(Singing) Spotted Towhee

Spring really is in full swing right now! More and more fruit trees are flowering, I see lots of birds flying around with nesting materials and they're singing all day long!

                                                             

I found this little blue egg, I suspect it's a Red Robin's:



It either fell out of the nest or one of the many Blue Jays that are around got a tasty little snack ...

It's definitely not this Chikadee's, theirs are much smaller!

            

The blue one on the left is the Robin egg, the tiny creamy white with little brown dots on the right is the Chickadee's.

I'd been on the lookout for Trout Lilies and as usually they snuck(sneaked?) up on me, despite me looking!
Our landlords have a whole bunch of them growing under the oaks (they like shade) next to their house.

That's the lilies on the left of course and the small blue Iris on the right is called Northern Blue Flag, a native of Oregon.

James has worked on installing his office's electric. For such a small building it sure takes a lot of wire!
I guess an office with it's computers, printers, shredder, battery back-ups, lights etc. etc needs a lot of outlets ..

I helped putting the second (and last) layer of paint on the outside. I did the 'cutting' and James did the rest with a big roller.

         

 
I was eager to get the thing painted because I wanted to hang my recently acquired 'Bee-hotel' on its south-east wall!
Although I played around for a while with the idea of getting honey-bees I've decided against them after all. It's quite a complicated endeavor and a lot of work, so I've opted for Mason and Leaf Cutter bees (aka orchard bees) instead.
They won't give you any honey but besides masters of pollinating, they're not aggressive at all and they don't need/use a hive!

Instead they use naturally occurring gaps such as between cracks in stones or other small dark cavities to build their nests or you can provide them with little nesting boxes or things like bamboo tubes/tunnels.

       

I choose this ingenious little 'house' made by Rivajam, that has pre-drilled nesting tunnels covered with a plexy glass viewing panel, so you can safely watch the bee's life cycle.
One side is sized for the common Mason Bee, and the other side is most suitable for smaller native bees like the Leaf Cutter Bee.

How fun is that?

Female bees will lay eggs in the tunnels which they separate from each other with mud, hence the name mason-bee.
Here's a little more about their life-cycle etc. : https://crownbees.com/pages/mason-bee-life-cycle
I was contemplating buying some cocoons to get a head start, but after placing the house on the grill outside, while getting the tools and a few screws to hang it, there was already a bee crawling in one of the openings when I came back! So cool!

While I was working on all that I suddenly noticed a strange little 'bulb' hanging from the underside of our awning:

                                                    
        

                                                                          

I'm afraid this is the start of a Bald-faced Hornet nest and they are not the friendliest of wasps around. They are aggressive and have very painful stingers, so I'm going to remove it before it'll get much bigger. Sorry guys ..

Other than that I've been on a bread-baking spree lately. Having read about the health benefits of sourdough bread (although it has comparable nutrients, the lower Phytate levels mean it is more digestible and nutritious. The pre-biotics also help to keep your gut bacteria happy, and it may be less likely to spike blood sugar levels) I'm baking more and more things 'sourdough' instead of 'normal' wheat breads.
This week I made a sourdough sandwich bread which came out pretty good:

And since we were out of English Muffins, which we eat on a regular base, I made the sourdough version of those as well.
This one was my first try-out, and since all went well I continued to make 10 of them:

                                                          

Not bad, if I say so myself .. a good 'crumb' and a nice 'tang' to them !

OK, that's all she wrote. It's 7.30 pm and it's still light ouside.

What a difference a few weeks make!