In the Yard

More from the Blue Jays

Rae Spencer7 Comments

Nest complete, the blue jays spend hours on end in the wax myrtles. They defend their honeymoon suite with harsh calls and indignant attacks–innocent warblers fare no better than foraging crows. Rabbits aren’t allowed to graze in the yard, and the merest quiver of a squirrel whisker raises apocalyptic alarm.

Between these bouts of aggression, the lovers perch together and mumble softly to each other. They feed each other, public displays of “affection” that make me wonder about their behavioral chemistries. How does a body cope with such abrupt changes? They interrupt bonding with outbreaks of tumultuous fury, then switch back to bonding, over and over again in the course of a day. In the span of a minute, sometimes. The physiologic stress must be enormous, and yet it seems to work for them. How?

Pollen and Spring Storms

Rae Spencer7 Comments

I’ve had my windows open most of the day, which means every surface in my house is coated with a thick yellow layer of pollen. The weather radar is turning yellow, too, with bright splashes of red…

April 3, 2012

Rae Spencer6 Comments

It’s a daisy and maple kind of day.

With a few thorns, of course. No day is complete without thorns.

Blue Jay Nests

Rae Spencer4 Comments

As a child, I both loved and dreaded blue jays. Beautiful and fierce, they are a permanent fixture in my summer memories. (See this poem.)

Last year, a pair of blue jays nested in our wax myrtle. They built on the far side of our fence, right over the sidewalk. It was a precarious choice, and I wasn’t too surprised when the nest failed.

Today, a new nest is taking shape. This time they chose the neighbor’s pear tree, a safer and more defensible position. They are using twigs from our wax myrtle, which makes for some fun photos, but I’m content to have them in someone else’s yard. They are, after all, quarrelsome birds.

Okay, that part about being content is a lie. I’m jealous. Maybe the babies will spend some time in our yard, as they learn to fly…

Blue Dasher Dragonflies

Rae Spencer10 Comments

In my dragonfly archives, I have more pictures of blue dashers than any other species. (At least, I believe so. As noted in a previous post, dragonfly identification is a tough study, for me.)  While I can’t claim absolute confidence, I’m reasonably certain that all of these are blue dashers.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Please correct me, if I am wrong!