View Around the Yard

 Parent has landed just below the nest and the babes are crowding to the front of the nest.

 If you enlarge this one a bit more, you can see beak to beak feeding.  The parent is well hidden by the leaves, but you can see a beak and something stuffed into baby's beak.

 I think I count four hungry beaks in this shot.

You can just make out the adult bird behind the leaves.  This nest needed a fancy nest cam attached to a branch above it, somehow!

First groundhog I've seen in our yard.  Munching away on clover about 7 this morning.  When I walked past the window to get a second cup of coffee, I thought this was a huge squirrel!  In my sister's yard, they are mostly light brown.  This one had a lot of gray and white streaking.  I'm grateful for some activity in my yard.  My butterfly bushes are not doing well at all, so I'll have to be content with the sparrows.

Nesting Update

A hint of fluff just above the rim of the nest.

 I think you can see beak in these two photos.  It is a well camouflaged spot and they are so small.

 If you enlarge this one, you should be able to see a glimpse of a parent feeding a baby just about center.

Second Brood

The Chipping Sparrows have taken over their tiny nest in the dogwood tree.  They've added some more material to the unused nest from last year.  They are nearly impossible to see.  I can sometimes see activity from just the right spot in my living room with binoculars but can't get a picture as there are screens on my windows.  Most of the spots in the yard are just not the right angle.  I thought that one of the above pictures showed a hint of rusty red cap, but with my bleary morning eyes I can't tell.

This morning there was a bit of drama as a few American Goldfinch chose to land in the tree.  Both parents came flying.  My SD card was not in my camera!!

There has been a great deal of logging in and around my neighborhood lately as landowners are looking for extra income and wood prices are high.  Knowing all the second round nesting that happens, I'm a bit undone as I hear the loggers at work.  I take comfort in knowing "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me."   Every day is a choice to trust in His unfailing love.

Nesting

Birding has taken a bit of a back seat this year, as I seem simultaneously pulled in different directions while stuck in a quagmire of grief/depression that saps all motivation.  Two birds did nest in our yard for first broods.  The chipping sparrows used the furthest "dwarf" mugo pine along the end of our driveway.  Their nest would fit cupped in the palm of my hand and standing over the bush we cannot see it at all.  I haven't seen any activity this past week so I am guessing that they've fledged.  It is hard keeping track when I'm staying at my mom's a few nights a week and gone most days.  

This is a picture after last June's fledge.  I need to find pictures of these bushes when we first planted them and now.  It never ceases to amaze me how years go by and these didn't seem to grow and suddenly they are ridiculously huge and have choked out the carpet roses that I had planted in between.  We probably did the plantings fifteen or sixteen years ago.  

A pair of Robins nested in the yard this year.  A few years ago they built a nest in my dogwood.  This year they are just a few feet away from that nest location but in a branch of the one pine tree in our yard, directly over the driveway!  We probably would never have noticed the nest except the sitting parent flies off almost every time we drive in or out or walk under the nest to get the mail.  The nest is not visible from inside my house.  I have no solid report as to what is happening....if eggs have hatched, how many.  Yesterday I was able to get these pictures from the driveway.  

The nest looks a little rough after almost a week of rain. I did not do a super garden clean up last fall, so this pair used a lot of day lily remnants in the nest.  The chipping sparrows manage to pull strands from a tarp that gets left out at the end of the driveway. 

 My favorite picture is from the Robin nest a few years ago in the dogwood tree.  That pair used a large piece of birch bark in their nest construction.