Common Terns come to our area in the warm weather months to breed.

The tail is forked,

the cap is black

and the bill is red-orange with a black tip:

The feet are orange-red:

MYSTERY BIRD

I will identify it at the end of the post.

Common Terns adapt readily to artificial floating rafts, and even nest on flat factory roofs. This is where I found a colony today near Col. Sam Smith Park.

I was surprised, however, to see how caring the males and females are to each other. After long sessions of sitting on the eggs in the nest, one bird will eagerly greet its mate who is arriving with food.

Birds can also be pretty nasty with each other as these gulls demonstrate:

Other birds:

Tree Swallows appear very blue in colour:

A glance at this bird taking nesting material into a box shows that under the blue, there is a lot of brown:

MYSTERY BIRD

The well-named Common Yellowthroat:

MAILBOX

I am subscribed to a youtuber from Manchester named Kaylee Ellen who owns this fascinating rare plant shop in the UK; she puts out a lot of interesting videos about plant care, etc but I recently found this video she made last year about opening up her plant shop, creating the layout, shopping for inventory, etc and I thought it was really well done – I figured I’d share it with you in case you’re interested. Look at the size of some of these plants!! Incredible.  

I felt this sense of pride – like so incredibly proud of her for achieving this dream of hers and a bonus for getting this amazing content for us viewers. 

NATURE POETRY

Whoever makes a garden
Has never worked alone;
the rain has always found it,
The sun has always known.                      – Douglas Malloch (1877–1938)

Miles Hearn