Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
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Category Archives: Birds I have an update on the Purple Martin nesting activity for this year. Also, some of the pictures at the bottom of this post may gross you out, so you’ve been forewarned. Nest 16 has 2 babies and 3 unhatched eggs Nest 15 still has 1 unhatched egg (I need to watch this nest and… I created a small video collage of some of the backyard birds I have at feeding time. Feeding time is around 6 p.m., where I fill the bird feeder with Black Oil Sunflower Seed, sprinkle some Nut and Berry Seed, and put out a few mealworms. While I have no idea where some of these…  I still have lots of unhatched Purple Martin eggs, but also have 2 nests that have babies. Thus far, the babies in nest 12 look quite healthy.  I haven’t had any Bluebird nests so far this year, but that hasn’t stopped the parents from visiting on a daily basis for mealworms. Today I had a little surprise. The parents led their two babies to my backyard! Perhaps I will get lucky and the parents will build their second bluebird nest of the…  Honestly I’m surprised the male and female Baltimore Orioles were still here this morning, but I’m certainly not trying to rush them off. The male appears much less shy than the female. I did take a couple of decent pictures in the early morning light, and both birds seemed to enjoy the bird stream for…  I still have about 5 Ruby Throated Hummingbirds hanging around, and they all are getting quite fat. They are also becoming increasingly aggressive with one another around the feeders. I happened to catch this male staking his claim on the feeder by the disappearing bird stream.  I’ve never seen this bird before and quite frankly, I was lucky to see it now. I saw this yellow shape dart in the trees behind my backyard. The image is heavily cropped, but if I am not mistaken, this is a Yellow Breasted Chat. Very shy birds from what I read.  Finally! The first eggs from one of the nests have hatched. I just took a quick peek as I didn’t want to upset the parents too much. From what I did see, 3 of the 5 eggs had hatched. I would expect that there should be continued hatchings almost daily. Here’s a male Purple Martin…  I saw a pair of Baltimore Orioles today! The last time I saw a Baltimore Oriole in the backyard was back in September of 2011. I’ll apologize up front by saying these aren’t the best pictures, especially of the female, but I’m still culling through all of the pictures I took this evening trying to…  Well today is roughly day 18 since I first saw the eggs in the Purple Martin houses, and none have hatched. From what I read, it’s normally around 16 days when the eggs hatch, but we have had a couple of cold days, so perhaps that’s the reason for the delay. On the bright side…  I finally can provide an update on my Purple Martins and their nest building. I have 9 nests so far (2 in the gourd houses, and 7 in the regular housing). The oldest eggs are about 7 days old now. I’ll give the nest and egg total in a moment, but I wanted to share…  I’ll go ahead and warn you right now. This post is going to have lots of Eastern Bluebird photos, so if you have a slow connection I apologize. I titled this post training Bluebirds, but make no mistake, they really have trained me. However, just for kicks, assume I could actually train Bluebirds. Perhaps I…  I bought a yet another new fruit tree last year, a Pakistan Mulberry. It’s a wonderful berry tree, with long, dark red fruit. Mine produces fruit twice a year. That doesn’t mean I get to harvest much fruit twice a year as the birds tend to go after the fruit as soon as it has…  Today was a little chilly in the morning so the Martins were just trying to stay warm. Here’s a male just basking in the sun  You may think you only see one Dove. Look again, on the fence. The other Dove is hiding behind the Grape vine. Dove are not near the smartest birds compared with other birds, but they always survive somehow. |
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