Last night, the baby swallows were even more vocal than normal, and when I looked at the nesting box, I noticed something sticking out of the hole, so I went to investigate.  The baby swallows are bigger now, and are starting to climb up to the hole, and their eyes are open.  They are especially cute when they open their beaks to be feed, and it didn't matter that their parents weren't around.  They must have thought that I was going to feed them, too.  With them getting so active and so close to the hole of the nesting box, I am worried about them falling out of the box.  I don't know if I want to actually open the box up for monitoring anymore in case they get excited and fall out.  Sure, I can always put them back in the box if I'm around, but what if they were to get hurt?  I don't know if Oxbow Park does rehabilitation of tree swallows, and the closest rehabilitator I know of is over an hour away. 

Yesterday, we got our plan for building our patio in our yard.  At first, I just thought that it wouldn't work because it was a departure of the things we had talked about with the landscaper, but after thinking about it, it is a good plan and we'd like to do it the way he drew it up, but the cost is three times as much as I thought it would be and twice as much as we can afford.  Maybe we can find someway of doing it cheaper.

This morning, the pheasant showed up again.  I heard it's unique call, and I started looking around for it.  It was a block behind the house, and it wasn't moving much--just looking around.  Eventually, it started walking towards us, and it checked out our flower garden in our yard before it had decided it had seen enough and started walking back the way it had come.  Apparently there was something in our yard that the pheasant felt it had to check out.