Among Friends

[possummink]

[possummink]

Winifred,   I hope you are keeping cool and feeling ok.   Is Davey out of school for the summer yet?   Hope he'll help you more with chores around the house.   The little ones can help with small things so you can get more rest and relax now and then.  

I love seeing so many different critters, but here in the area where my son lives, not so many anymore.   People put up big privacy fences and the yards are off limits to most native critters other than birds and climbers like possums, squirrels.   My son and his wife go on walks at a nearby nature park and have seen gators, wild boars,  armadillos,  snakes, gopher tortoises,  etc on their walks.  Bob cats are in the area but so far none of them. 

There are two nesting pairs of Cardinals in their yard.   They come to the feeder everyday and to the birdbath.   We have more varieties of birds at home coming to the feeders than here, but we do see the water birds around here which I don't see very often at home, and only near the Mississippi or Missouri rivers or away from the city and suburbs.  

We sure do have a lot of deer though in MO.   They come into our yard and nibble on the hostas, veggies, almost anything green.  There is a big field of grass behind our property and you'd think they'd eat the grass, maybe they do and come for 'dessert' in our plants.   Once in a while we have fawns come along with the does and the does hide the fawns near one of the boats that sits near a grassy area.    

This is a picture of a young doe by my banana plants a couple of years ago.   I took the photo with my cell phone.   Wish I'd had a telephoto lens then. 

One of the things I miss in the summer down here at my son's home are lightning bugs.   I have never seen them in this area of Florida.   We have hundreds upon hundreds of them at home and I just love watching them flashing their little lights starting off low to the ground and then as the night gets darker and later they seem to fly higher into the branches of some of the trees.  Some favorite trees of theirs look like Christmas trees, with all those little critters flashing from top to bottom of the trees.  Love it!! 

[possummink]

[possummink]

[possummink]

[possummink]

One of my tree peonys.  Cell phone photo. 

[yock]

Love the tree peony.  That cardinals brother was in my dogwood tree this morning.  

[possummink]

[mousiegirl]

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@possummink wrote:

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@possummink  I see this every day all day, there are busy bees of several types, buzzing all around.  When I have to walk by the plants, I hope they won't sting me, but then I am not as tasty as the flowers, lol.  I think to myself, I hope they realize that without me, there would be no flowers here for them and had better not sting me.  The previous owners had none.

[Bird mama]

After taking a break for a week, my Presto laid an egg on Sunday and laid another this morning.  She's not particularly thrilled with me right now.  On the one hand, it's a good thing I recognized her behavior on Saturday night and was prepared.  On the other hand, my relationship with her is causing this. 

In the wild sparrows will go 27-29 days between laying eggs.  Presto resuming her egg laying after a week is life threatening (if this continues).

Since Sunday morning there is no hand feeding.  No hand watering either - she likes to drink out of her cup when I hold it.  She is not allowed to allopreen me.  No birdie kisses.  The biggie is no burrowing or snuggling, except for early morning when I can tell she is gonna lay her egg and then she's cut off the rest of the day.

I'm not changing her food or how she goes to bed (not caged and not covered at night).  

Yesterday she was pitiful.  She molting on top of it and can't fly long distances.  She ran down the hall and crawled up my yoga pant leg and I thought I was gonna cry.

Today we are playing games more, none of which could be construed as mating behavior. 

Sigh.