These chives are volunteer from last year and have put on some beautiful purple flowers
retirement activity
Brood X cicada invasion is in our backyard
Ok, maybe one cicada sighting doesn’t rate “invasion”, but we have been waiting for these ugly things to emerge. Brood X is the designation given to this bunch of cicadas, who have been underground for 17 years. You can read all about them just about everywhere.
It was long after dark when we spotted one hanging on a tarp that we had over some stuff on a couple of card tables. The cicada is crawling out of its now hard shell.
Starting to leave its shell
Doing a back bend to get out
This morning the cicada was beside its now abandoned shell. Usually they are on tree trunks at this point, but this guy ended up on a green tarp.
Finally free, its just chilling
Side view: you can see details of the cicada and its abandoned shell
Like I said, we’ve been waiting for the cicadas to emerge. The weather has been hot enough that the soil should have been warm enough a couple of days ago. Oh well, at least things are starting to happen. It will remain to be seen how many cicadas will emerge in our yard, or in our town. And maybe this one we have will start producing that loud obnoxious sound today.
Ready for an afternoon of bird watching
It is a beautiful day partly sunny pretty warm but nice in the shade with a slight breeze. Lots and lots of birds today should be a wonderful afternoon of birdwatching.
Mom, Dad, get back here!
We noticed a behavior in starlings that we had not seen before. Adult starlings were moving through the yard, doing their normal grazing thing.
Some adult feathers are beginning to show on the backs of these two starling juveniles
What was different was the sight of juvenile starlings, one or two per adult, staying amazingly close. Every time the adult moved, the juvenile stayed right with the adult. We watched as the adult would grab a worm or grub an give it to the youngster. When the adult flew away the youngster would squawk and carry on very loudly. This parent/young interaction went on for minutes at a time.
Ah, you might want to duck
Here he comes, center of picture
Look closely, there is a starling who just left the suet feeder heading right towards the camera. The yellow beak is in the center of the black body, and the out stretched wings are very blurry. We see the starlings getting a beak full of suet and flying off to, we assume, their nests. According to one of our resources the young starlings should be leaving their nests anytime now.
A flash of red on final approach
A beautiful splash of red
It’s always fun to see a new (to us) species coming to our backyard and our feeders. We are slowly putting together a pretty decent list of the birds we have seen. Yesterday a flash of red, white and black caught our eye. We first saw the Rose-breasted Grosbeak sitting on a swing frame.
Coming in for a landing
It wasn’t long before a second Grosbeak joined in on the feeding fun. They both found the glass shelf feeder and shared a meal together. These colorful birds are always fun to see and hear.
Family life on the river bank
Young goslings under watchful eyes
It was a pretty day so we went on a drive to a local park. This park has a river running through it and is home to lots of waterfowl. We were treated to an idyllic scene of an adult goose with 3 very young goslings poking around on the river bank. White ducks and Mallards were in the background enjoying the day.
West Side Pub & Grub
Friday night is usually (for some) a date night. Well, this last Friday Sher and I decided to have a real date night. Off we went to a local bar named the West Side Pub & Grub. It used to be a semi rough place a couple of decades ago, but now it is a comfortable local bar that happens to serve great food. And we mean great food.
Early Friday night the crowd was small, maybe a dozen or so patrons. Sher ordered a frozen strawberry margarita, I opted for a Blue Moon long neck. I had heard that this place served a wonderful breaded tenderloin, and the fried spicy cheese curds we also highly recommended by our wait staff.
Shortly our food arrived. The fried cheese curds came in a miniature fryer basket, Cute. My tenderloin was HUGE. The picture tells the story, except it does not show how thick the tenderloin was. (3/8 to 1/2 inch) And so good. The fried spicy cheese curds were most delicious as well.
We found out there will be a live band next Saturday night. We’ll be back at the West Side Pub & Grub for dinner, followed by enjoying what is said to be a great live band. And our bartender explained that the restaurant locally sources all of the meat and most of the other supplies for the kitchen. That is also a very good thing.
Free trees
List of available saplings
The Indiana Dept. of Natural Resources once again provided free trees for anyone who wanted to come pick them up. Last year we picked up some free trees, and have had reasonable success with them.
This year the give a way was organized at the County Fairgrounds. The variety was larger than last year’s offering and I was pleased to see Red Buds on the list. They are so pretty each year!
There was a good sized crowd as soon as it opened
This is one of the two Pecan saplings now planted
This is our Black Cherry from last year. It has grown a lot!
As was the case last year, you could get a maximum of ten trees per household. We decided that this year I’d pick up two Red Buds, two Pecans and one Shag Bark Hickory. All five are now planted, and hopefully they will all survive. We did have a couple of losses last year due to (I think) pesky rabbits. This tree give a way is a great program.
I see you!
Sometimes there are birds that just stand out when you see them. Here is one:
This interesting gaze belongs to a White-crowned Sparrow. Below are a couple more images of the same bird after he flitted about a bit.
This is a direct quote from the allaboutbirds.org website “Scientists interested in movement and energetics have discovered that White-crowned Sparrows can run on a treadmill at a pace of about one-third of a mile an hour without tiring out.” I can’t imagine any self respecting bird allowing itself to be run on a treadmill.
Roadtirement 