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I bought a small watermelon that had absolutely no flavor. Last night near dusk, I took the remains of it to the woods at the end of the street where the deer live who come out in the evenings to the park across from me, walked in about fifteen feet and threw it for them to find.
When I took my socks off later getting ready for bed, I saw a brownish thing on my ankle...a tick! That's what I got for my good deed. Must have jumped on my shoe, made its way under my sock and was preparing to burrow in. I had a small red spot where I picked him off. He went running up my hand so I went outside and pinged him off into the darkness.
Sometimes nature isn't as much fun as it is at other times.
No good deed goes unpunished...tick was watching saw you heading to where deer are active decided since it fell off the deer it would hitch a ride on you...
So i live in a motel temporarily and was outside puffing on a lung deflator and was entertained by several blue jays and 1 crow all furiously contesting bread and possibly some pizza crust...quite funny when a jay grabbed a long piece of pizza crust got halfway up to tree fumbled it whereupon the crow hopped over snagged it and flew off...the jay was totally bummed...
There were three juvenile (last year) broad-winged hawks here yesterday afternoon. Two sat perched in ash trees 100' apart and the third flew around them. They called back and forth for a few minutes before leaving together. I assume they're migrating together.
Update on this: For the past 2-3 weeks I've been seeing the chickadees go in and out of that bird house several times a day. They're really busy! I might try to get a pic or video of one going in or out, but that might be hard to do since I'd need to get close to the birdhouse to get a good shot because I don't have any sort of telephoto lens, and the birdies might not be kind to me getting so close.
Last week there was a squirrel sitting on the top of the fence next to the bird house, and the two chickadees were giving it a hard time. Squirrel must have been like, "Huh? What'd I do?" Sometimes I've seen squirrels sit right on top of that bird house.
I got a video today!
Last week I saw a squirrel trying to sit right on top of the box, and the chickadees were dive-bombing it. Was pretty funny.
Just returned from a short stroll, happened to look up, caught sight of a bird of prey ( likely a Cooper's or Red Tail hawk), with grackles or crows mobbing it. It was hard to tell which at such a distance. They kept harassing it, and eventually the hawk moved elsewhere.
I posted earlier about the "squirrel puppy" that has been entertaining itself with sticks and gymnastics in my yard. Today, it was squirrel "kitten"....silly thin found a piece of a vine caught up in a Cast Iron plant at the base of a tree. That little bugger toyed with that "string" for a good 10 minutes before finally jumping into the plant and then up the tree.
Honestly, I think the COVID has given our squirrels a bad case of Identity Crisis!
I've noticed the baby squirrels here are just like children. They have to get their little paws on everything, turning stuff upside down, knocking things out of the trees.
Mr. Wren arrived this week right on time. He's been siting on top of the wren house proclaiming ownership. So far so good. Haven't see a mate yet.
We have a Blue Grosbeak couple hanging around our feeder. I'm in South Jersey, and this is the northern edge of their breeding territory. We love watching them. He is beautiful. She looks like an "ordinary finch", but close-ups with binoculars confirmed she is a female Blue Grosbeak. They will sit and eat seed for quite a while before flying away.
A sparrow and a house wren were getting into it over one of our birdhouses. The house wren kept saying, "Chchchchchchch" to the sparrow, who also wanted to claim the house. The wren is tiny, but my money is on him winning that battle.
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