Hello my friends and welcome to July. We have Veterans Day and Memorial Day and other ways to honor those people that have served to protect our nation. But in July, we have this special day for all of us to celebrate the independence of our great country. We get to celebrate the founding of this country that I am so very fond of. I love our country. I wish you all a happy Independence Day!
My bird friends have been here visiting and bringing food back to the nest for their young. That is until the heat hit us in mid-June then they slowed up a lot. I am still seeing them in the morning and evening, but midday is very slow.
We do have our small watering pond and birdbath that they enjoy quite frequently. One nice advantage of the water is that we now have Red Eyed Vireo from time to time coming in for a drink and bath. It’s nice to add birds in our yard that normally would not show up if the only attraction was food.
I have heard from others that the number of birds that they are seeing has been lower than previous years. I say let’s just keep spraying our lawns and trees and soon we will be saving a lot of money because we will not have to buy any seed. No need to feed what is not here right?
Since 1970 it is estimated that we have lost 3 billion breeding birds. That is more than 1 in every 4 birds gone. This loss has affected all ecosystems, grassland birds are estimated to be down 53 percent. A lot of the reasons for this decrease are from the loss of habitat. Birds need a place to live, find food, rest and raise their young. Also, free roaming cats and pesticides that kill directly but also pesticides used to control insects resulting in less food for the birds.
I had a big bear in after my sunflower seed. It was dark but from what I could see he was a very nice one and about as big around as the seed container. I opened the door and yelled, and he left but stopped to check me out before leaving completely. Then a couple of weeks later we saw one down the road that was around 200 pounds.
Other wild critters have been showing up as we have had a couple Eastern Hog-nosed snakes in the yard. The last one was here while we were watching the grandchildren so of course they had to have a nice long look. Snakes here are safe, we do not harm them. Any help that I can get keeping mice out of the house is fine with me.
That’s all for this month, please help keep our woods and waters clean.
