Photos: House Yard

[ysabetwordsmith]

These pictures are from Sunday, but it's after midnight, so the post says Monday.

( Walk with me ... )

Birdfeeding

[ysabetwordsmith]

Today is partly cloudy and warm.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a mourning dove.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I finished trimming along the south end of the forest garden.  I still need to do the outside edge along the patio, before working on the interior.

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I trimmed along the patio side of the forest garden. 

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I started trimming brush in the forest garden.

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I trimmed more brush in the forest garden.

I've seen a fox squirrel.

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I watered the new picnic table garden and the septic garden.

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I watered the patio plants and the old picnic table garden.

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and the savanna seedlings.

EDIT 6/2/25 -- I watered the prairie garden patch.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

Hummingbirds

[ysabetwordsmith]

Backyard feeders changed the shape of hummingbird beaks, scientists say

According to a recent study in Global Change Biology, a journal focused on environmental change, the use and prevalence of hummingbird feeders — like those red and clear plastic ones filled with homemade sugar water — changed the size and shape of the birds' beaks. The range of the hummingbird also spread from the southern part of California all the way up the West coast into Canada.

"Very simplified, the bills get longer and they become more slender, and that helps to have a larger tongue inside that can get more nectar from the feeder at a time," says Alejandro Rico-Guevara, a professor of biology at the University of Washington and senior author on the study.