All winter we've had a Chickadee "couple" that would come and go in our backyard. I had heard them in the past in some bushes along a neighbor's yard, but had rarely seen them. They're probably my favorite bird, reminding me of the house I grew up in that was built next to a wooded area. I remember seeing them a lot and always loved hearing them and seeing how they were always in pairs.
Yesterday (Wednesday) I was looking out our kitchen window and I saw them around the pond again, which is where they are usually. I saw a clump of debris in the beak of one of them, then he worked his way up our lilac like he was hopping up stairs then leaped into a wren box that I made about 3 years ago. We've never had an "occupant" in that house and I'm THRILLED that Chickadees are getting use out of it.
I quickly went and got Savannah because that house was made for her. Andrew's house, on the other side of the backyard, has had house wrens nesting in it each year since I put it out three years ago. However, last year they didn't choose it as their summer home. The male put a lot of work into preparing the house, but the female chose another location instead.
As I'm typing this post the male chickadee has started working again... the female sits in the lilac bush watching as he makes several trips in and out with nesting material. Every once in awhile I'll see her dart into the house to check out his progress.
I just looked out and now I have a thrush working around under the lilac... good year for birding in our backyard so far!! Warblers will be arriving soon :) I've promised Andrew and Savannah that I would take each of them (separately) bird watching with me this spring... I've shown them pictures of the more common migrating birds I've seen in years past and they're excited about maybe seeing them.
The other night, on my nightly walk with Bella, we were walking through Illinois Wesleyan's campus and I saw something in a tree just over where we were walking... as I focused in I realized it was a brown screech owl (much smaller than I was expecting). It was no more than 4 to 5-feet from me staring at Bella and I. He seemed satisfied to just sit and watch us. I was hoping to get another look at him when we came back around the quad, but he was gone.
I did some pond work on Tuesday... I installed a skimmer to house the pump/filter. I had been wanting to get it out of the pond to allow for better water circulation and give the fish more room in the deep end of the pond where the waterfall is. However, in the process of this I lost my larger fish... I had to reduce the pond level down quite low and I stirred up the "yuck" at the bottom of the pond. I'm sure the oxygen level dropped considerably... I saw the fish surfacing quite often to "grab" some good air. I lost two of my larger ones that night and three more Wednesday (plus a couple of small ones). The water has now cleared and appears to have stabilized. We had several fish, so it's not a great loss, but I just hate to be the cause of their fatality.
We already had sitings of our frog this week, too. He appeared on Monday (I think). With the warmer weather we've been having I assumed he would appear soon. He's probably not very happy with me, though. In moving the waterfall pump I had to take apart some of the waterfall... his "hiding place" was behind the rocks of the waterfall. I put it back together, but there isn't a hiding place anymore since the pump/tubing is gone. Hopefully he won't go to our neighbor's pond in disgust.
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