Kestrel Update, plus Hey It's Spring, There Are Weeds

All of the nestboxes have had at least one monitoring visit and some have had two.  We have one kestrel pair nesting!  It's not a very good occupancy rate, but to borrow a sports analogy, there's always next year.  It's a long term project and data from other nestbox monitors indicate that it does take a few years to really get up to speed.  That and possibly some continuous loop Luther Vandross or whatever the kestrel equivalent might be.

Here is the mama-to-be, incubating four lovely eggs:

The last couple of weekends, I've been heading up to the orchard to work on removing tons of that blankety blank filaree.  Over four sessions, I wheelbarrowed at least 16 very full loads out of there.  I found a few of what I call wildflowers vs. weeds and those got to stay.  Last week, Dino splurged on a new push-type string trimmer and whacked the bejeebers out of them, leaving some for me to hand weed under the trees, roses and in the daffodil areas.  If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not really as I quite enjoy weeding, it's just whoo, so much!