June 9th, 2022. The dove nest is still empty. It seems like the other birds sure are hatching now.

The other day I checked a barn swallow nest, there were 3 chicks in it. I've been seeing Cardinal chicks, watched one being fed on the porch yesterday. Had 2 out there this morning, if one would move the other one would, they stayed 10 inches apart.

We've been talking about birds for over a year, I don't think that I've mentioned this. Maybe I have? Anyway, there is a sparrow nest in the same bush/vine thing, as the dove nest.

I first noticed a female sparrow hauling in nesting material, while I was checking on the dove nest. I have a double set of windows there, all together it's like 4 feet square. The dove and sparrow nests are about 3 feet apart.

I've told several of my friends, the other morning, almost 2 weeks ago. There was a female sparrow chick on my porch rail, that little bird, across it's breast, was about the size of a pop bottle cap. I mean just a regular plastic pop bottle cap.

We have different breeds of sparrows, our most commone ones, the male sparrows will have a black patch on the top of it's breast. Females don't.

We have another breed of sparrow, they have stripes, almost like the colors of a barred owl.

We haven't talked about our local birds for a while. I started on my forth 5-pound bag of bird food a while back, looks to be about a 2 week supply yet. Now and then I'll give them a slice of bread.

I've got a man working for me, doing little odd jobs, trying to get things squared-up before it gets cold and all. I had an elm tree out back, just past my porch, looked like it's roots were growing under my foundation, so I had him take it down. The tree wasn't that old, but was still 16 inches across the stump. Elm trees are dirty, it made a lot of shade, but the sap dripped all over my porch steps and I'll tell you they would get slick if they were damp.

Anyway, that tree is gone, and I told him while he was out there farting around, to cut the bush/vine thing off of the side of the house. The bush/vine thing that had the sparrow and robin/dove's nest.

I told him before he got started, that there was a dove nest over on this side and a sparrow nest up in that corner. And asked him to try to bring them down intact, if he could.

I remember when the little bush was planted, it was about a foot tall. That thing latched onto the side of the house, climbed up the siding, across my upstairs windows, on up into the rain gutter and was starting around the corner. It was planted about 30 years ago? Forget the name of it, but you don't want one growing up the side of your house!

I had the upstairs remodeled years ago, and my carpenter told me then: You don't ever want a tree or bush growing close to your house. They'll hold moisture, things will mold and rot, end up costing you money down the road. That's good advice. I screwed up, but it won't happen again!

But Tony did a good job removing the bird nests. He took down the sparrow nest first, I'll do my best to describe it. One side of the nest was against the building, and it's really built in the shape of a triangle. One flat side of the triangle is on top, sort of like an upside-down pyramid.

Think about it like this, take your kitchen funnel, hold the bottom part in your hand, and split the top part right down the middle and hold that half agains the wall. It's sort of like a cone.

At the bottom part of the "cone" nest, it's 4 or 5 inches thick? And across the top part of the cone/nest, it's about 14 inches wide, and about 6 inches thick. Maybe 7 inches?

I have no idea how many years that nest has been on the side of the house? But this is my theory, I think the 1st, original nest was at the very bottom, and over the years they just kept adding nesting material. The sparrow nest is very fragile, made of very tiny, very thin, thread sized grass. A couple pieces of plastic, some of that plastic like they make feed sacks with and all. But right on top, there is a little dimple, about the size of your fist, and maybe 2 inches deep?

But the nest is made with thousands and thousands of little tiny pieces. It would be interesting to know?

But the robin/dove nest is pretty neat. I have both nests here at work, there have been quite a few people look at them. Once we get everything squared-up, I am going to try to put them back in the window.

While I have a little bit of free time, I'll try to describe the robin/dove nest.

As far as I know, the original nest was built by a robin. For the past 2 summers, a dove or doves, have used it. All together that nest has been used at least 5 times.

The nest is 4 inches wide across the top and 2.5 inches deep. It's a combination of grass and mud, bird slobers, I'm not sure? It's fairly dense, attached to and built around the bush/vine thing. Honestly, I think it would hold water, not forever, but for a few minutes before it started to drip through.

Hard to describe, but it's like its coated with mud.

If you remember, think it was the summer of 2021? Two eggs rolled out of the nest, almost ready to hatch at the time and didn't survive the fall. The nest is (was) about 18 feet above the ground.

Anyway, the nest was full of dirt and leaf duff. Whatever it was? The nest was nearly full, their eggs were almost flush with the top rim of the nest. That's why they rolled out.

But the nest is clean and as soon as we get the window patched up and clean the windows, I'll try to put it back in place. And we'll see what happens next summer.

If you remember, last spring I started a little experiment trying to grow millet seeds, from my bag of bird food. I'll give you an update on that project. I think it's on page 8 of this thread.

I had a row of red clover, a row alfalfa, and a row of millet. Small seeds only need to be planted 1/4" deep, we had a hard pounding rain a day or so later, and it exposed most of the millet. I remember there was a dove in my planter one day, I think that it found about all of the millet seeds.

Long story short, the clover and alfalfa came up good, grew up to a foot high or so? I only had 2 millet plants that came up, both grew to about 24 to 30 inches tall. Both plants had a seed head, about 4 inches long. It's a different type of seed head than anything that I'd ever seen before. I will guess, each plant produced 50, maybe 75 seeds. Maybe 100?

I might take last years crop of millet and plant it this spring, and see what happens. If half of the seeds come up and grow, if I'd do that for 5 years, I wouldn't need to buy bird food.

I spotted my first robin, I think it was Sunday. There were a bunch of them here this morning.

Also have a pair of doves building a nest in one of my trees out back. I haven't put the window nest back in place yet.

Yeah, saw my first robin last Saturday. I was about an hour south of my digs, so still waiting for a sighting here in the yard. Course they'd still be sucking on wormcicles. And, according to my calendar, Tim, you're having a birthday today. Seems you just had one last year. Hey, you keep this up and you're gonna get old!! Happy birthday anyway!!

Frank.

Thanks, Frank. Yes, 58 this time.

Search: How many days old am I. It'll come up with a calculator, put in your birthdate, and it'll tell you all you need to know.

I'm 21,185 days old, today. Long time if you think about it.

Here's another little topic that we talked about above. Talking about bird feeders drawing mice and all. I'll tell you this real fast.

Heidi from the health dept. stopped by, just before Christmas. She'd finished her inspection, and we were just talking. We started talking about deer, then she asked about the bird nest setting on the shelf. I gave her a rundown an that thing.

I asked Heidi if she had a bird feeder. I'll just tell you, the way she told me: No, I don't. My Grandmother moved in and lived with me, she had bird feeders, a suet block, the whole works. After she passed, I took all of that stuff down. That one summer I killed 4 or 5 little copperheads (snakes) and found another one dead in my basement. I'm sure the big one was there someplace.

I looked under the porch and the bird food was about that thick (showing me about 3" with her hand. I got up under there with a rake and a shovel and hauled it off.

The bird food was drawing in the chipmunks, mice and everything else, and they were drawing in the snakes.

Heidi lives on the mountain west of town, someplace, good deer area. She's told me about seeing deer at her house. I told her to get a salt block.

We haven't talked about birds for a while. I can't say that they are "my" birds or "our" birds, cause they're not. They are wild.

Here in my neighborhood, there have been at least 2 hatches of dove chicks, so far. I think there were 3 chicks, in the one bunch. I had 5 doves out back, that one morning, and 3 of them were just a little bit smaller.

At least one cardinal hatch, I think 2 chicks.

And I think, 2 sparrow hatches, so far. Some of the sparrows are still small enough, I can tell from the feathers on their backs, they are chicks.

I've changed the way I've been feeding. Not sure, maybe I've mentioned this above? A few years ago I bought a set of used outdoor lawn furniture, chairs and a little glass-top table. I didn't need it, just bought it because it was cheap. Anyway, the little table is pretty nice, and that's where I feed the birds. It's about 2 feet X 3 feet long.

I don't feed them very much per day, just a guess I feed them about 1 ounce, by volume per morning. Maybe a little bit more? I have a small measuring cup, when the table is dry, you can hold the cup about 10 inches above the glass and just run a bead of bird food. It'll bounce around and spread out, pretty much cover the table top.

About the most birds that I've ever had on the table at once, a while back there were 3 doves, a cardinal and a dozen or 14 sparrows. Figure in a little spot, not much bigger than your 2-bowl kitchen sink, it's a busy place.

Just looked, had one of those little black and white speckled woodpeckers working on the beef suet. That's rare. That little piece of beef fat has been there for 6 months.

I don't remember the date when I first started to feed the birds? So far I've fed 30 pounds. Stopped at the co-op the other day to get some salt blocks, noticed they had a stack of 40# bags of bird food. I bought one of those, I wrote the date on the bag when I started on it. (Yesterday,) It'll be interesting to see how long that bag of food lasts. It'll be in 2024.

We haven't talked about birds for a while, I wanted to say that I've been seeing flocks of robins. I noticed the first flock in mid-November, with 30 or 40 birds?

The 2nd flock was a little bit bigger, with 50 head or more? One day this week, I found another batch of robins, I'm sure there were over 100 head in that bunch. Before long they will be gone for the season.

I'm still seeing a few doves but not many.

Above we were talking about the robin & dove nest in my window. We finally got the house painted, made a bracket for the nest and put it back in place. It does look odd from outside, I've had several people ask about it. I guess it was after breeding season when we finally got it back in the window, and never had any birds move in.

It's a good solid nest, as soon as I get a chance, think I'll set up the ladder and wrap a plastic bag over it for the winter. About the first of March, take the bag off and be ready for business. But it has been interesting. Watching the chicks grow and take their first flight and all.

I had a low temp of 13* F. the other morning, coldest so far. It's that time of year.

I'll make a note: The robins are back. First sighting, flock of 25 birds, 1/28/24. I did see another flock, 1/31/24, and I've got 1 in the yard today.

Talking about dove, I've been seeing a couple here and there about all winter. I had a dove on my bird food table yesterday morning, and one again this morning. As far as I know, that's the first time I've had a dove on the porch for months.

Anyway, the robin/dove window nest is in place, and ready. We'll see what happens, but I do hope something uses the nest, it is interesting.

We've had some odd weather, like we do every year. The other week I had 6* F. one morning, 3 or 4 days later, we had a high temperature of 70*. Indian Summer, the old folks would say.