My Family Loves It

We have been very lucky that our robins came back and our 2nd batch of chicks were born on Father’s Day. I haven’t even blogged about it until today and only took pictures once! We enjoy them every time we are in the dining room though and they are unfortunately starting to look close to [...]

A few years ago I decided to make our backyard be a little more nature friendly. We don’t use any chemicals, we’ve put up bird houses, and I created a branch pile in an out of the way spot for critters to call home. I have also kept a pile of scrapwood by [...]

Today we went on a pond walk with a local nature center and the kids had fun but it would have been a lot nicer if it were 10 degrees cooler. Its been too hot and humid without enough warning for me! Everyone who went used a net to collect pond life and then we [...]

One by one the baby Robins left the nest yesterday. I guess I was right that they were getting big but I was hoping for a few more days with them. The kids aren’t sad though, they are talking about when the parents will come back and have another batch of babies. I think Robins [...]

I think our Robin babies will soon be leaving the nest, they are getting pretty big and are much more alert. Here they are at 8 days old all snuggled into their nest (I think this is the best picture I’ve gotten of them):
This is yesterday’s picture at 13 days old. I didn’t want [...]

We have been keeping an eye on our Robin family as they grow and when the parents fly away we’ve ran out a few times to get some up close pictures. Here is the day that the first 2 babies hatched (the 3rd one hatched a day later):
We have a great close [...]

Our favorite backyard snake made an appearance yesterday.

I tried to get a full body shot of him so you can see his girth and his stubby tail. Unfortunately, Spikey was not very cooperative and took off for the safety of the woodpile.

What a fitting unplugged project for us this week! We have had our baby chicks for almost a week now and they are certainly a project but we’ve had quite a few other bird encounters as well.
If you haven’t been at our blog to see the chick posts you really should scroll on down and [...]

Here are two free bird house plans I found when looking ideas for our bird house project. These plans had the best directions and diagrams of the ones I found online. In the end I decided on a book from Amazon because I was looking for more options for different species of birds. [...]

Our beloved backyard garter snake, Spikey, has returned. This is the 3rd Spring we have found Spikey living by our porch, but this year we spotted a skinny little friend with him. They were both skittish, but Spikey stuck his head out to say hello.