I'm watching two newly-fledged bluejays chasing their mother around in the bushes opposite my porch at the Rancho. It's a major birdarama around here: bad late spring weather caused everyone to migrate late and start nesting late, but good weather since then means everyone's done well. Purple martins and barn swallows, cardinals, downy woodpeckers (okay, or maybe hairy woodpeckers, I mean seriously, who can tell when they're hopping up a tree?), catbirds, mockingbirds, starlings, goldfinches, red-winged blackbirds, tiny little wrens, all have visible progeny. The egrets, ospreys, geese and swans -- see below -- have all nested and produced, also. And a robin's built a nest outside our kitchen window, which may have seemed like a good idea at the time but right next to it is our back door. She laid her eggs before she discovered that, though, and now all she does is fly into the shrubbery and screech at us whenever we go in and out. Then she hops back in the nest and sits again. We're expecting hatchlings in the next week or so. I won't be here for the next couple of weeks -- Thrillerfest, Comic Con, and then the workshop in Assisi -- and they'll likely be fledged by the time I get back.



Momma Swan has nine (!) cygnets



Poppa Swan doesn't think I need to know any more about it