Butterfly and Wildlife Gardening And Photography In Houston Texas
Category Archives: Purple Martin We have more and more Dragonflies starting to appear. That’s good news for the nesting Purple Martins (they are bringing tons of them into their nest to feed their babies), good news for my photography, and bad news for the mosquitoes. I’m not very good at identifying Dragonflies, but I will make a better effort…  Today certainly has been interesting. I’ll start with the Monarchs. Originally we had 9 Monarch caterpillars from that adult Monarch who probably traveled from Mexico. Now we have 7. Two of them died, but I’m not sure why. I had been keeping the Monarch caterpillars in a protected enclosure to protect them from wasps, and…  We just received this sad news: Your Purple Martin suffered a severe fracture at the shoulder and it can’t be repaired. I know how precious these birds are to Purple Martin Landlords and they are precious to us too, but he was in pain and we couldn’t fix his wing. He could have flown into…  Today must be a day for me to rant. Before I state my little rant, let me share the story. So I’m out in the backyard with the dogs and notice both of the dogs start surrounding this jumping thing. I yell at both of them “NO” and both dogs stop and look at me. …  The happy couple started to make themselves comfortable in their new home. Actually, I counted a total of 6 Purple Martins today, but these two seemed to be especially close. My Martin house has 14 rooms so I’ve got room for 8 more. In previous years I’ve had two neighbors that have put up Martin… Finally! I’ve had the Purple Martin house up for about a week now but I saw no sign of any Martins. I was starting to wonder if I put the Martin house up too late. I was outside tonight testing out my new bird cam (more about that in another post later this week) and… I confess. I’m starting to get a little excited with each passing weekend. If it hold true that we will no longer have freezing temperatures, then those of around Houston can start finally taking a tally of what plants may survive, and which plants may have bit the dust. Since I have so very little… Another new visitor we had this weekend was a group of Purple Martins. We had already taken down the Martin house when this weekend there was a new flock of them darting around. I thought these guys had already starting migrating north, so I’m not sure why they started showing up. I think I have mentioned before about how Sparrows will try and take over the nesting sites of Purple Martins. For whatever reason, there are now about 10 Sparrows (1 male and many females from what I can tell) flying around and attempting to build nests in my Purple Martin house. This drives me absolutely… Yet more wildlife, but nothing about Butterfly Gardening, what gives? Truth is, we’re experiencing a little lull right now in terms of Butterflies flying around. So hopefully you don’t mind if I share thoughts and pictures of other backyard inhabitants. Today it’s about the Purple Martins. It seems the babies have all learned to fly… Our Martin house is really getting noisey. The babies are squawking for food every few seconds and the adults are become a bit more aggressive towards the dogs by divebombing them. I think their behavior is because the baby Martin’s are getting pretty darn close to experiencing the first joys of flight. Whereas we never… But sorry, I don’t have any pictures to prove it. Just close your eyes and imagine what I am describing. I’ve seen it happen a couple of times now. The constantly chattering Martins are bringing by their favorite food, the dragonfly, to their young every few minutes. Unbeknownst to them, there are some Male Monarchs… |
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