Pic dump
My bluebird box had four species of birds fighting over it this spring: bluebirds, house sparrows, chickadees, and Carolina wrens. The chickadees won (I put up a couple more nest boxes - bluebird family has already moved in.)
There were seven eggs - one didn't hatch but there are at least five babies in there.
This pic is from three or four days ago - they're now big enough I can really hear them cheeping away when mom and dad stop by with bugs. Won't do anymore peeking from here on out - don't want to scare them into fledging early!
Have been trying not to take any rehab wildlife since will soon be at 50% staffing in the busiest time of year (unless our government hiring system magically becomes efficient), but the opossums, they do arrive! These little doobers had the usual story, mom hit by car. They were old enough to start drinking from a dish right away, so not too much work :)
Educational opossum Clockwise, snoozed out on some branches
My baby Jack-in-the-pulpits coming back up! I planted them last year and they all put up a single leaf, this year they have three leaflets, in another two or three years they might be big enough to flower!
Dog vomit slime mold on my mulch pile - so cool, my very own slime mold!! Actually you can see the baby Jacks in the background there a few weeks later all leafed out - nearly every seed I planted did great, must have around 90 little plants :D
Shooting star in bloom at the park a couple weeks ago.
My backyard woodland wildflower planting project this year - the back end of my yard is very shady and often damp and flooded in the spring, and takes a lot of extension cords to reach with my electric mower. I've been filling it in with bags and wheelbarrows of dead leaves a little at a time (eventually I want to cover the whole back quarter) and planting it with woodland wildflowers and shrubs. Some are extras thinned out from my front bed (bloodroot! Bloodroot coming out my ears!), some are transplants that one of the awesome park volunteers let me dig from her yard, some I got at a local native plant sale yesterday, and some are little seedlets and seedlings like the baby Jacks. It's an exercise in patience since it'll be several years for most of these species to get established and start spreading, and nearly everything I planted this spring will go dormant and die back in another few weeks and won't see it again until next year - good zen-type practice, lol. But I want a little woodland riiiight now *takes deep waiting breaths*
My splurge at the native plant sale - a lovely little green dragon! I've also started some seeds, but like the baby Jacks it'll be four or five years before they get big enough to flower.
There were seven eggs - one didn't hatch but there are at least five babies in there.
This pic is from three or four days ago - they're now big enough I can really hear them cheeping away when mom and dad stop by with bugs. Won't do anymore peeking from here on out - don't want to scare them into fledging early!
Have been trying not to take any rehab wildlife since will soon be at 50% staffing in the busiest time of year (unless our government hiring system magically becomes efficient), but the opossums, they do arrive! These little doobers had the usual story, mom hit by car. They were old enough to start drinking from a dish right away, so not too much work :)
Educational opossum Clockwise, snoozed out on some branches
My baby Jack-in-the-pulpits coming back up! I planted them last year and they all put up a single leaf, this year they have three leaflets, in another two or three years they might be big enough to flower!
Dog vomit slime mold on my mulch pile - so cool, my very own slime mold!! Actually you can see the baby Jacks in the background there a few weeks later all leafed out - nearly every seed I planted did great, must have around 90 little plants :D
Shooting star in bloom at the park a couple weeks ago.
My backyard woodland wildflower planting project this year - the back end of my yard is very shady and often damp and flooded in the spring, and takes a lot of extension cords to reach with my electric mower. I've been filling it in with bags and wheelbarrows of dead leaves a little at a time (eventually I want to cover the whole back quarter) and planting it with woodland wildflowers and shrubs. Some are extras thinned out from my front bed (bloodroot! Bloodroot coming out my ears!), some are transplants that one of the awesome park volunteers let me dig from her yard, some I got at a local native plant sale yesterday, and some are little seedlets and seedlings like the baby Jacks. It's an exercise in patience since it'll be several years for most of these species to get established and start spreading, and nearly everything I planted this spring will go dormant and die back in another few weeks and won't see it again until next year - good zen-type practice, lol. But I want a little woodland riiiight now *takes deep waiting breaths*
My splurge at the native plant sale - a lovely little green dragon! I've also started some seeds, but like the baby Jacks it'll be four or five years before they get big enough to flower.