... to clean out your bluebird boxes. Cleaned out the two I have in my yard today, and both were full of last year's nesting materials. One house was used three times, twice by a pair of tree swallows early in the season and contained five failed eggs from the first attempt, more nesting material added and that second nest contained three failed eggs. And on top of that a third nest was built by bluebirds. I watched four youngsters fledge from this box in mid-August last year. I had seen the tree swallow pair early in the season, but had no idea they'd had two failed attempts. Surprised that the bluebirds nested on top of those failed nests.
The second box contained nesting material from tree swallows before mice moved in for the winter. They were evicted today, and I left the face off of the house until the weekend when I'll put it back, just so the mice don't attempt to re-build.
--
It's not
by chance that the dark center of human eye, the pupil, is actually an
empty hole through which the world becomes known to us. Likewise, in a
spiritual sense, the I is the empty center through which we see
everything. It's revealing that such a threshold is called the pupil,
for it is only when we are emptied of all noise and dreams of ego that
we become truly teachable. -Mark Nepo
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