Wrens, Turtles, Ducks and Bulldozers

     My yard has quite a few wrens and one family is occupying a birdhouse.  I have a feeder filled with dried meal worms to the delight of the wrens and catbirds. So yesterday when I mowed the lawn, I had the garage door up. Two of wrens flew into the garage. They kept perching up high and they would not fly out. I was chasing them around for a while but then I gave up and they stayed in there until about 7.  They finally figured it out that they had to fly lower to get out of the doorway. It must be instinctive to fly up higher than to fly lower.  What a relief! Are these house wrens or Carolina wrens?
 

     Also we have a pond not far from my house and there were about twelve ducks (first photo below) but in recent weeks they have been leaving the pond on rainy days and cars have killed all but four.  Looks like two domesticated white ducks, a mallard and some weird looking cross breed with a long neck.  The  lady with the pond says that she does not own the ducks nor does she feed them.  She said they are afraid to stay at the pond because an owl got a few of them while in the water so they are nervous when they are in the water.  If they come through my yard I feed them bread and they seem to make a daily trip down the road.  Yesterday after being only four ducks for many days they must have had two other semi-wild ducks join up.  I did not get a photo of one that must be a black duck.  It is smaller than a mallard and it has gleaming blue-black feathers.  So now the wild ducks are taking up a life of waddling around and walking into neighborhood garages. 

   Also found a box turtle and normally when I do, I open a can of cat food for a treat. One whiff of that stuff and the turtle loses all will power to stay inside his shell and starts to chow down.  With the promised development it probably will soon be a thing of the past to have visiting box turtles.

   They are hard at work using those large road building tractors in the development behind my house.  For five days they have been skimming off soil from the high places and then filling in and grading other plots of ground.  It is still sickening to me to see this beautiful pristine pine lands developed.  If the lots were large and well wooded I think I could tolerate it better but the frontage of the homes will be half the size of mine.  Again I will have to say how much I hate the idea of a terrace which allows people to drive not only by my front yard and side yard but also in my back yard, too.  I would rather be up against someone's junked up yard that to have snoopy people driving in the back of my house on the dirt terrace.  There's no privacy at all!