At the entrance to my subdivision, there is a short street that intersects with mine. There are only two houses along this street and they each have massive live oaks in the front yards. One of them has a tiny (about six foot) Bradford Pear tree growing next to an oak.

For several weekends, when I am arriving home at about 730 am, there is an army of squirrels in that yard. Really. One morning I slowed down to count and there were fourteen of them, all hanging out, snarfing up acorns. As I drive closer to the stop sign, they all take off, as squirrels are wont to do.

Fourteen squirrels scrambling up the branches of that poor little pear tree to leap into the more substantial arms of the oak. Sometimes there is a back-up and all the little squirrels are left clinging and swaying on sagging limbs, waiting their moment to escape danger.

It makes me laugh everytime I see it.

A very large squirrel nest appeared in my oak tree last week. I guess so many of the pines were murdered, I mean cut down to preserve the profit margins of insurance companies, that the squirrels are moving to the oaks.

I want to buy some bluebird houses this week. When I moved here, there was quite a large family of them (about five or six) that I would see rather frequently. Since then only a few random sightings. This morning, gazing out my back window, I saw one lonely little male just sitting in the middle of the lawn. Maybe if I help him out with some shelter, he can get a gal and start raising up little blue babies.

I know that starlings and sparrows will take over bluebird nests. We have some migrating starlings, but I don't see them on a year round basis. We do, however, have the noisiest, rudest, eating-me-out-of-house-and-home flock of sparrows living in my gardenia plant and I don't care to have them take over. I read somewhere that sparrows don't like rectangular entrances or shallow boxes. So I shall see what I can find.