Springtime is always fun when you are lucky enough to be able to watch avian parents raise a brood successfully to fledgling status. My previous two blogs about watching brown-headed nuthatches and Carolina chickadees conscientiously keep their hatchlings well-fed was going to be followed by some new observations on bird parents – either the Carolina wrens or a tufted titmouse, who had laid eggs in two of my bluebird boxes.
The wrens are very circumspect about feeding when I am in the vicinity but I had seen the titmouse coming and going to the nest. When I looked in one day, I saw that one egg had hatched and three others were still there. Then, I went away for the Memorial Day weekend and returned home to find the nest had been pulled from the box and the fledgling and eggs were gone. (A loose piece of the roof had been removed; there were squirrel and raccoon baffles on the pole; I surmise a squirrel dropped down from a branch overhead.) So there likely won’t be a blog on those species.
But I thought you might like to try your identification skills on the baby and juvenile birds in this blog. Some are fairly easy and others not so much. I will number the photos and hope that you will make guesses in the comments section of the blog. Then I will post the answers in a comment when I publish my next blog, so check back to see how you did. Good luck!
No. 1
No. 2
No. 3
No. 4
No. 5
No. 6
No. 7 
No. 8
No. 9 
No. 10
No. 11
hickadees had begun nests in two others. It is not uncommon for them to begin a couple nests and then finally settle on one. On 12 April, I discovered that Mom had laid five white with brown-specked eggs in a nice soft nest made of moss, soft grasses and some down, even using a bit of pillow stuffing I had left out for interested nest-builders.
spent time looking out of the box before venturing out. One took a flying leap and swerved up into a tree.
ckadees’ nest (after removing some remaining fecal matter). One chickadee ventured back to peer into the box but the wren pair loudly chased the original owner away.
working on an advocacy paper and then awakened by a tornado alert on my cell phone at 5 a.m. a few days ago, seeing bright flashes of lightening through the blinds and hearing rumbling thunder as the rain poured down. After what seemed like a somewhat lengthy and lingering winter, we’ve had a rather wet spring with temperatures yo-yo-ing. The flowers seemed a bit confused, too, but they have been blooming albeit not always when expected!
ough they are fairly common, the violets (Viola sororia) are among 
my favorites. Their deep blue or purple blooms look wonderful against the deep green leaves. The azure bluets (Houstonia caerulia), on the other hand, have a very subtle bluish tinge.
ferns (Polystichum acrostichoides). These curled fern fronds are collected to be cooked and served as vegetables, although the fiddleheads of this particular fern are not recommended as being particularly edible. It is a useful fern, though, as the full-grown leaves lie flat on the ground and contribute to controlling erosion and conserving soil by keeping fallen leaves in place as they decompose.
odrush (Lazula multiflora) is not such a spectacularly beautiful flower from my perspective but perhaps it is because of the muted colors. The turkey tail mushrooms (Trametes versicolor) also often appear with browns, rust and blackish colors but I find that they always create a beautiful image as they grow on stumps with bands of different colors.
My beautiful world 