Welcome to Street Prophets Coffee Hour.
The weather here in Kansas can’t decide what time of year it is. Three weeks ago we had daily highs below 0o and nighttime temperatures as low as -17o. Now we have daily temperatures in the 60s and 70s. I’ll be planting seeds directly outdoors over the next couple of days, in pots that can slide into the garage for the few nights forecast to be in the 30s.
And here are some pictures of what goes on at my place in March.
I love bluebirds. They’re a field bird so you’re unlikely to see them in town.
I have a bluebird trail, going ¼ mile across my land, with these little houses. The metal on the right is a snake guard that keeps snakes from getting into the nest. It also prevents hawks and owls from perching on top and reaching inside for the chicks.
And this is the nest bluebirds make, very neat and compact.
I caught this ornate box turtle just coming out of its winter hibernation, so it’s still covered with drying mud. If you see one trying to cross the road and want to give it a hand, put it on the side it’s headed to, or it will just go back into the road trying to get where it wants to go.
Cardinals are usually the first birds at the feeders in the morning and the last at night.
Mourning doves are ground feeders so they are often under my bird feeders eating what the other birds drop—or throw.
The downy woodpecker is modeling one very expensive suet feeder. The theory is that only the smallest birds can get inside, and bigger woodpeckers will hang underneath. It’s supposed to foil the starlings. Nope. Starlings don’t stay long because they don’t like to feed upside down, but they have learned to hover for a short while underneath to get at the suet, which is why I only have one of these. Note that I only use plain suet. Starlings are less likely to eat that, and squirrels ignore it altogether.
Frogs are starting to wake up.
Hawks are getting ready to nest. They use the same nest for several years before moving on to another spot.
Like many birds, blue jays are molting so they don’t look their best. They’ll start nesting next month.
I try to have food and plants for the mockingbirds. That means raisins and sunflower hearts in the winter. I just had a Bradford pear tree cut down so they won’t get the fruits from that this year, but the darned tree, although healthy, had such soft wood that it was always dropping huge limbs onto my driveway.
Nuthatches carry the seeds away and tuck pieces under the bark of trees to eat later.
The color on the red-bellied woodpecker is visible here as a faint blush.
I turn my compost whenever I can in the winter, to bring worms up for the robins. But they eat fruit, too, so I throw raisins onto the deck for them.
Turtles sink into the mud at the bottom of the pond, where they spend the winter. They’re coming up now.
And diary is now open. What’s going on in your world?