Oh Frabjous Day!

I was outside in the vegetable garden, half-heartedly weeding after planting some arugula (rocket) seeds, when I heard a bird singing that I didn't recognize. I looked up to find the source of the sound and it was the male bluebird! Some of you will remember that for the first time ever, last summer, we had a bluebird pair that nested in a box they found sitting on a shelf outside our garden shed amongst various flowerpots. It was an actual bluebird box, so they weren't wrong about it, but it wasn't mounted on a proper pole with the intent of attracting bluebirds - although it once had been to absolutely no effect, for years. They found it and used it and raised two sets of young. And treated me to the opportunity of documenting some of it. There had been to this point no sign of them this year, so I was thinking last year was going to prove to have been a one off.

But.

The Husband had - meanwhile - put up on one of the corner posts of the vegetable garden fence a tier of a purple martin house that he had found in a dumpster. He made it a floor and a fancy top for its roof. It has something like six apartments. He asked me when a bird would start nesting in it and I said he was unlikely to attract purple martins - although I suppose it wouldn't be impossible - but that maybe a Carolina wren would think it looked like a good spot. Well! I did not expect BLUEBIRDS to decide to nest in it. It's not a certainty yet, but Mr. Bluebird was definitely going in and out of all the rooms, bearing nesting material even. And Mrs. Bluebird was down on the fence looking up at him. I am mostly intrigued to see if he can settle his confusion about exactly which apartment to settle on as THE perfect home. The extras are him looking at some of the various options.

Now The Husband is going to have to put up a baffle around that post to stop snakes...