Garden Pic Wednesday: Tiger Swallowtail!

Garden Pic of the Day is a large female Tiger Swallowtail on my yellow Lantana!

You can recognize it's female by the blue spots; males don't have the blue.
Females can also be "black form" with all black wings with blue markings, but there body remains striped. I've seen both.
The yellow and black female like this is far more spectacular looking!

And a nice picture of a Mockingbird Nest
This nest is old; the brood long gone. It's in a Gardenia at about shoulder level, so easy to see. I wanted to get a picture of it before removing.
Mockingbirds do an elaborate weaving of sticks for their nest; the center is of soft grasses. 

And finally, a strange visitor found it's way into my back yard....

Yes, it's a parakeet. He showed up on Sunday, 1 August. It seems odd to me that right after the house across from me is abandoned by it's renters and the owners show up to clean things out---I have bird that can't hardly fly in my back yard?

I fed him Sunday, but didn't figure out until Tuesday that he was just lingering around in my yard, searching for food under the feeder like the other birds. Tuesday night, I saw him hiding in my chocolate elephant ears in the back yard, clearly scared.
He answered me when I called "birdie" and I knew he (or she) had been a pet.
So today, I dedicated myself to trying to find a way to get the little fella rescued.
Checking with both the local police and the local Humane Society, no one had report a missing bird. I didn't see anyone roaming the neighborhood calling or anything.
Finding help for a stray bird isn't easy.
I called Vets, who recommended the Wildlife Rescue people here, but they don't do pets.

Desperate, I joined a neighborhood website called, "Nextdoor," which connected me to my own local neighborhood and posted a found notice about this bird.
I either wanted help catching him to take to a shelter I know does that birds or I wanted someone who'd adopt him directly.
I found the latter. A lady in town who had birds privately messaged me that's she'd take him and we spoke by phone. She told me how to catch him with a light throw and put him in a box with air holes and she'd come by to get him.

So, I did that. It was a little chase, him scrabbling and fluttering along the ground (he can't actually fly like a normal bird), but I finally got the blanket over him and was able to then carry him to prepared box.

Now with a sigh of relief, I know he's safe, waiting to be picked up for his new forever home.