Birds and other critters seem to be particularly abundant this year. The first group are probably about 9 or 10 days old and have become timid enough that they hunker down when I open the box in which they were hatched. The black cap chickadee in the second (and unfortunately not very well focused) shot is pretty mature and probably was close to fledging when I took this picture. Still, he or she wasn’t quite ready. Neither was the bluebird watching me from the opening of box 73 in the third shot. There were two other pretty mature looking young birds in the box with him and two had already left for free air. At the bottom of this group is a groundhog who seemed pretty unafraid of Abner and me until we were about 15 feet away. Then he took a header into his burrow.