Late Spring Cleaning

The tufted titmouse that was nesting in the bluebird box has fledged its younster(s), so I decided to clean out the box in the hopes of getting another pair of birds in the box.

Here's what it looked like before I removed the nest.

There was even a strip of clear plastic you can see hanging out from the bottom of the nest. Here you can see a lot of white animal hair woven into the top. I regularly release the hair from brushing Luther and Waldo outdoors, but neither has white hair. I wonder if this was from a skunk.

A house wren has settled into the other nest box and has been feeding its voracious young for weeks. 

Today is the kind of murky, dank day when I feel like doing nothing. The humidity's high, the air's not moving and the sky is sunless. It's hard to work up enthusiasm for gardening on this kind of day.

Here's the kind of delicious salad I've been eating these days. I used plentiful salad greens from my garden with strips of teriyaki chicken, a chopped hard-boiled egg, toasted sunflower seeds, tomato and cucumber. Yum.