Pink Hooray Birthday

My 4oth (!!!!) birthday is coming up, and I was just on eVite creating a, well, eVite. I was searching the design gallery and typed in the word "bhangra." eVite said " Did you mean: pink hooray birthday, pink hearts?" Why, no! But what a nice suggestion.

I've been fairly blogless. Life has just been puddling along without much to say. The Bewick's wrens who nested in my yard last year are back checking things out. I'm thinking it would be cool to install a wireless infrared camera in the nest box, but I may not have the $$ to do that before they move in. It would be cool, though!

I have too many projects ...

Lazy Fall Cleanup

Bijou helped me with the extra catnip harvest Saturday.
Then I cleaned out the Bewick's Wrens' nesting box.
It was pretty interesting to see the different layers of nesting material. I don't know if you can see it in the pictures, but the dark layers are Bijou's fur, and the white puff and layers are JoJo's fur.

Creature Feature

I'm going to play blog catch-up again today.

Good fashion sense in the wild
This toad is one of many animals newly discovered in the Amazon.

The toad reminds me of a fantastic worm I read about once in the book The earth moved: on the remarkable achievements of earthworms by Amy Stewart. An earthworm specialist named Sam James found an iridescent blue one in the Philippines.

"One is deep indigo blue," he said. "Eighteen inches long and about a thumb's width in diameter. It's got big white spots with yellow centers, like fried eggs, all over its back, if you can imagine that. And get this -- it crawls on the forest floor, doesn't burrow in the ground, and its infants live in trees until they're mature. Amazing." (pg. 38)

Unfortunately, Amy doesn't mention the name of the worm in the book, and I'll be danged if I can find a picture of it. I'd love to see one. But you know (and this is surely a thought unique to me), considering this beautiful toad and the shimmery worm reminds me of a turquoise, purple, and black sequined Mexican skirt I have. My toad and worm skirt.

Well. Moving on.

Little princes?
Michael thinks he may have seen some young Bewick's wrens in our yard! He heard one of the parents' buzzing mini-squawk and saw these two on the fence. It's pretty damn hard to tell from the picture exactly who they are, but I think they just might have a stripe on the eyes. I like to think they are the little wrens that grew up in the bird house mounted on the fence a few feet away. The parents may have come back to scout out the house for a second brood, but there's a good chance they won't like it. I had to prune away all the vines surrounding the home because my red trumpet vine never came back to life this spring. I had to plant a new one.

A sad Seattle bird note: there is an outbreak of salmonella killing wild birds in Western Washington. I cleaned and bleached my feeders today, but I suppose I should stop putting them out at all for awhile. I hate not to attract and feed birds, but I'd hate to cause any to get sick. I suppose they have plenty of food this time of year.

Ferreting out the fleas
Tuesday night when Michael came home from Kung Fu, I heard the rustle of grocery bags, and he yelled, "Can you come help me!" I figured he needed help getting something inside. I go to the door, and Wow! He's got a ferret! The ferret was a beautiful, friendly, perfumed/musky little guy. While driving home, Michael had seen him wandering around about 5 blocks from our house. He hopped out, and with lighting fast Kung Fu reflexes, snapped him up. Michael couldn't locate the owner, but a neighborhood woman nearby who had been trying to catch the ferret took Michael's number in case she saw someone out looking.

We let the guy crawl all over us, I brought him up for Bijou to smell (her eyes dialated into black holes), but then we stashed him in a cat carrier until we could get him some food and water. Michael used to have ferrets, and he said they can worm their way into anything and then you can't get them out. Well, it's a good thing we didn't let him roam around. Once he was safe in his cage and didn't have new sights and sounds distracting him, he started flailing around and itching and biting himself like mad. "Uh, Michael? I think he's got fleas." We decided to give him a bath. We don't actually have flea bath, so we used Bunny Bath.

Oh. God. I have never ever ever seen so many fleas on an individual creature. Once we dunked him in the water they all started fleeing (fleaing? hyuk hyuk) up his body and onto his face. His little eyes and ears and mouth were just swarming with them. It was so nasty. We kept washing and rinsing and combing and picking, and about 30 minutes later we had sent about 150 fleas to Davey Jones' Locker. His poor little body was covered with tiny pink flea bites. Even after the bath he was still itching like mad, but if you've ever had a flea bite you know they itch like crazy for days.

Just after we finished all the hard work, the owner called and we returned the ferret to her. It turns out he'd only been missing for an hour or so tops, so he didn't get those fleas outside, he got them from home. We mentioned how many fleas he had, and she said she'd "cleaned" him the day before, whatever that means. I wanted to keep the guy just to save him from going back to a house infesed with fleas. Poor li'l dude.

So ends today's creature feature.

Empty Nest

This past Saturday morning I sat out in my backyard with Jo Jo (my rabbit), expecting to see the Bewick's wrens fledge. After about 45 minutes, I realized I had not seen the parents at all. Usually they are zipping back and forth bringing food in and taking poop out and scolding me for watching. After waiting quite a while longer, my investigations (listening and sticking my finger in the nest box) revealed that nobody was home. They haven't been seen since! I sincerely hope it's because the babies fledged successfully, and the family has moved off to mature elsewhere. The other option is that something came along and ate them all. Shudder. Think happy thoughts. If the parents come back in a couple of weeks to raise another brood, I'll know they thought it was a good place to raise a family, and therefore the babies probably survived.

Bewick Babies!

The Bewick's Wren babies have hatched! I haven't actually seen them, but mom and dad wren have been very busy bringing in tons of food and carrying out eggshells. If I could see into the nest, it would look like this:
I so so so so want to open the house and look inside, but I know I shouldn't. I put my ear next to the house, but I couldn't hear anything. I guess if they are just hatching today (and look like the pink scraps above), they probably aren't strong enough to scream for their supper yet.

Manly Bush Tit

Well if that title doesn't get me some web traffic from keyword searches, I don't know what will! Actually, though, this post is about this guy:I've had these small decorative mirrors in my garden for years but never noticed any bird attacking them. This little guy was going at it with gusto. For hours. Michael finally removed the mirror, but he just flew to the next one and began again. That mirror came down, too. I didn't want to be responsible for any tiny headaches.

Here he is clacking away at the mirror. After about 15 seconds I get a shot of one of the Bewick's wrens entering their house. The chirrrr-ing you hear in the backgroung is the wrens.

Bewick's Wrens in Da House!

A couple of years ago I put up two birdhouses: one with a see-through back suction cupped to a bedroom window and a chickadee house nestled under my red trumpet vine. Nobody moved in, and I was sad. I have to admit, I don't actually think any sane bird would raise their children in a nest box with a see-through back that looked into my bedroom.

Now I have birds in my chickadee house! This spring there was a typical Ballard/Seattle housing bidding war between a pair of chickadees and a pair of Bewick's wrens. The wrens won! I'm very excited because much as I love-love-love chickadees, I hardly ever see the sprightly Bewick's wren. Bewick's wrens are very cute and jerk their tails around a lot. I think they might even be swearing.

I've been sitting in my backyard with beer and a magazine for hours on several days, trying to get a picture of them. It is very grueling work sitting in the spring sunshine with a beer, a cat, a bunny, and Archaeology magazine, let me tell you. But I perservered and finally got some shots! I'll let you all know when I have baby bird news.

The photo at the top of the page is not mine, but these are. In the last one, the wren has a mouthful of stuff and is leaning down to fly into the house.