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The Bird Saga
The bird saga continues and it has been a little rocky. The cardinals are having an up and down course with their young. They lost a chick. One egg was laid a bit late and so the two chicks remaining are vastly different in size. The house finches are hatching. So far there were two…
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The Groundhog Effect
Last year, we noticed a groundhog waking up and bulldozing our back yard, even though snow was forecast that day. It’s pretty good at just putting its head down and pushing through almost anything in its path including leaves, sticks, small rocks, flowers, and so on. Their single-minded digging has helped uncover bones and pottery…
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What’s Up with the Birds?
Since my last post about our birds, we’ve had some new developments. The robins actually have a pretty fine nest now under our deck. I managed to get a blurry snapshot of mama robin actually sitting in the nest. I’ve also caught sight of a portly male cavorting with her on our porch rail. Early…
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Spring
I’m coming up on my last 3 days for the academic year and reflecting now that my favorite season is upon us. Spring does that to me, especially now that I’ve been in the phased retirement contract for the last 2 years. I’ll be going into the 3rd and final year as of July. I…
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OK, Maybe Robins Can Build Nests Anywhere
I’ve been making fun of birds who build funny-looking and impractical nests. Maybe I’ve been wrong about the robins, though. My wife alerted me by phone that the robin I joked about in my YouTube video, “Nest Building for Bird Brains,” had actually cobbled together a convincing nest underneath our deck. I couldn’t believe it.…
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Bird Brains Building Nests
I just can’t figure how some birds ever get the nest-building job done. It’s mind-boggling how clueless some of them are. And it’s no wonder—they’re all bird brains trying to figure out something that they obviously don’t have much more than bare instinct to go on. Robins are some of the worst nest builders around.…
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Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!
Let’s get ready to rumble! It’s an egg laying contest. The competition is underway and let’s face it—the house finch has the title tails down. As of last Friday, the house finch had 5 white eggs in the nest, which is a typical clutch. The cardinal is probably going to end up with only two,…
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Bird Garden Update
I have some bird garden updates. As of a few days ago, we noticed a 4th egg was added to the front yard nest. I say that because there is a mysterious triad of birds now associated with the loosely woven and frankly untidy property. I caught a fair snapshot of a house finch male…
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Spring is for the Birds
Here’s an update on front-yard and back-yard birds, doing what birds always do in the spring–nesting. There were still only two cardinal eggs in the nest as of last Wednesday. There are no robin eggs in the nest; they would be blue. The parents are still pretty fussy (click on the images to see them…
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Cardinals vs Robins?
I’m not sure what to think about our cardinals. We saw the egg cache go from two to three—than back to two in the same day. No kidding, the nest gained a third egg in the morning and lost it in the afternoon. I looked all over the ground and couldn’t find it. Before that,…
Go Retire Psychiatrist 