Starlings are a Pain

After withholding suet for a few weeks because of an overload of starlings, I refilled the cage suspended over the back yard this week. The locals were back in no time. A chickadee, female cardinal, house sparrows and of course starlings were at it in no time. There is a male cardinal working it over this morning.
I am watching for the woodpeckers who are my prime targets, and may have startled one away this morning when I opened the shade in the living room (it was too quick for slow me to recognize). What is most interesting is how hard the sparrows work at getting some. They are not physically prepared to hang on a cage and feed, but they want the stuff so badly, they will hold in place with wings a flutter long enough to get a beakful, or dislodge a chunk that they follow to the ground.
The starlings are a pain -- one jumped on the female cardinal on the ground, chasing her away from pieces that fell as another starling attacked the brick.

We had three egrets taking their night's rest on trees east of the pond last night. They were gone at dawn as usual, but a handsome black-crowned night heron accented the view as it perched on a bulkhead watching for prey. The fish are in there -- I have seen several swirls and eddies when they touch the surface and two days ago watched a cormorant sail off with what looked like a small one in its beak.
The mallard pair appeared briefly this week and I spotted the female on the street in front of our house once, but she is in hiding -- no doubt on a nest -- while the male patrols the pond night and day.
Nearly all the trees are leafed out now. We tend to run a little behind the area due to sea breezes and the pond's cooling effect. It has been a cool spring to date with temps not getting out of the 50s during the last couple of days of rain. We should touch 70 today, rising from a morning 51.

The sound of the hammer and claw, trucks and saw echo in the land. Between the gigantic new house at 3A Ct Belton and roofers who arrived today to attack number 4, there are few hours of quiet when the sun is shining of late. This on top of a year of construction at the south end of the pond where an apparently perfectly fine and lately renovated house was yanked down and a new one built. Peace, along with higher real estate valuations, may yet return.

Strange but true

Who would believe the coincidence of the British term "twitcher" and Kazakhstan showing up in one story. I have TWICHR as a license plate and I was in Kazakhstan (!) when a British friend alerted me to this story.

Rare bird sends twitchers on a wild plover chase

ALAMY

The Caspian plover has only been spotted in the UK in two of the 118 years since the first record in 1890

May Flowers

No sooner had the apple blossoms opened across the creek than the first Oriole of the season appeared. It is hanging out several times a day with an ear-piercing cry every few minutes while feeding not more than 15 feet from the kitchen door at deck level. A bright flasher of orange, this is a welcome returnee.
Our resident egrets slipped in number to a worrying zero in mid-April, but they have settled at two a night for the last couple of weeks, and have a black-crowned night heron along most nights.
Today, as the sun had a chance to appear after many days of clouds, a pair of turtles hauled out on the snag that marks the halfway point of the west side of our pond.
Cowbirds are in abundance -- an unusual sight. There is at least one pair that return daily but yesterday seven showed up -- six males and a female. They compete with a couple of redwing blackbirds and two or three grackles in searching for seeds.
This past weekend also marked the return of catbirds. Absent since November, the first two or three are on scene and taking up residence in the usual spot, a stand of brush next to the creek outlet.