Outdoor Entertainment

Very little work is getting done in my garden these days. With temperatures soaring into the 90's, and the "feels like" temp over 100...honestly, all I want to do is stay inside.

While I was looking out the window...to see how my plants were holding up...this BIG guy...red-shouldered hawk...dropped by for a visit. Actually, he flew into the window...Yikes! Fortunately, he was only dazed for a moment.

Perhaps he was trying to get out of the heat, too!

In the somewhat cooler...if you can call it that...evening, I ventured out to the dock to check on the baby Blue Herons. For the first time, a nest with 3 baby herons sits atop an old cypress tree approximately 35 feet from our dock. Here they sit waiting for mom to bring home the bacon...in this case some fish.

Here's mom sitting on the shoreline getting a much needed break, but within site of her nest. She's a real beauty! Blue Herons are one of my favorite water birds...they seem prehistoric in nature with their giant wingspan.

The three young'uns are growing bigger week by week. For the last two weeks they've been practicing leaving the nest. They fly back and forth among the tree tops,

and our boat house roof, slowly but surely, growing more comfortable with leaving the nest. We're not sure if they'll hang around our area or find a new spot...either way, we'll miss seeing them sitting high atop their nest.

A new discovery was  made...on the underside of this rotted out remnant of a past branch on the maple tree. You can just barely make out the tail of a woodpecker...it's the triangle-looking shape located between the middle and right piece of Spanish moss. My husband noticed wood chips on the ground at the base of the tree, and started looking around to see where they came from.

And, he discovered the woodpecker had carved out a nesting cavity in this dead section of the tree. Unfortunately, mama or papa woodpecker slipped inside before I could take a photo. Soon we will have little red-headed baby woodpeckers to entertain us. What a blessing to eavesdrop on some of God's beautiful creatures as they busily prepare for and tend to their young.