(no subject)
Been a while since I posted. Nothing much has happened here, it’s a quiet life in the country.
I’ve been noticing some interesting changes happening around the yard. Since we’ve had the bird feeders, our resident sparrows have become used to us and also very very plump. This makes them attractive to predators, and we often shoo away the butcher birds. The sparrows will now stay put while I rattle the tree branches to chase away the butcher birds.
Even better, the other day a butcher bird was chasing a sparrow who’d been caught in the open. The sparrow saw me on the path and flew toward and past me, touching my arm with its wing as it passed. The butcher bird shied away and left the yard. This isn’t the first time the birds who live here have suspended their fear of people to escape a predator.
On the down side, the numbers of small birds here all the time have attracted hawks, and I saw two in one day, chasing our birds under the trees in the yard. Still, hawks have to eat too.
We cut down the parts of the grape vine that we’d trained to grow under the patio deck. Originally it was to provide shade where the previous owners had put in clear panels in the patio roof. However, the black ants had started to use it as a farm, running their herds of mealy bugs and aphids on the stems and fruit, and it was impossible to sit outside without being showered with falling ants.
We have since had the pest exterminator in, and the good news is that we have no termites! Well, except for the ones in a stump near the fence. But they’ve been sprayed now. I was a bit worried that we had an infestation, as the house next door was demolished due to its being riddled with the little bastards.
I’ve been noticing some interesting changes happening around the yard. Since we’ve had the bird feeders, our resident sparrows have become used to us and also very very plump. This makes them attractive to predators, and we often shoo away the butcher birds. The sparrows will now stay put while I rattle the tree branches to chase away the butcher birds.
Even better, the other day a butcher bird was chasing a sparrow who’d been caught in the open. The sparrow saw me on the path and flew toward and past me, touching my arm with its wing as it passed. The butcher bird shied away and left the yard. This isn’t the first time the birds who live here have suspended their fear of people to escape a predator.
On the down side, the numbers of small birds here all the time have attracted hawks, and I saw two in one day, chasing our birds under the trees in the yard. Still, hawks have to eat too.
We cut down the parts of the grape vine that we’d trained to grow under the patio deck. Originally it was to provide shade where the previous owners had put in clear panels in the patio roof. However, the black ants had started to use it as a farm, running their herds of mealy bugs and aphids on the stems and fruit, and it was impossible to sit outside without being showered with falling ants.
We have since had the pest exterminator in, and the good news is that we have no termites! Well, except for the ones in a stump near the fence. But they’ve been sprayed now. I was a bit worried that we had an infestation, as the house next door was demolished due to its being riddled with the little bastards.