Life in the Yard

This post is brought to you in part by...
...Ethan, mowing the yard. Derek's taking his turn, too, but we all know how much 17-year-olds like to be caught on camera.

We celebrated Kendra's birthday last evening, so there'll be pictures up of that, in time. But today is slated for mucho mowingo.

I purposely let the grass get higher than usual so we can accumulate mulch for the garden, assuming we can hack through the tall grass without completely killing the mower.

Ah well...time for an update on the cowbird drama:

As you can see, there are two birds in this Chipping Sparrow nest...two birds that do not look alike.
On the bottom one can plainly see the brown markings indicative of a sparrow. On top, with greedy and undeserving mouth open, a probable cowbird baby.

The only reason one of the sparrows survived is that those eggs began hatching before the cowbird egg. Usually it's the other way around and the bigger cowbirds successfully compete for food to the detriment of the smaller birds.

When I looked in on them last week, I clearly saw what looked to be a small dead bird on the bottom of the nest, as well as an unhatched cowbird egg.

My only comfort is that one of the sparrows lived and only one cowbird seems to have made it out of its egg.

Farmer Frey is back today, downloading corn from the bin. A newly shorn Trevor has found a shady place to watch, while picking moss off a tree trunk.


Oh joy, the Indigo Bunting has come back!
This beautiful fellow stopped by more than a week ago, but looking at him helps me forget about that mangy cowbird....ARRGH! I thought about it again...
 

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