Japanese beetles, hummingbird rivalry, and independence is near for this nestling

I spent some time today giving Japanese beetles a free soap bath. I found them on a wide variety of plants since they eat about 300 species of plants.

I’m so full of joy seeing these little birds spending time here in my mini wildlife habitat. I’ve planted flowers they enjoy, too! If only they would quit fighting, haha!

I have a clearer but more boring video so I uploaded this one. The nestling and parent were doing a kind of call and response. At one point the foraging parent was on the ground near the nest answering the nestling. It was probably keeping an eye since I was hanging out the window near it.

There were two or three chicks but my daughter heard some small screams and a scuffle on the roof above her bedroom last week. Last year an owl got the entire first brood. The nest is on the second story and is inaccessible from the ground. This near-fledgling is practicing flapping its wings and is now eating solid foods (whole insects). They grow up so fast!

Rogue maple trees, damn deer, and a baby (robins) announcement

Is anyone else pulling literally hundreds of maple saplings from their yard? I think I should have started a maple tree farm since I had an estimated 300 or more (I stopped counting at 200) in my vegetable garden alone. Now, when I go outside I pull the usual weeds AND maple trees. Ugh.

 

My frustration with deer in the area has been tempered by the reduction in their numbers either by the extremely cold winter or by coyotes. I personally know of two coyote kills of fawns this past spring. I’ve been able to grow plants they have eaten to nubs in the past but I knew my luck would run out.

 

I had covered one of my little fenced gardens of mostly jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) had been half eaten by deer last week so I covered the entire garden with bird netting. This morning I discovered deer had bent the chicken wire fencing on all sides to get to the plants! Grrrr!

On a happy note, the baby robins have hatched. They’re still too small to even see in photos but here’s a photo with a proud parent feeding them.

 

The American robin family is back to nest!

Last year a pair of American robins (Turdus migratorius) built a nest on the crook of our gutter. It seemed like an ideal location. It was sheltered by a large overhang, a raccoon or squirrel would have to shimmy up two stories of gutter pipe or shimmy almost horizontally down from the roof. Their first brood was a meal for one of the barred owls (Strix varia) that live in our area.

I love owls and robins both but I’ll admit I cried for the robin family. It was because I had seen them gather insects and worms dozens and dozens of times a day from sunrise to sunset to feed their little ones. I hope the owls were able to feed their babies with the robins to raise a successful brood themselves.

They were able to successfully raise a second brood but I was at work when they fledged so I wasn’t able to see it. Maybe I will this year.

One of my daughters walked into the living room, saw me on the floor, laughed, and took some photos.