METAMORPHOSIS

With my children, I watched one of the most amazing shows Mother Nature has to offer....

A friend moved away this fall. The house had not sold yet, so I offered to keep a watch over the property. I snooped around her garden, picking some vegetables and flowers (to keep them from just rotting away, you see?) I also spied some monarch caterpillars happily chomping away on their favorite food, swamp milkweed, that she also had in her gardens. My kids encouraged me to bring them home to watch the metamorphosis happen before our very eyes, which I had never seen.... Here... our observations....

(Now...I only wish my own personal metamorphosis was complete.)

Bluebirds!!

We have baby bluebirds!!

I noticed a lot of funny activity a couple of weeks ago and when I peeked in one of two boxes we have in our back yard, we had EGGS!! Three perfect, little blue pearls... A clutch of 3 suggests to me a young breeding pair.... (Earlier this spring, a pair of tree swallows won the nestbox over the bluebirds.... Posturing and fighting was seen but....the swallows won...)

So I peeked in a couplle of days ago again and LO! There were babies.... Ugly, hairless, prehistoric-looking things....

Please cross your collective fingers and hold your collective breaths... I sooooooo want to be a proud mama.... We had a nest hatch last year, too, but for a reason/s unknown to me, all of the nestlings perished... I saw no visible evidence of enemies or parasites... A possibility could have been that an unexpected cold snap came through.... (Last year? I honestly don't remember... I can't remember yesterday!) But yesterday (oh my! I can remember yesterday!) was coooooold and rainy... so I am keeping my fingers crossed very tightly....

But I am also going to stay away from the nest at this point and let nature (*sigh*) take it's course.... Hope for the best with me.

Good news is that I have seen a couple of young bluebird fledglings flitting about our yard, so a spring brood has successfully navigated the dangers of life ...so far.....