Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Rescue Crows and Other Gardening Friends

The Grackle is a member of the corvid (crow) family.
They are also smart, social, noisy, and aggressive pest eaters.

They also put their baby bird diapers in my rain-barrels.




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Starlings, another member of the crow family, love to splash in the birdbaths.
They prowl the grown and flip over leaves to find insects. They love suet.


The corvids I see most are the Starlings and Grackles. They are also very social but not so wary of man. Crows have suffered from a bad reputation, not entirely deserved, so they react accordingly.

We were lucky one night to see a swarm of crows, hundreds and hundreds of them, picking a roost for the night. Apparently the roosting group can reach hundreds of thousands.


Cardinals
The pair of cardinals nesting in the Crepe Myrle bush (now blooming) is regularly feeding at the backyard platform feeder outside our bedroom window. We sometimes see the male or the female standing in the seeds and munching seed after seed with their powerful beaks.

The Crepe Myrtle is just starting to bloom, so I will have photos soon of it in its glory. I am watering and mulching it for the full effect.

I also see the male cardinal in one part of the front yard. He likes to look for food in the mulched rose garden, but also near the slabs of bark I am using to mulch the two Elephant Ears. The big slabs of bark that fell off two tree stumps are great places for soil creatures to gather some food in the dark dampness of their shelter. They easily attract birds and toads with their movement.



Scientific Theories
Someone asked me today if I were a  determinist or something else in science. I replied, "I am a Creationist, and a Six Twenty-Four Hour Dayist."

I went on to say, "If someone does not believe that God could create the universe in Six Days, he does not believe in the Word of God."