I have been monitoring the boxes closely for the last few weeks. Last week I noticed the first egg in the box. And each day after there was one more shiny blue egg inside the nest! There are now a total of five eggs in there. Yeah!!!! These two parents to be were flighty and I could not get such good pics of them together.
Then I moved to another nest box location on our property and saw that the horses needed a glamor shot too. Here's Gemma, she turned five in March. I measured her yesterday for fun. She is a touch under 17 hands. That's huge by the way. A hand is 4 inches so you can do the math cause I can't in my head. What's math??
Then Sharpie and Max were alert and looking for their cameo. Max just came home from vacation at a friends place for the winter. He is the one on the left. I call him Sharpies "Mini-Me." He is a little guy, only 14.3 hands tall, and turned 6 on May 5th. Old man Sharpie turned 13 in March.
But back to business with the love birds here...
These are tree swallows swarming to take this nest box. There were five little bombers swooping and diving at each other over this box site.
But this pair were the apparent victors for the moment.
Mr. Swallow says, "Yo babe, you're kinda cute.... Uhhhhhhh.... Wanna shack up?
Mrs. Swallow says, "Well let me think about it."
Mrs Swallow states, "First I need to check out these here accommodations!"
The birds took off in a wild free for all after I stood up. I was stalking them from behind a fruit tree in our orchard. I investigated the box to see if they had begun any nest making. BUT all I found was a box full of pincher bugs!!! Yuck. I brushed the vermin out and hope that makes the swallow apartment suitable for use.
And on another note, I have several days of paying field work for botany this week and will be sparse in bloggy visits. :(
But finally some work is coming in and I have to take it! I am so going to do the happy dance when paychecks start coming again.
I hope everybody has a great week!
