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old-english-hen's Blog




I love this yard :)

Category: Life in the backyard! | Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:01 am

OMGosh what a glorious day in our garden.. This season in our backyard we have had the privilege of watching a pair of Bluebirds return to their shanty and raise two clutches, a new pair of bluebirds move in to a new box (or the 1st pair upgraded finally), and they are in the midst of raising a family right now and as I write you can hear our red bellied woodpecker baby chirping away each time mom and dad come back with a tasty morsel for it. The wrens also have returned to the posts of the above ground pool, and the mockingbirds are forever swooping down on us and the dogs, protecting whichever of the nests it finally managed to start a family in, but to my surprise we managed to entice a titmouse to move into a house, I was very excited until I realized unfortunately it was, at the expense of the flycatcher that visits our backyard each year, actually...the first bird to take up home here. It was my first homemade birdhouse. It was designed for a woodpecker or an owl, but I was just as happy to see that unfamiliar bird sitting high on a perch on the tallest thing in our backyard 6 years ago. She came back year after year, even when Hurricane Charlie took out our pine tree pole, and we used a shorter 4x4 for replacement, she still nested there. Last year I got worried because the perch had fallen off, and I kept forgetting to find a new one. Upon her return though, under a watchful eye I quickly hot glued a new one in place. Yet again she moved right in, to raise her babies. So you can imagine how crushed I was the day she returned and I witnessed the titmouse that had already started a clutch of her own, swoop at her repeatedly to chase her away, with every attempt she made to move in. It made my heart just ache. I quickly got to work and constructed a new house the exact dimensions of the last, and raised it high in the air, to the original 15 feet it was, souring above everything surrounding it. It took me just a few days, but that was not fast enough, and my sweet Flycatcher was not seen again. (That was April)......until this Sunday, that is, way up on the highest branch of the maple tree, looking guard, was no other than my sweet Flycatcher, the same treetop she has used for the last 6 years. The titmouse family have moved out, and I can only hope that she is giving her old home another chance, but whether or not she moves in this season remains to be seen. What I do know is this....she remembers.....and I feel pretty confident she will return again next year, to our yard looking for a home to raise her babies, now hopefully she'll have a few to choose from!





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