First Day of Spring

It is March 20, the first full day of spring, but it is by far the coldest day we have had for some time.  However, it has been very warm over the past several weeks, including up to 90 F earlier this week.

We have seen a range of animals in the yard over the past few weeks. There are the usual large numbers of birds that frequent the bird feeders, but there have been other unexpected sightings as well.

Early Easter Bunny.  We saw a rabbit (eastern cottontail?) in the yard several days ago.  There are two of them that frequent the neighborhood.  I have seen them several times in the front yard when I pick up the paper before sunrise.  They are also often in the alley when I leave for work before sunrise or when we come back from dinner if it is after dark.  They also frequently set off the motion detector early in the morning on the light over the driveway.  However, this is the first time we have seen either of them during the daytime this year.

Bunny in the backyard

Cooper's Hawk.  One day in late February, we heard a tremendous commotion from the blue jays outside our bathroom window.  We looked out to see this fellow.  The picture is not great, but not bad considering I took it quickly with my cell phone through the slats in the blinds before he took off.

Cooper's Hawk in yaupon outside our bathroom

He is small by hawk standards, but still huge compared to most of the birds in the yard.  According to our bird books, he was either a Cooper's Hawk or a Sharp-shinned Hawk.  In searching online to differentiate between the two, I stumbled onto the DFW Urban Wildlife site, including the associated DFW Wildlife Group on Facebook.  Looking at these sites has been a real joy.  The photography is magnificent and most of the locations are in places we are familiar with from hiking or geocaching.  The folks on that site indicated this was a Cooper's Hawk, so a Cooper's Hawk it is.  It is a beautiful bird but unfortunately, unlike some hawks that prey on rats and mice, it preys on the other birds in the neighborhood.

Texas spiny lizard.  Early in March I noticed some insulation that had fallen onto the stove top from around the range hood.  This had happened once before when a lizard had made his way through a crack along the wall from the attic but could not get traction on the glass backsplash and fell onto the range top.  I looked around to see if this had happened again and sure enough there was a Texas spiny lizard sitting on the floor beside the cat bowls.  I put a shoebox over him and then escorted him outside.  I don't mind having him around because he probably eats lots of insects, but I do not want him in the house. 

The Texas spiny lizard feeling a bit stunned after being escorted outside. 

Lizard trying to hide on the garden hose

Close-up of the Texas spiny lizard.  From this it is easy to see how it got its name.

He may still be looking for a new home.  When the brickmason rebuilt the brick mailbox at the curb this summer there was evidence of a lizard nest of some type in the hollow interior. 

Old mailbox--note lizard access portal near the base

Egg shells (lizard eggs?) from inside the old mailbox

 
It was probably a relatively warm place inside that mass of bricks.  Needless to say, the new mailbox no longer has easy lizard access.

Carolina wrens building their nest.  Last year a pair of Carolina wrens built a nest in the house outside the bathroom at the end of March.  Fortunately the bird house was in place because the very warm weather had them thinking about nest building much earlier this year.  I first saw them carrying nest materials into the house on March 4.  Below is a video of their nest building efforts.  As always, set to full screen to better see the birds and yes, there is audio.

Hopefully we will be seeing evidence of baby birds soon. Incubation is normally 12-14 days, so it could be anytime now.

White-winged doves.  Finally, there was a pair of white-winged doves building a nest in the yaupon further up in the yaupon outside our bathroom (cropped out of the video shots above) at the same time the wrens were working on their nest in the house below.  They spent several days working on it, then one of them sat on it for a day or two.  Like most dove nests it was just a haphazard small pile of sticks.  It wasn't clear from looking at the nest from below how it could hold eggs.  The next day I noticed the doves were gone.  After not seeing them around for the entire day, I did some more investigating and noticed a broken egg shell on the ground below the nest.  I don 't know whether it was the nest or the wind storm, but obviously things did not work out.