The Woodpecker at the Hummingbird Feeder

Check out that tongue! This is Woodina, the female of the pair of golden-fronted woodpeckers (our specialty, you know). Sigh—so many photos taken through our very dirty front windows. They really look fine; it's only when you try to shoot through them that one notices the grime.

The Cardlets Fledge and Danger Looms in the Guise of Scrub Jays!

The three little cardinals left the nest Saturday morning to go out into the big new world. I awoke to a huge squawking and flapping out back which turned out to be the parent cardinals and a couple of scrub jays going at it, but I didn't realize until later, when I saw the empty nest, what was going on, and there was more of the same later.


They are so small! I was surprised that they are big enough to fledge. They were 10 or 11 days old, but looked so wee in the nest (and still do out in the open, actually). So anyway, later, after the scene I'd witnessed earlier, the parents were hopping around in the trees out back, making their encouraging chip-chip noises, and the little birds were gamely doing their learning-to-fly thing. I hid in the outdoor shower for a while to get these photos and then after I went inside, the scrub jays came back. They swooped at the trees where the babies were, and the parent cardinals swooped back at them, and it was really sort of horrifying in a bird-world sort of way. The jays were quite vicious and relentless in their attacks.


The mother bird with one of the young (I know it's a crappy photo; I don't care)


The parents watching vigilantly


So scrawny and sweet!


Taking a chance that the wings will work


After a bit, the fight began to center itself on the ground below one of the trees. I went out again to have a closer look and saw this:


Poor thing, I thought, its eyes weren't even open yet, which doesn't make sense with the fact that it made it out of the nest to this spot, but whatever. Its eyes were open, but it was clearly very frightened, and the jays were getting closer. I stuck around, figuring that I would scare the jays but the parent birds wouldn't leave the baby no matter what, and it worked. The jays left and the parent birds got the baby to come out from under the tree and they all went off to a tree in the meadow, where they are presumably today living happily ever after. We hope, we hope.




The angry dad—fightin' mad!

Spider Eats Dragonfly

First in a series

Scorpion #1, 2008

Scorpion #1 2008:
Found Tuesday May 13th, circa 9 p.m. on the floor in the big room, just by where Ham and Frit had just been sparring. Hamilton was poking at it with his paw, which drew my attention to it.


He was the model for this

Devastation and the Calm After the Storm

There was a tremendous, GIGANTIC storm last night. It was bad; at one point I thought that the bathroom window had been broken by the hail (it wasn't), but I was so preoccupied with the cat who'd run out into the night (who is fine) and worrying about our nesting birds in the storm that I didn't really think about the storm itself. It wasn't until I let the dogs out this a.m. before leaving for work that I realized HOW bad it had been. The outdoor furniture and recycling were blown all over the place, but worse was the tree where the woodpeckers nest—the top of it is gone! Just gone! Even so, I could hear the little birds within, and I saw both parents coming as usual with food (you can see one in the photo if you enlarge it). The cardinal nest is also intact, but I don't know about the porch-skull-nesting wrens; I didn't see the parent birds this morning or evening, and I can't hear the babies, and I cautiously nudged the wind-whipped skull slightly back into place tonight with no sign or sound from within. I was certain they were going to fledge any day now, so it's possible they did so this morning or sometime yesterday. I hope so. Tomorrow I am going to look into the nest...


The evening sky: gorgeous. Driving home, looking west, it was both beautiful and sort of creepily yellow, in the way that future storms sometimes appear; but then the light smoothed out into being just pretty and calm.


This tarantula was huddled into the intersection of steps and wall beneath the wrens' nest this morning. They always look so shy and scared. He was gone by the time I got home tonight.

My Study Of The Diet Of Golden-Fronted Woodpecker Hatchlings Resumes

Part of the Woodlets 2008 Series









These shots are from Monday 5/12. For comparison of head-spots with last year's Woodie, see the links below. I believe that it's a new Woodie this year. Or has last year's head-spot just filled out a little?

The Twenty-ninth (29th) Day
It's What's for Dinner

My Brave Cat

An Anxious Wren

Perhaps also thinking about the pecking out of eyes if one does not soon get away from her nest.


The nest is within.

The Wee Hunter

Or, My Spider Friend

This wee spider I found in the meadow on the little table out there. He was fascinating to watch; he kept pouncing on things (bugs, and sometimes things he just thought might be bugs) and grasping them between those two very long front legs. Until I looked at the photos, I didn't see his eyes. They're amazing!


8.23.2008 update:
This is a jumping spider, Hentzia palmarum (Hentz).


He was well aware of my presence and kept looking up at me like this. He is very like a tiny, tiny crab.






This photo was taken underneath the table with the flash. It shows the eyes in a very different way, though the coloring of the other shots is much truer to life.


My trusty penny for scale

Nestlings

Dad with a mouthful of yummy goodness for the babes.
A grasshopper, perhaps?



As mentioned before, there are three nests quite nearby of which we are aware, and I am sure that there are dozens more all about us that we haven't discovered yet. There are the little wrens in the skull on the porch; the woodlets (offspring of our golden-fronted woodpeckers); and the little cardinals in the jasmine outside the kitchen window. The wrens and the woodlets have been hatched for over a week—I don't know the exact dates, but I first heard both sets of young on May 1st.

The cardinal eggs hatched just a few days ago, sometime between Wednesday and Thursday mornings (the 7th and 8th of May), and we are fascinated by the teeny tiny birds and their parents, who are feeding them nonstop and looking out for them in other ways, such as coming to sit on them when it rains. Hugh is begging and pleading with me to take photos; I tell him I will do it only if I can manage to do so without alarming them. I was going to try this morning but it's very overcast, and they're deep in the jasmine, through a dirty window and a screen, and I don't think there will be enough light. Maybe I'll try anyway, or try tomorrow.

Other younguns are starting to appear. I have seen 2 scrub jay babies at the feeders, and I think that the Scott's Oriole couple have a young one with them suddenly, too.

He is watching me and thinking, perhaps, that he'll peck my eyes out if I get any closer to that nest.

Recent Visitors

Recent and atypical visitors to the birdfeeders:

• A bluejay (the city kind, not our country scrub jays); in fact, I think I saw a whole group of them fly over the meadow the other day, though I saw only one at the feeder
  
• A squirrel
• A brown-headed cowbird: pretty, but disliked because they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds (after first removing an already-laid egg of the owner bird)
• A grackle: have never seen one out here before, though I've seen them about 8 miles down the road, where our main road meets the highway
  

Spring Evening

Or, Loretta Climbs the Arch







Computer still broken. Horribly sick with allergies (me, not computer). Sigh. Spider photos to come soon....

WOODLETS, rev 2008!

Part of the Woodlets 2008 Series

Let not the excitement over the brown recluse overshadow the real thrill of the week (at least to me):

There is a new batch of woodlets in the tree! We knew that the nesting had begun, but I thought that it had only begun. I had no idea that babies had already hatched until last Thursday evening when I heard the unmistakable hiss and static that means baby birds within the tree.

There is also a cardinal nest in the star jasmine outside the kitchen window; I inadvertently disturbed the nest yesterday by walking nearby, causing the mother cardinal to shoot out from hiding, thereby revealing the location that I knew was near but had not yet located. After she'd left the jasmine, from inside the house I looked into the inside of the jasmine to see a nest with (at least) 3 speckled eggs therein. Go cardies!

I saw another cardinal dad at the feeder today with a new youngun; and as mentioned before in this space, there are once again wrens nesting in the skull on the front porch. I am sure there are dozens more nests all around, if only I knew where to look, and had the time to just be quiet outside and watch where the birds go. There are at least 2 other nesting cardinal pairs, and titmice, chickadees, hummingbirds, finches, orioles, and scrub jays.

O Spring!




All my bird photos from today were crap, hence the flowers. Better bird photography to commence in earnest ASAP, fitted in somehow among lute and driving and work and knitting and driving and laundry and driving and dishes and yardwork, et al.

Brown Recluse In The Biscuit Bowl!

Or, A Saturday Morning Adventure

The day began with excitement when, after deciding to make biscuits to take to Jack's ranch- and barnwarming, I opened the baking drawer to pull out a bowl and found a brown recluse therein. A big one. She's currently in the SCARP container in the kitchen sink, waiting for one of us to get dressed and take her down the hill to the wilderness below to be set free.


A poor photo but the only one which shows one of its identifying features: its three pairs of eyes