We fed the birds last night and so today was a pretty good birdwatching day. We also used the last of our thistle seed last night and the last of the sunflower seed, so I’m going to start tracking my seed usage and costs to get a handle on that. Also, to share that information with people that are interested in beginning to watch birds. It can get a little expensive sometimes.
Anyways, today was a great day. I got the flower bed alongside the red shed cleaned out. The day lilies are coming up nicely, but I think that I lost my foxglove over the winter. There were a lot of worms in the bed and I loosened up the soil to get ready to plant some annuals. Steve cleaned out the gutters on the house and put up the aerial dog tie out. I think that Quincy is really going to like that. She’ll be able to move about the backyard better.
After we came inside and were cooking dinner, I saw an unusual visitor to the backyard, an Eastern Towhee. He was in the flower bed that I had just cleaned out either finding seeds or insects. He came back several times, going between the red shed flower bed and a brush pile just inside of the tree line. I never saw him do the signature towhee move according to my bird book, the double leg hop or scoot backwards. I have only ever observed this bird one other time here, and that was last spring. Maybe they just migrate through this area and don’t really stay.
We also saw the wounded toad from last night again. We had put him in the flower bed near the red shed last night, but today he was on the side porch. Steve set him down in the dirt by the red shed. I am sure that he is the same toad from last night. We picked him up to make sure because we could see some marks on the side of his body.
It has been raining now all afternoon, so later this evening, Quincy and I will have to go out on a toad hunt. We’ve been hearing lots of calling, but have checked every night and not seen any toads, other than our wounded one. Hopefully, I’ll have more to report later.
