The Gems

An update on our latest front yard drama; Octomom decided to deposit another egg in her nest to make this her third batch of twins:



She also really didn't care for me snapping shots of her with the camera, so I left her alone for the last weeks of June. During which time these little darlings hatched:



Like their many sibs before them, the babies are very quiet and never utter a peep. Their mom leaves them alone for only short periods of time so I had to be quick and take these pics when she left one morning to grab breakfast.



This nest is in a tricky position, so in order not to disturb them I've stopped watering the plant. It may not survive this time, but one look at these little faces makes it worth losing one sweet potato vine.



Because they're so identical I've named them Castor and Polydeuces. Cute, yes?

Twins Update

It's only been a week since we took a peek at Mama mourning dove's twins, Liu and Xiaobo, but they have since more than doubled in size (click on any image to see larger version):



Their Mama has been nice enough not to attack any of our infrequent visitors, while the twins have been very quiet and well-behaved.



Judging by past experiences, I'd say we only have another week to go before they're old enough to fly.



I'll miss them, but we already have another feathered family moving in -- and this one decided to take advantage of our most popular pre-fab nesting spot:

Blessings

As many of you know, our blogpal author Nadia Lee lives in Japan. I've been in touch with her via e-mail, and I am quite happy and relieved to report that she and her family are okay. She's also just posted more details about the situation there in an update on her blog.

This morning I finally got a clear shot of the mourning dove who decided to nest in one of my poinsettias (click on any image to see larger version):



Naturally while she was in the tree we decided to take a peek in the nest and see how her eggs are doing. Only they're no longer eggs:



I'll guess they hatched sometime late yesterday or last night, as they are tiny and still a bit egg-shaped:



Now we just need to explain (again) to our UPS guy why we'd like him to leave our packages by the garage door for the next three weeks.



My thanks to the Powers That Be for providing so many blessings this week.

A Belated Christmas Gift

Before I get to today's post, I asked the magic hat to give me five winners for the Cat Magic giveaway, and they are:

Trisha, who favors the kittens, writes about mice and has us all very intrigued with this mention of the turkey

Charmaine Clancy, who knows exactly how spooky cats can be (a rattling doorknob would freak me out)

Margaret Claire, whose cat-loving sister should give her a big hug right now

bluebamboo, who in addition to loving the usual suspects wants an alpaca story (me, too -- will someone write this book, please)

Digillette, who reads, writes and converses with cats

Winners, when you have a chance please send your full name and ship-to address to LynnViehl@aol.com so I can send these books out to you. My thanks to everyone for joining in.

Onto the post:

This past Christmas my guy gave me some baskets of pointsettias to hang out on the front porch, which I hadn't taken down yet because I love the way they look (they also survived every cold snap and freeze we've had since December.) But lately they've been looking a bit droopy and sparse, so over the weekend I went out to finally take them down:



As soon as I touched the basket a little mourning dove flew out at my head and then went to perch in the tree nearby. I suspected at once why she was giving me the evil eye, but took down the basket to be sure. And sure enough, just like last year:



She's a few months early this time, but not like I can do anything about it now. Thus we will start off Spring with a little leftover Christmas to give Mama the time she needs for the twins.

Getting Big

Sweetie's twins, Meriden and Dansant, are growing up really fast. They've almost doubled in size in five days:



The sweet potato vine is definitely worse for wear, but we've only been refilling the water globes about once a week to keep from disturbing the nest too much:



Judging by how quickly Stubborn Thing's twins went solo back in May, I think these will probably be the last close shots I get.



Baby birds are just so freaking cool.

Two Sweet

We took down the hanging plant this morning to refill the watering globes and discovered that Sweetie's twins have hatched:



Judging by their size I'd say they're only a couple of days old.



We can't tell the genders, but since they were born during my release week for Dreamveil we're calling them Meriden and Dansant.

Splendor in the Grass

'Tis the season for butterflies here at Casa PBW, and I've been trying to take pics of them all week. They're faster than me (so are snails, for that matter) but I did manage to snap a shot of what I think was a big, gothic black swallowtail in one of the flower hedges just the other day.

While I was out walking Cole today, I saw a flutter of dark wings in the grass under one of the trees in the front yard. Fortunately I had the camera in my pocket and took this:



This swallowtail didn't appear to be shaped right; it looked as if it had too many wings, or had somehow gotten torn up. The pup thinks butterflies are snack food, so I took him inside before I came back out to see if the swallowtail was hurt or emerging from a cocoon that had fallen out of the tree or something.

Yes. I triage butterflies. Sue me.

It was still there in the exact same spot when I returned. Or, rather, they were:



I'll give you three guesses what they're doing. If you don't get it right in three, you have to go and watch this video.



As for the title of this post, well, I thought it was more romantic than Butterfly Porn. But seriously, is this why they call them swallowtails?