Spring is here – we have lots of things starting to bloom at my house.  The Daffodils have come and gone already, the azaleas are blooming now, the cherry trees are blooming and the hostas are popping quickly out of the ground.  And the birds are here and busy finding homes to build their nests and lay eggs.  So it’s time to start posting about the birds in my yard.  This year I have 5 birdhouses – 3 I have had for a long time, one is the woodpecker house which was up last year but no nesters, and the last one is a window house – it is attached to one of our windows so you can see from the inside – I got it late in the season last year – we’ll see if anyone is interested in it – I’m not sure it is in a very good spot so I may need to move it.

Chickadee 3-7

So you may be wondering about my post title – or maybe not – Bird House Wars – it seems every year the chickadees and the bluebirds want to use the same bird house.  And this year is no different.  The chickadees started early in March and worked on a nest in House #2.  It seems that once they build a nest they go on vacation and leave it alone for about a week. The bluebirds seem to do the same thing – I’m not sure if it is really true or just that I don’t see the activity because it slowed down once the nest was built.

chickadee nest 3-11

Anyway the chickadees built themselves a nest.  They use moss, a little bit of straw and then they line it with fur.   I’m not sure whose dog is missing some fur but there are a lot around and they have grabbed white and brown fur this year.

But then I noticed the bluebirds checking out House #2.  This is common – I’m not sure why they like this house so much better – it’s right by the driveway so you would think that it would be less desirable because the cars and activity on the driveway.

The bluebirds decide to unbuild the chickadee nest – they want to take out all the fur.  They spent a couple of days trying to do this and the chickadees would bring it back in. You can see in the pictures the bluebirds are pulling stuff out of the house.  If you look in the hole to the house you can see all the nesting material pulled up.

bluebirds on 3-14 taking stuff out of the house

bluebird 3-14

The chickadees did not give up though – they would put everything back in after the bluebirds took it out.

chickadee 3-14

And in the end it seems the chickadee won this year and is staying in house #2.  The bluebirds have now started looking at house #3 – I’m not sure they are convinced that is where they want to be though.  They took a peek in house #1 also. I’ll keep you posted if I see any more nest building going on and I’ll keep tabs on the chickadees to see when they start laying eggs.

We also had a visitor to the yard on Friday night.  I let the dogs out around 11 and they took off toward the fence and started barking – oh no what is out there I wonder.  I go running out to see and it is a opossum up on the rail.  He starts waddling (they don’t run and they aren’t fast) along the fence and the dogs are barking and jumping and I’m trying to grab them.  The opossum stops to lean over and I think he is going to bite them or me or fall – none of which seem like good things.  I’m still trying to catch the dogs and he continues to waddle – it the timing of the jumps and the opossom leaning over had been just right we would have had trouble.  Finally he made it all the way to the back corner of the yard and moved on to the neighbors fence.  The dogs continued to bark and I continued to try to grab them – not an easy task when they don’t want to be grabbed.  In all that time I thought why isn’t someone coming out here to help me – finally Ryan came and rounded up Magnolia, while I finally got Aspen.  And Greg was inside – he had no clue there was anything going on.  That was our Friday night adventure.