be extremely territorial as well. Ivan wouldn’t leave the poor Blue Birds alone, but we know just as soon as Ivan has some children, he will have no more time to bother anyone.
Here are Mr. and Mrs Bluebird sitting on top of their house.




Cute huh?

After a while we decided to go into town for lunch.  We were driving down our driveway past the first woods and saw a bunch of larger birds.  We have thousands of Chipping Sparrows and Goldfinch in our yard that are all over the place, but these birds seemed to be a little larger so we wondered what they could be.  Al mentioned they might be Cedar Waxwings and he was right.  We only see them about twice a year during migration, and we never saw any while we lived in Tampa.  I told Al to open the window and turn off the ignition and I got my camera out.  We sat in the car for 12-20 minutes watching at least 100 Cedar Waxwings feeding on some dark black/blue berries.  I don’t  know what kind of plant is is but the Waxwings were going NUTS.  They were hanging upside down, hanging sideways, and all over like they were ravenous. 

You can see the berries are just thick.


Two birds here, one is upside down!

Two more here.





See the berry in his mouth?


These are the berries they were so happy to have found.


It was a very good day for birding!

We also found a few flowers blooming..Our first Daffodil of the season!