The most common birds at our birdbaths are the grackles.
The used to be very abundant and it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen or more at a time at our birdbaths. However, since hurricane Hannah came through here several years ago the population has yet to recover.
Border Patrol in the green space.
Common to see them back there, but it is somewhat unusual to see them walking together in pairs.
Even with five birdbaths in the garden area it can sometimes get crowded.
Thirsty birds on these hot days.
The remains of the Poinciana tree in our backyard. I had planned on cutting off the remaining branches off this week.
While pulling weeds I saw movement in the tree that definitely wasn’t a bird.
It was a Texas Spiny Lizard, and a big one at that. We have quite a few smaller ones that we regularly see on the ground in both the front and back, but this one is the largest one. A few years ago we had one we named Lizzy. We would always talk to it when we saw it and never tried to scare it. After a while it never even froze or scurried away when it saw us. Sitting out back in our lawn chairs it would walk all around us. We were sorry when it disappeared, never to return. The tree is going to have to go, but for the time being it has a brief reprieve. These lizards don’t live in trees, rather their home is a hole in the ground, but they do like to spend time up high. Lucky lizard, temporarily lucky tree.
I can’t believe I didn’t connect the condensate tray outlet to the drain hose when I reassembled the air conditioner. It took a while but eventually there was water dripping from the bottom of the unit. When I removed the cover this is what we saw. I know at one time when I was reassembling the unit I had the outlet and the hose joined. I guess they weren’t locked in place and separated when I was trying to get the condensate tray to snap into place.
Image taken after reassembly, but before placing the cover back on. This time there was no leak. One of the YouTube videos had the comment that the more times you disassemble and reassemble the unit the easier it gets. I can absolutely verify the veracity of that statement. I probably took more time taking photos and video than it took to do the disassembly and reassembly.
