Fall is here with gentle breezes and an opportunity to be outside. We have many birdhouses in our backyard, and the other day we were checking to see what ones had been used. The birds leave their own signature nests so that you can surmise what kind of bird was the summer resident.

There are four boxes strung along one side of our yard and we found one box empty. My husband explained that the barn swallows that live there in the summer leave one box empty as a decoy for predators.