The Birds & The Bees

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Baby Blue Grosbeak took his first flight out of the black bamboo and fluttered over to a sunflower. Daddy Blue Grosbeak hopped around near where baby had flown concerned about the paparazzo sneaking up on Baby Blue. Mama Blue Grosbeak fluttered around in the bamboo, but would not come out into the open. I got up close to Baby Blue, got some photos before he flew off into our giant Dr. Huey rose bush that made  his papa and mama very happy.

The temperatures on Saturday and Sunday were much cooler, only getting up to 80º F, so the birds and the bees were actively foraging on our abundance of plants that are either in bloom or going to seed.

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In The Heat, A Battle

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Laurie pointed out that there was a bluebird in the bamboo being attacked by a hummingbird — by the time I got outside with my camera, the bluebird was standing its ground atop the pear tree next to the bamboo. I did get one shot of the hummingbird confronting the bluebird.

So much for 105 @ 5:00. Our weather station reported a wind chill of 111º F (43.9º C) at 3:47 pm yesterday afternoon, about the time the birds were battling (see the last photo).

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All Tired Out

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I got a flat tire on the truck, put on the spare and drove the flat tire to Discount Tires to see if they could repair it. Even though the tire didn’t have much wear, it was over 10 years old, so he said by law he couldn’t touch it. A guy from the Midas shop next door walked by and said, I think I have some used tires that will fit. He didn’t have any 225/15s, but he had a pair 235/15s, which are a bit bigger. For $30 he mounted and balanced the two 235/15 tires, and put them on the back of the truck, and then he out the two better tires of the 3 remaining originals on the front. That was quite a deal, since the lowest price set of four new tires for the truck would run about $400, and since I don’t drive the truck very often, I didn’t want to put a new set of tires on it right now.

After a morning run and repairing one of the drip systems this morning, to getting tires replaced, loading and unloading my other large snake cage and a bunch of stuff out of Tristan’s garage, I’m all tired out. While making my evening rounds with the camera, I noticed that the white lilies, Rosencrantz and a hummingbird where tired out as well.

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Rain Smuggler

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Don’t tell anyone, but I did sneak a little bit of rain past customs. It’s a piddling amount, just enough to turn the dust on the cars into muddy drops, but it’s rain all the same. When I went out to photograph the clouds, a hummingbird hovered at what it thought was a safe distance from my lens, but even in the low light of overcast skies at dusk, I got a clear shot of it hovering in front of clouds. A crow flew through my photo of the backlit clouds, and as it flew over me I could see it had something in its beak, but it was so strongly silhouetted against the clouds, I couldn’t see what it had.

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