Wildlife Weekend

Welcome to my patch of wildness in the middle of suburbia.


Mom and Dad tried to create a wildlife sanctuary in the garden, and I think they succeeded. It is certainly an informal garden, but has a kind of neat wildness about it.



In our Flower Friday post, Jeter asked about bees since there is a lot of concern about their state of health nationwide. While bees are certainly having problems in Virginia too, we have our own colony of bees. Some years ago, Dad built a large birdhouse intended for "our" red-bellied woodpeckers, and he erected it high in one of our white oak trees. No woodpeckers nested in it, but we did have great crested flycatchers live in it. After that, bees moved in.

Here is a closer photo of the house, but without a good telephoto lens, you can't tell that bees inhabit it.

We have a family of bluejays in our yard. They are very colorful and beautiful, but they like to squack a lot. The youngsters perch on branches of the elm tree and flap their wings "helplessly" as their mom or dad go to the suet feeder and bring back food for them.

The young blue jays appear just as large as their parents--and fatter. It's no wonder since mom and dad must not have much time to feed themselves as they tend to their offspring. That must be why the parents like coming to the suet feeder in summer: it's like fast food for them in their busy lives.

Recently our friend Skeezix showed us some birds' nests from his yard, and now we have one to show. We think that this was the blue jays' nest in the photinia bush next to the sunny side of the house.

Our state bird the cardinal nested in our yard this year too.

Now let's take a look out front. What do we see in the sunny front bed but a female eastern box turtle! We know she's a female because her eyes are yellowish-brown. The male has red eyes.

Here's a photo of part of our wild (but controlled) front yard where the common daylilies (hemerocallis) are now in bloom. Dad calls them "freeway lilies" because they often grow along highways.

I love my wild yard, but I think that I am the wildest beast in it. Happy Man Cat Monday.

~Jake

P.S. We hope to get to visit our friends this week. Mom wouldn't let us on the computer here for several days straight and now it's getting late. Hiss!

Sleepy Sunday

Oh, it was a day for sleeping! Cold and rainy outside, it was warm and snuggly inside. Here I am on my loveseat. I even have my catnip banana with me.

And Bathsheba slept on her favorite kitchen chair, except that she's not truly asleep in this picture. I think the flash made her open her eye a crack.

Bathsheba told everyone about my little indiscretion yesterday. I just can't help it! Anyway, I didn't mind being out on the deck despite the chill. I could keep my eye on the bird feeders. If you biggify this picture and look at the middle feeder, you can see a white-breasted nuthatch. They're cool little birds that descend upside down from trees. Here he is hanging onto the wire mesh that holds a cake of suet on the bottom of this feeder. Dad made it to try to keep the starlings out of it. The other suet feeder to the right does a pretty good job at that too.

Mom made me include another photo of the garden, and since she is helping me blog, I thought that I'd indulge her. There are mostly Virginia bluebells in this bed, and the yellow blooms are wood poppies.

The winds are starting to howl tonight. I'm glad I'm toasty and warm in the house.

~Jake