Well, Shiver Me Timbers! June 1st Weather...

Every week, I say this is the last time. Fooled again! Here is the "feel-like" temp. at 7am. The actual temp. is 39F.

Vegetable Gardens are all in

The vegetables are all in the ground and in the City Pickers planting boxes. On the deck we have two City Picker boxes. 

The farthest one has leafy greens in it. And, I actually labeled the photo so I would know what I am picking! The parsley might be a bit of overkill with three plants growing...We'll see. It does get so big!

The nearest City Picker box (with the fencing)  has cucumbers, one row of Spacemaster Cukes, and one row of National Pickling Cukes. I forgot which row is which;-) No matter as they both grow very well.

I have potted a small Tiny Treats compact cherry tomato and have it at the end of the walkway (next to the False Indigo). My cherry tomatoes did very well in this location last year.

This year we decided to buy more tomato plants and put them in the ground in the front yard. It just gets too hot on the deck to successfully grow tomatoes. So, we have Celebrity and Early Girl tomatoes and will see how they do. The zucchinis are Burpee's Best Hybrid and Burpee's Fordhook Zucchini. If you look in the background, you will see that the high bush blueberries seem very happy this year. I have no idea what varieties they are, but one is earlier and the others are a bit later.

Dragonflies are hatching!

There are dragonflies all over the yard! They are hatching out today;-)

Whip-Poor-Will audio recording...Yahoooo!

 Neighbor Shannon was lucky enough to record audio of a Whip-Poor-Will the other evening! We haven't heard one in around 20 years! Now, I want to put our audio recorder back in the woods to see if this bird is over in our neck of the woods (5 houses down from Shannon.)

Yellow-shafted Flicker Video

Yellow-shafted Flickers nested in the ash tree behind our house. They worked on excavating this former hairy woodpecker nest hole in early May, and then moved in. The female laid eggs at some point. In the last couple of weeks, I started hearing their warning call at the far end of the neighbor's yard. This confused me because their nest was in our backyard. I guess that, at some point, they realized that our backyard was too busy, and decided to move to a new location. They made the move on May 22nd. We documented as much as we could without disturbing them. But, we do miss all the commotion...the loud calls from early morning to late afternoon. It is way too quiet now. Make sure you turn your sound on to hear their call.

Yellow-shafted Flickers

We had a Yellow-shafted Flicker pair nest in the ash tree next to our back deck.

Above, you can see the nest hole with the female at the opening.

Male Yellow-shafted Flicker

Here is the male Yellow-shafted Flicker. Notice the distinguishing characteristic black malar marking down from the hinge edge of his bill. And, you can see some hint of brilliant yellow coloring on the flight feathers and the tail feathers!
Unfortunately, this is a screen shot from some video that we took. I don't have any clear, actual still shots. This is because the birds have moved their nest elsewhere on May 22nd. You'll see this activity in the video. We are bummed.

Here is the female Yellow-shafted Flicker. She is a bit browner in coloration than the male, and she lacks the black malar marking.

The female is gorgeous! We didn't see much of her initially as she is the one to seemingly spend most of the time on the eggs. By the way, I took these photos from outside the fence using my Nikon P1000 at full zoom (3000mm), so as not to disturb the birds.

Here is a screen grab, from the video, of the female moving one of the eggs. Oddly enough, I think the birds have been creating a second nest hole for awhile as I have heard the male doing his warning call from the far side of our neighbor's yard. 

And, here is a screen grab, from the video, of the female flicker flying away with the egg. 

We decided to try to get images of the inside of the abandoned nest. Drew attached a tiny tripod to the end of a pole pruner, and then duct taped a camera to it. The camera was too big to fit into the nest hole entrance.

Then we remembered that we had an endoscope that we use to try to see into chipmunk dens, etc. Drew uses an old Samsung cell phone (thank you David) that our bro-in-law gave us years ago, that syncs up with the endoscope.

The endoscope was then attached to the pole pruner via the tiny tripod. Drew left a good length of cord so the endoscope could be dropped a ways down into the nest cavity.

The endoscope has lights on the end and can illuminate the nest cavity as photos are taken.

Here is what we saw... a nest of fine wood shavings! No downy softness for woodpeckers. They are made of tougher stuff than your common tweety birds!

Note: I know it may seem callous, but we have maintained normal activity throughout the entire nesting process figuring that if the birds weren't comfortable with us, they wouldn't nest there. Our fenced-in backyard is where our firewood is stacked, our equipment shed is, and where Toby has a safe place, being a blind dog, to roam, to snooze, and to play. And, it is a safe place for us to physically distance ourselves while socializing with friends and their dogs. At no time did we disturb the woodpeckers on purpose. And, Toby had no interest in them whatsoever. Please do not judge us harshly...

Overnight temperatures reached into the 30's

What???? Every week I continue to think that we are out of the 30's at night, and every week I stand corrected. I don't know when we last saw overnight temperatures this low in late May! We have one more night in the 30's and then we really should be warmer at night...I hope...

Robins

Here is Mama Robin on the nest, today. Look how high she is sitting on it. Do you think that the chicks may have hatched?

Here she is 6 days ago, snuggled much further down onto the eggs.

And, here is proud papa Robin keeping a watchful eye on his territory and nesting partner. His breast is a darker red than his mate's breast is.

And, papa Robin has to keep an ear out for earthworms...to feed young chicks.

Our 30th Wedding Anniversary Pandemic Celebration...say what?

Gee... how do you celebrate 30 years of marriage? I don't know about you, but during the pandemic we thought it appropriate to visit our favorite cemetery in the woods. Hix Small Cemetery has grave stones dating back to the early 1800's. And, this time of year it is covered with wildflowers.

These pink and white flowers, commonly called Moss Pink or Ground Phlox, (Phlox sublata), are commonly seen blanketing the ground of cemeteries! These little flowers like rocky or sandy soil. And, this cemetery land is absolutely perfect to support it.

There are also Bluets, aka Quaker Ladies, (Houstonia caerulea), covering wide swaths of the ground around the grave stones. Thick carpets of the white variety give the appearance of snow on lawns and fields in our neck of the woods.

The Bluets occur in blue varieties as well. They are very tiny and so beautiful.

But, wait! There's more...I saw my first ever Eastern Pine Butterfly (Incisalia niphon). Yahooo! It's not much of a photo, but it was enough to identify it. And, it was flitting close to the ground supping on the tiny bluets. The upper wings (that you see here) are brown chocolate colored. You can see the edge of the wing is white with black striping.

The underwing (seen here) is patterned with brown, white, and black. These butterflies lay their eggs on "new growth of young pines..." Their larvae "favor both native and ornamental pines." "Late emerging adults feed on wild plum, dogbane, lupine, everlasting, and other wildflowers."
Nelson, Cyndi. Painted Ladies Butterflies of North America. Edited by Millie Miller, Johnson Books, Boulder, Colorado, 1993.

Scarlet Tanager

It is a good week in our neck of the woods. Today, I saw a Scarlet Tanager for the first time this spring. I was looking back in my old posts on Maine Nature Diary, and we had one arrive on this same day in 2014!