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This isn't the greatest quality video because I took it with my phone through the window. But you can still see this baby Carolina Chickadee fledge from the birdhouse on our back deck. He thinks about it a long time before he finally gets up his courage! This was the last chick to fledge this morning. There were at least three more that left the nest before him. My boys and I had a great time watching the whole process. The chicks all made it into the trees and seemed safe. Parents were still feeding them.

The quality of this video isn't great because I took it through a window with my phone. But you can still see a baby chickadee that had just fledged from the birdhouse on our back deck. He was trying to sit on the edge of our dog's water bowl. His mama (or daddy?) is also trying to feed him still. Later he hopped off our deck and managed to get up into the nearby trees. There were at least three other chicks that fledged from the same nest this morning. It was very exciting for my boys and me to watch. We were very surprised to see how they have their full color.

My boys were playing in the backyard, and the way my son tells it, he was standing near our woodpile when he heard a squirrel screaming and a lot of commotion up in a nearby tree. Right after that, the squirrel and a black rat snake fell onto the woodpile and rolled off onto the ground. My six-year-old loves snakes, and he says he wants to study them when he grows up, so this was thrilling for him. He could identify this snake easily. We all watched. It took 2.5 hours for the snake to eat the squirrel and slither out of our yard. You can read my column about it on my blog at www.mamaofletters.com