While wandering around on the walkway to the front door, something caught my eye!
This little Spruce tree is only three feet tall, but what is that nestled into the branches?
Looks like Mother Bird has found something useful for my straw mulch. I did not dare get any closer but used the zoom on the camera.
I showed the children the nature find and they were all excited. They have told everyone! However, by Sunday, Father's Day, we had to discover who the nest belonged to. I pulled out a Bird Identification Book and we began to eliminated them one at a time. Finally we figured it out!
The Chipping Sparrow!
This highly useful bird dines almost exclusively on insects with some seed to round out the diet. This is good as I want the insect population to go down so I do not have to send Karl out to kill any more of these.....
Karl is talking up the idea of Guinea Hens a lot more lately, especially after his camping trip with the kiddos last weekend. The children had 16 ticks removed before coming home and I removed six more off Isabella, one off Anton and three off Karl. My only hesitation is trying to not over load myself again. Having the dogs is a little easier to deal with when we want to get away than farm animals. We can either take the dogs to a kennel or bring them with us. Farm animals require someone coming twice daily to take care of them. We might be able to get the neighbor kids across the way as they are responsible teenagers, but I am hesitant never the less. Maybe after I get those tree guards on the fruit trees and our next project completed?
I might be able to put it off till next Spring?
