Bayberries on branch I’ve recently noticed all the bayberries on the bayberry shrubbery in our back yard and it has been luring me into an experimental mode. So today I picked about 3/4 cup of the tiny blue berries and I have been picking out the tiny stems. I read up on making bayberry wax on several web pages and learned that bayberry wax is very expensive because it is such a time consuming process to make it. I am a
The babies are gone. I havn’t seen the adult Bluebirds for two days now so I took the chance and peeked into the box. There was only one egg and no babies. There are two tiny round pink blobs in the nest, not much bigger than the head of a pin. I wonder if that could be part of the remains of the other egg that I thought didn’t hatch. This is strange to me. I am so sad that I
Eleven days and still growing This picture was taken on July 1 when the babies were eleven days old. You can see the wing and tail feathers getting longer and very blue. They have wide beaks when they are young to make it easier for the parents to feed them. (OOOPS! I should have re-read my bluebird book before taking this last peek. I wasn’t supposed to peek after the 13th day. I hope I haven’t messed up here. Fortunately the birds
The second baby bluebird hatched on June 22 which is unusual. Normally bluebirds don’t start incubating the eggs until all are laid so the babies will all hatch on the same day. Since South Carolina had some extremely hot weather about the time the Mama bird was laying eggs, I suspect incubation began immediately without the parent birds sitting on the nest. That would cause the eggs to hatch one a day because they are laid one a day.
The baby bluebirds are hatching today. This is the first one. I want to go out and peek again, but I don’t want to risk causing problems. I know I’m missing a lot of chances to get some good pictures. This baby held its head up with its beak open but I wasn’t fast enough to get the picture that way. I’ll probably go back out a little later today and take a chance on it. It is so
