Canyon Wrens ready to fledge

And I'll miss it just like I missed the duck eggs hatching in town. The wren nest is so impossible to see inside that I don't know how many nestlings there are, but I see lots of flapping going on inside the nest. At least two babies. The nest isn't above the kitchen door where I thought it was, it's in the far corner of the courtyard above a bat box that bats have never used.

It was dark in the nest and I didn't want to bother to set up a tripod and try for a sharper photo. You can see the head of one nestling and the beak of a second. I think there's at least one more in there.

The adults made food deliveries every few minutes to a lot of squawking every time. One of them would arrive at the patio floor with food, then fly straight up to the nest with it. They were so fast, and I couldn't get into that corner to take photos. But here is one with a spider just before it became baby food. 

Up to the hatches, and down the hatches all day long.

Just because there are millions of Prickly Pear blooms everywhere doesn't mean they're not awesomely beautiful. Some are real yellow like this one.....

And some are a little orange-ish.

Here's a Black-headed Grosbeak... just because. Just because many of the recent visitors really wanted to see one, and the best looks were when no one was here.

Here's a rather unattractive dragonfly nymph shell. ID per my guru Brian.

And I won't mind going to town so much tomorrow. Here duckie, duckie, here duckie, duckie.....