Life's Little Moments

By dbifulco

Chaos in the nursery

Although starlings are not a common yard bird for me, I can fairly reliably count on several pairs showing up sometime in the spring when they are feeding young.  They hit the suet feeders hard, flying off with gobs of fatty suet to feed their babies.  And that means that, eventually, when the babies fledge, they too will be introduced to the yard.  It seems that today was the day - the din coming from outside when I came downstairs was ... impressive.  Starlings will never be credited with having a lovely song even under the most generous of circumstances and the babies ... well, they sound amazingly bad.  

They are also spooky as can be, so I had to practice some stealth moves to get this shot.  Worth it though as I think it captures the demanding nature of a baby bird quite well.  Just wish I could attach an audio recording.  You'd ask yourself why the parents don't just fly off and never return.

Meanwhile, as craziness abounded on that side of the nursery, it seems that the bluebirds got their young out of the box and up into the trees sometime early this afternoon  And, darn-it, I missed the whole thing!  I can hear both parents calling and chattering to the young, so I know they are up there somewhere.  And I saw both parents launch a vigorous attack on a squirrel that casually decided to take a stroll along the edge of the woods.  Poor thing got hit by both bluebird parents until he fled.  I will wait until tomorrow afternoon to do a last check of the box and clean it out.  And I'll hope that the bluebirds grace me with a second brood as they've done the past 2 years.

Meanwhile, the wrens have 2 nest boxes going, one with 7 little 8 or 9 day old chicks which you can see HERE on Flickr.  Quite a difference than just a week ago when they were blind and virtually naked.  Now they are cute and actually look like birds.  Still ridiculously small though.

Also saw my first Hummingbird Clearwing Moth of the season, which is always fun.  Ditto the first silver-spotted skipper and a whole mess of Variable Dancer Damselflies, all in the garden.  

Tomorrow I'm off to meet up with my nature group - weather is supposed to be perfect so I expect a good day for birds and bugs and maybe, if we're lucky, even some snakes!  Stay tuned...

Thanks for stopping by!

xo
Debbi

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