Your Wildlife Fix

 I am away on a road trip and will be back in a week or so.

 At long last, we finally have some bluebirds that have hatched out. It has been a tough start for them. Despite being bigger than sparrows/wrens, the bluebirds kept being fought off every time they showed interest in nesting in our bluebird house between the house and the garden. The sparrows would attack the poor male bluebird until he gave up and flew off and then throw one of their quick built nests up inside the bird house. Every day, I would go remove the nest and toss it in our compost bin. This went on for TWO MONTHS!

Evidently the sparrows got the hint at that point and either built a nest somewhere else or moved on to someplace with less picky humans. After a week or two of inactivity, suddenly I saw the bluebird pair had come back, built a nest and laid four eggs. Typically they lay five but this was during a heat wave and late in the season which may have limited them. It was so hot, I was worried that they eggs might not hatch but 15 days later, I found this one morning when I looked inside. 

Fortunately the week ahead is supposed to be mild. In the past, we've gotten some heat waves hot enough to kill the bluebird hatchlings before they could fledge and July is normally our hottest month so it still may be a bit iffy if the next 21 days will be cool enough for them to grow and fledge. But I'm hopeful just the same. I do like seeing bluebirds filling our trees versus the every present sparrows/wrens. I'm not a bird expert so I don't know which I have other than they are small grayish patterned birds. 

Not sure how this will post or if you will hear the music in the background or if it will be restricted due to the music which I'm sure is copyrighted. So I will describe what happened.

I was working in the garage on my coffee table project applying a coat of finish to the top of it when I heard some scraping sounds on the concrete out front. For some reason, two deer were walking across my front lawn, down my driveway and across the street into the neighbor's side yard. Since I have one hand gloved and covered in finish gel, I had to cross body grab my phone out of my pocket with my left (non-dominate) hand and get the video app up and recording. It also explains why it is shaking a bit and why Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" was blasting in the background. I suppose I could throw the video into my editing software, strip the sound out of it and put some other more appropriate sound in it but it seems like too much work to do right this minute so I won't. Hopefully this video will be posted while I am away on vacation and you can get a wildlife fix.