My New Neigh-bors

When I got up this morning I discovered these two next door:

New Neigh-bors

They are now sharing the yard with the neighbors’ pet goat. Country in the City! We are only one block away from the main street in town. Wonder if I can get their “leavings” for my gardens?

A Bed Of Roses

As I have posted in the past, Mr. M and I feel as though we are simply tenants of a property possessed by a family of hummingbirds. They are truly fearless! Recently, we noticed a lot of hummingbird activity in the area where we have our standard roses planted. The trees line a sidewalk that leads to our front door. The walk runs parallel to the deck in front of our house.

Here’s a photo of where we park our car with the roses next to it:

Here is the proximity of our rose "trees" to our usual parking spot

Recently when we walked down the sidewalk to go retrieve our mail, a hummer flew out of this rose tree:

Notice how close the rose grows to our parking spot. We back it out for passengers to get in.

This prompted a closer look and here is what we discovered right in the center of the rose tree:

A surprise right in the center!

Now it has been a couple of weeks and here is a shot of the two healthy babies. No wonder they think they own to place! Generation after generation are hatched and remain to live here.

No room for Mama!

They won’t be in the nest much longer but have been fun to watch from close up! The hummers are so brave we can even cut roses from the bush without causing any problems.

Surprise Visitors

Today we had some surprise visitors, a pair of hooded orioles. They spent some time cleaning insects off of a guava tree in my garden. I tried to get a photo of them but they were far too busy to pose for me! Although I enjoyed watching their antics, one of our resident hummingbirds did not.

First, she moved onto the topmost branch of the guava, apparently to see what was going on. Then she spent a few minutes flitting to the nearby lime tree to feed on the blossoms. Back and forth she went, watching then feeding. I could hear her squeaky objections to the pair in the guava tree.

Finally, she had enough. She flew about twenty feet into the air above the guava tree, then straight down to dive bomb the intruders! She tried about three times, when either they were finished with their task or actually intimidated by the brave little hummer. Off they flew, across the street, and the little hummingbird went back to sipping the nectar from the lime tree.

I am convinced that hummingbirds are fearless. I have had one come right up face to face with me, only about a foot away. I also discovered a mother on her nest one day when I was just about done pruning the apricot tree she was nesting in. She had bravely sat there the entire time I shaped up the tree! Regretfully, these photos are not the best but I hope you enjoy them, anyway:

Really, it IS a hooded oriole

Brave little hummer