By Carolyn Henderson
On a quest to take more photos for another iNaturalist on a possible Viper’s Bugloss plant, I discover baby Purple Martins and something else. There is always something new to discover in nature.
There are photos of parents feeding the recently hatched Purple Martins. Plenty of the houses at Mike McCormick’s considerable housing for the birds are occupied with hatchlings and eggs.
McCormick says the majority of them will take flight in mid-June. He also noted that the late male arrivals are fighting the older males for housing. This is apparently common. The debate is over whether they are drawn to their nest they were hatched in the year before or they are trying to establish territory.
While standing out among the martins, I noticed a ball on the ground. It was between cow patties, but it was too perfectly round to be that.
The challenge of the day is to identify it.
Nature Along the El Camino Real 