I have European Startings nesting in the eave of my roof.  I have not yet nailed on the soffit of my front porch, and thus the starlings have flown up inside there and have begun nest building!  The completion of my porch soffit has just jumped to the top of my priority list.  Starlings were the first birds to nest on my property.  The nested inside my house when we were first building it.  They stained the floor of my upstairs a very deep purple which took my father and I an entire day of sanding to make it look nice.

I have found another plant this spring that I did not find last year.  Verbena stricta.  I collected this seed back in 2004 along an old fence row and didn’t see any of it last year.  I know, I keep saying this, but it’s true.  It makes me wonder how much of the seed I through down this spring won’t show up untill next year.  But to me, that’s the exciting part.  Not knowing what will happen, but, I can picture it in my mind.

Verbena stricta is a purple spikey flower that is found in dry areas.  Its cousin, verbena hastata, is found in wet areas.  The verbena hastata that I had found and scattered was in a ditch along route 23 just north of route 34.

This picture was taken of my house back in November 2004.  You can see the big dipper also in this picture.  I was looking through some pictures of my house when I came across some of these with the northern lights, or Aurora Borealis.  I was coming home from work at the time-1:30 am-when I noticed the glow in the sky.  I got home as soon as I could and went outside to get some long exposures with Carrie’s camera.  With only a 30 second exposure, I captured this image.

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The northern lights are caused by solar particles that are expelled during a solar flare.  As these particles travel down the magnetic lines of our planet, they enter our atmosphere.  As these particles collide with the different gases in our atmosphere, they give off light.  The different colors represent the different gases in our atmosphere.  This image has reds and purples, not usually seen in a northern lights display.  There was an excess of solar particles which allowed these other gases to be seen this time.

Today on my lunch break, I stopped at Elburn forest preserve in Elburn.  It’s located on route 38 just west of route 47.  The preserve is a very nicely wooded area with a small trail that winds through the woods.

The woods were just full of flowers and birds.  The most abundant flowers were the rue anemone, and the most trilliums I have ever seen!  The forest floor was just covered in these 2 species and alot of other species were just starting to get some blooms as well.  Purple and yellow violets were scattered here and there and Solomon’s seals were getting close to blooming as well.  I was looking for some morels, but found none.  There were downy and red-bellied woodpeckers all over the place.  I even saw a great-horned owl, breifly, as it flew away from me.  There were several warblers, but I was without my binoculars.  This doesn’t happen very often.

The house sparrow that are occupying mine and my parents property are causing lots of problems.  They have built several nests in my parents garage first of all.  The nest of house sparrows are made of long grasses and usually pieces of garbage, like plastic.  Their nesting in the garage is leading to lots of poop being spread both on the floor of the garage and in the upper loft which is unfinished at this time.  They have also just taken over a chipping sparrow’s nest located in a small pine tree.  When a invasive, non-native species, like the house sparrow, pushes our native species out, I must act.

House sparrows were brought to the US from Europe in the 1800’s.  They have now spread all over our country and into Canada.  They are an aggresive species that will destroy eggs of other birds, even kill their chicks, in order for their own chicks to have a better chance at survival.  There are several ways to remove house sparrows.  Non-lethal methods are as simple as taking down their nests.  There are also traps that can be used to catch the birds, the trapped birds can then be killed through drowing.  I know this sounds harsh, but I believe in preserving our native bird species, they have so much to deal with already.  If I can remove an aggresive non-native species which will help them to propogate, I will.  However, I don’t like to kill birds, so I use the nest removal method.