When a Blogger Doesn’t Blog

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When a blogger doesn’t blog, there usually is a reason.  Because I am a person who loves to wallow around in guilt, I feel I need to explain this disappearance before I can return to writing again.  It’s just the way I am wired.  So what are my excuses?

Several reasons jump to mind.  Feb-April is our busy spring teaching season at the nature center so free time gets scarce.  Add that to the fact that it was the wettest spring I have seen in TX so far; floods of biblical proportion, which led to the weediest season I have yet to experience and the limited free time became even more limited. 

Each day would see me coming back from 4 hours showing students the clever adaptations some plants possess whose sticky seeds can hitch a ride on you or any animal that passes by and thereby get away from the sun-hogging parents.  Well, its one thing to teach about it but then to come home and see endless amounts of said plant that needed to be pulled out before they turn my dogs life into misery, is quite another.  I felt like all I did was teach in the mornings and weed and sweat in the afternoons. 

I have had a benevolent policy with the plants in my yard these 5 years. I do not bow down to the god of green grass so I am happy to let the wild flowers occupy a full half of the yard where they do so well in the scrabbly caliche soil that it is amazing.  That half blooms with Black foot daisy and Zexmenia and all manner of fleabanes and yellow composites without any help or attention from me. 

However, the other half is the work intensive half, where fruit trees planted by the previous owner, require drip irrigation that clogs up within minutes of being unclogged, the result of an overabundance of limestone dissolved in the water.  The “lawn” is almost 90% burr clover, the burr that takes all the joy out of it being clover.   

The other 10% sports Malta thistle, which has a vengeful burr, that hurts long after it is removed.  Then there is the “Velcro” plant which again may be entertaining to show kids how it clings to you like Velcro as you pass by, but it also clings to your garden gloves, your shirt, your pants, to every part of you as you tangle with the yards and yards of it which on the one hand is easy to remove and on the other makes you half mad by growing back seemingly overnight and you get to do the whole exercise all over again.

March, April and May I weeded so much that my poor little fingers were always in a state of cramping or “trigger” fingering.   No one wants to hear a grumbly blog and by then it was already getting hot and humid so kind thoughts towards Texas weren’t exactly filling my soul. 

April is the grand finale for Sunday school and I like to end with each class dong a signing praise song, which we did.  It went well, as it so often does, but my little weeded-to-death-fingers couldn’t quite make the appropriate signs.  As it is actually always a hearing audience that sees it, no one was the wiser.

Then in May it was time for me to flee the heat and answer the call of any daughter in the North to help out in any way they needed. 

“Yes, I would come and watch Willow” while my daughter who teaches at West Point had some overnight maneuvers.  “ Of course I would love to come to splash about in lakes and hike mountains with my much missed grandchildren in Maine, and yikes! the wedding of my youngest is fast approaching, so better see how things are going there. 

On top of that, which already had me absent from Texas for a little over a month, now a trip to Iceland is in the offing, spurred on by my globe- trotting middle daughter who has two weeks leave coming up at the end of July.  We will fly from NY so, why drive back to Texas to just fly back here for the flight to Iceland on July 24^th?  Better to just stay!

Oh Yippee! Oh answered prayer! Oh the “Glory of God all around me” that I recognize so clearly in marsh, ocean, forest, pond and lakes.  NOW I haven’t been blogging because I am just having too much fun!  That being said, I have every intention to fit it back into my schedule and start sharing the delirious joy I feel at being back among friends, not just of the human kind, but of the plant and animal kind too.  Dear old chipmunks, and look at that partridge berry along the trail, I know you, and mosses and ferns and lichens. I have missed you all!     

So now, I have every good intention to write anew.  However, this explanation had to happen first; it’s just the way I am, like cleaning the dishes before you start a new recipe.  I am cleaning out the old excuses for my paltry performance in the past before I attempt to write anew of the delights of the present.  Let’s watch and see how well I stick to that.

It's Not All Instinct

I think anyone with a bird feeder and a moment or two to watch birds at the feeder, will conclude that life isn’t purely instinctual for our young fledglings.  It is that time of year, at least here in Texas where nesting starts pretty early, that the young are hatched, fledged, but not in their adult plumage yet so it makes them easy to spot.  They are also easy to spot for the tentative way some of them approach the accoutrements we have provided for them- feeders, birdbaths etc.

Yesterday I saw a young Carolina wren come to the tubular bird feeder.  Generally the wrens that live on the porch are content to scratch about in the potted plants looking for insects, or the gutters, or just come for water.  However this young wren had noticed the action was on the feeder and once it secured a spot, it just started tossing seed after seed out.  It seemed like it was looking for the insect that must be in there somewhere.  But it did eventually fly off with a seed, a peanut maybe.

Whatever it found, that was the first young wren I ever saw do that.  Surely the squirrels and ground feeders are hoping it will do it again!

I also been watching the young and gangly, Golden Fronted woodpeckers hang precariously from the hummingbird feeder.  Getting the right angle so that they can hang on, yet still get their long tongue into the sugar water only comes with practice.  Liking sweets might be instinctual but how to get at them is not!

In the night I am often awakened by a mockingbird practicing it’s mimicry.  It goes on and on till I want to argue, “Aren’t you mostly diurnal?” Mostly, being the salient point.  Last night however, what I heard was a much softer and short-lived song. At first I thought it was the trill of a tree frog, but them it switched to a short version of “tea kettle, tea kettle tee,” so NOT a toad.  Then it stopped.  The adult goes on forever, at least it seems that way when you are trying to sleep, but this one, a few little lines, a restart, and then silence.  An immature mockingbird then?  Perhaps.

Bathing with gusto seems to also take time to learn. Young birds sometimes seem to just stand there, cooling their heels as it were, whereas the “dip and shake” move comes as they get a little older.   

I won’t even mention how quickly squirrels learn by watching each other.  This year we hung our feeder on a monofilament line strung like a clothesline. We TRIED to position it just a bit too far from the tree and from the porch to keep them from leaping onto it. It worked for months until this latest crop of new and even more athletic squirrels took center stage.  Either training camp really paid off or this new generation is just more athletic but, either way, there isn’t an angle that they can’t conquer.

My husband, a military engineer officer, has been erecting obstacles to “impede enemy mobility”.  They look impressive but so far have been no match for the “wonder leapers” this recent crop seems to be. I have been tasked to find pointy rocks to set along the railings but I am convinced it will only give them added height.  There is point in which we have to admit that our much-hyped “brain above all brains” is still somehow no match for a hungry rodent. What IS left, is the ground littered with the hardware of our attempts at thwarting them.  Charming.

MY instinct tells me to give up!

A deer in the tree? How can that be?

 

I have been meaning and meaning to get back to blogging.  Once a break in the routine had happened I was just having a hard time finding a topic.  The only one that sprung to mind was the mind numbing job of pulling weeds all over my yard only to have the omnipresent rain resurrect them all in short order so I could pull them again.  It has driven me half mad! But rain should be and is a happy thing. Just we are getting too much of a good thing at the moment.

But then, an intriguing topic did present itself.  My friend who lives just two houses down casually mentioned she had a deer hanging in her tree.

Well yes, it has been windy enough to blow down 2 of our cedar trees, but blow a deer into a tree?!  Not quite.  So we are jumping into our CSI naturalist role and wondering what could have possibly done that.  

 Mountain lions are present here in the Hill country, but that’s such an exciting explanation that it probably isn’t true.  Leopards cache food in trees but as I have not heard of any escapees from the zoo we can scratch them from the likely suspect list. 

I tried to research whether mountain lions cached things in trees and most articles point to them caching on the ground, in caves and what not.   

Gray fox are standouts in the canine world for they are the only ones that CAN climb trees.  They have retractable claws and can head up a tree for safety for snoozing, and perhaps for stashing a midnight snack outside their hollow tree den.  Looking at the picture you can see a large opening in the tree.   It looks like a good resting place for fox or raccoons. 

Are raccoons ever cooperative enough to haul this portion size of a deer up into their tree? Clearly they are clever and the large males may be strong enough but I have never heard of such a thing.  Still,  that doesn’t rule them out entirely.

Then of course, we have the human element.  Would my friend’s son be willing to drag up a decomposing deer hind quarter and secure it to branches in a tree?  I think not, this boy is more “snappy dresser musician” than “carcass prankster”.  I think it shall just forever remain a  a mystery .  But the notion is fun enough to speculate about and weird enough to break the spell on writing again.  

The other over riding mystery is how weeds, well plants that I wish grew elsewhere, could so take over our couple of little acres in such little time.  Perhaps that will spark a follow up blog.  And if I could get on a roll I could stop weeding 24/7 and get back on the computer.  We shall just have to wait and see. 

 

don't let this fool you- It is NOT Queen Anne's Lace

Now, the rain has stopped and I can hear the hedge parsley setting its stick tights as we speak.  Grab a bucket, slather on insect spray and get out there Pat. Storm has passed-no excuses. Do it for Tucker.

The Miracle of Travel From a projected high of 80 to a projected low of -30 in one day!

Last Thursday, I left Texas, where summer had the audacity to come creeping back before it was even Valentines Day.   The day I left, they were expecting temperatures in the 80’s.  I was headed to Rhode Island to help a friend recuperate from knee replacement surgery.  Rhode Island, along with a good half of the country, was bracing for record-breaking lows from this latest Polar Vortex.  Here with the wind whipping at some 35mph and a temp of -9 we got to brag of a 36 below wind chill bringing us the coldest day since 1984.  Literally, how cool was that!  Remember, I LOVE weather. 

But this is what was fascinating.  I know, I have read, I understand, that birds prepare for the mating season, not by the temperature around them, but by the increasing amount of day light. This weekend I had that confirmed in spades.

In my last blog, I believe I mentioned that the territorial calls, separating my yard into “who would nest where”, had already begun in January.  The “fee-bee-fee bay” of the Carolina Chickadee that I have in TX, was noticeably on the uptick when I left.  That seemed fitting, as already our short-lived, to non-existent, winter seems to have ended.   

Then arriving here, with the cold whistling down right behind me, what is the first thing I hear in her backyard?  “Hey cutie, hey cutie” or maybe it sounds like “fee-be, fee-be-be” to you. The Black Capped Chickadees territorial call, a signal that here in RI the flocks would soon be breaking up as pairs looked about for their nesting trees.  Fact confirmed that moving toward nesting time has nothing to do with temperature.

I know I have written countless times about chickadees of one species or the other but it is because there is no easier bird to watch than this friendly, first-to-any-new-feeder, bird and their behavior is so clear to see.  Due to their “not afraid of you or me” attitude, they come to any place you put your feeder, even if you have one of those “stick to the window” kind.

 Consequently, from your toasty spot with hot chocolate in hand, you can relax and watch the “Dominance Show” or the “ First Responder Show”. The latter happening whenever a threat in the form of cat or hawk enters your yard. Listen for a string of excited “dee dees” to end the “chick-a-dee-dee”.  The more “dee dee’s ”at the end, the greater the danger.

Dominance is clear to see by who gives way to whom.  All that supposed politeness of just taking one seed at a time, and flying off, is a pecking order thing, not an Emily Post attribute.  Watch for awhile and you will see how a second arriving chickadee either displaces the first, meaning it is the King Pin, or the first holds its ground and the other veers off to wait its turn.  I had never thought of even the side of the feeder being dominance related but the Cornell Ornithology site has videos of the lower ranking chickadee being relegated to the windy side of the feeder.

 Because, chickadees and titmice often occupy your yard together, you will see that the larger Tufted Titmouse will generally displace the chickadee.  Watch, as spring approaches to see how the larger flocks settle out into mating pairs and then, seeing two chickadees feeding at the same place in peace will show you who the Mr. and Mrs. are.   No need to pack the bag for Borneo and some exotic wildlife expedition, it is all happening right there at your feeder. 

In Texas because it already warm enough to have windows open, but not so hot that I have to shut them, I have a grand time listening to the local goings on through the open window.  Bird language truly exits, and several species will respond to one bird’s alarm, so an open window is like having a police blotter broadcasting out in your yard. 

Ah, but to go into that now would demand too much reading in one sitting on your part, so let’s leave it for another time.  Besides it is time to refill feeders.  My Italian desire to feed things seems to display itself more with birds than with people. Yesterday I brought home fifty pounds of sunflower seeds plus my friend has a peanut supply that looks as though she might be planning to take in Barnum and Baileys discontinued elephants.So we are all set to spend another cold day, with hot chocolate in hand doing our own bird behavior studies to see what the pecking order is with the resident turkey flock, crows, jays, squirrels and assorted small birds.

 

And so could you.  If you find yourself in the cross hairs of this or another, Polar Vortex and want the novelty of looking out your window at the world instead of at the screen in your hand, you too can launch your career as animal behaviorist; all for the low, low, cost of a cup of chocolate.  I highly recommend it. 

A Stubborn New Englander’s Confession

OK, OK, admit it Pat, Texas IS nice in the winter, isn’t it?  Say, it, come on, say it!  All right.

Texas IS nice, is very nice, from Jan-May.  Really.  It is one long spring with short interruptions for winter, and occasionally fall, but mostly spring.  December would fit into that spring category too but that doesn’t make it “nice” in my book.  For that matter, I really struggle with that being all wrong!  I simply can’t generate a “fa la la” feeling in days that waiver from spring to summer. 

But now, I have had my snow “fix” in Maine at Christmas, I have had my vicarious blizzard experience through my daughter in Baltimore and I am ready to feel like it really could be spring.  The birds in my yard are raising the decibels of their territorial calls, especially the titmice, what amazing volume those little birds put out. It gets extremely screechy around here when one pair dares to tread on another pairs assigned branches.  Or so it seems to me. 

Whenever there is a real racket going on outside, I slip out to see what the “breaking news” in the branches is all about.  There are a lot of feral cats around and even though my yard is fenced in, I often expect to see one lurking under the jasmine near the feeders. But so far, that has never been the case. Instead, whether it is titmice or scrub jays, chickadees or wrens that are getting all worked up, the loud annoyance seems to be directed at one another.  A, “How dare you cross into my territory” sort of thing and from my experience that is a sign that nesting areas are being fought over.  I could be wrong, but there is a whole lot of excited twittering going on out there lately.

            http://www.highlandsaudubonsociety.org/Ed's%20Indigo%20Buntings,%20etc.html

I do remember hearing chickadees making their “fee-bee” territorial calls in winter on the Cape.  If I remember correctly, I would hear it in Feb, which also used to surprise me, but establishing a bit of woods to call your own is serious business.  The ones with the best nesting trees, food supply, water, and who knows, maybe even a lovely view, will probably have the most successful nesting season.

It also stands to reason then, that if you have feeders out, water available and decent nesting trees, your yard becomes primo real estate.  Be listening then for bird rumbles. Let the racket draw you out of your house to see what is going on. You may see a male titmouse on a high speed chase of another male through the branches.  Chickadee women seem to stand by their men, so watch for 4 birds to be facing off.  Impossible to tell male from female but the males are acting aggressively while the females seem to be giving them the “Go get ‘em Harry” kind of support.

Even if you live in the more northern areas that are clearly in the grip of winter it is time to start watching and listening for this.  Remember, the days ARE getting longer and that is the signal birds are looking for.  Nesting won’t start, even here in Texas for another month or more, but house hunting may be happening where you are right now. 

And, admit it Pat, it is nice to be able to pop out on the porch to see what is going on without donning layers of clothes isn’t it?  OK, OK, it is.  Are my, “We love Texas over every other place” friends satisfied now?  Not really, for they know, in just 4 short months I will be whining again that it is just toooooo hot in Texas.  But for now, it is just right, and I AM thankful!

My Birthday Blizzard

Even though the appropriate phrase for the day should be “65 and Still Alive”, I must confess there are huge swaths of my brain that never made it past 10!  For example, the part of the brain responsible for having mature responses to oncoming storms.  I never outgrew the crazy delight and anticipation of a storm, really any storm barreling it’s way toward me. 

Snow storms of course, were the most magical: the possibility of no school/no work, the captivating sight of wind-driven snow swirling under the streetlight, the world shimmering in diamonds when the storm ended and the sun came out.   I simply never outgrew the immense joy of that. 

So, today is my birthday, and what a great gift.  The only snag is, it is being delivered to the wrong zip code.  Not nature’s fault but mine for moving to a place where a blizzard would come under the category of the miraculous.

However, I can live vicariously, for one of my daughter’s lives in Baltimore, in the absolute bulls-eye of this storm and she also has that arrested development syndrome when it comes to snow.  Her sled is ready, the hot chocolate’s brewing, and with enough “Sherpa style” clothing and “Smart Wool” socks, she should be fine.

On the Cape we would be filling bath tubs with water plus as many jugs as we could muster for, when you are on a well, no electricity means no pump, ergo no water. Unlike a hurricane, blizzards cause no worries about food spoilage for the world is your refrigerator. 

I must say, part of feeling my 65 years is that I can start to say, old-person like, “when I was young” why even, “when I was middle-aged”, snowstorms weren’t named, not even bona fide blizzards.  They were simply blizzards.  There is something more menacing about a storm heading your way that has a name.  I don’t know when hurricanes decided to share that personal trait.  Perhaps when news became the hyperbole it is today.

One of our military assignments was 3 years at Ft Drum, NY.  There was a place that totally underplayed their snow. Calmly, “Lake Effect snow” would be forecast and that was it.  Wump! 4 ft of snow would arrive in the span of 12 hours or less and no one said much about it.  Our streets on base weren’t plowed in the normal manner but rather “packed down” till, leaving base meant your car had to nose dive a foot or so to the more traditionally plowed streets of the town.  My second daughter was born there in Feb and I thought I would likely be giving birth in a snow bank.  The total snow for that year was 12 ft and, once again, I don’t remember any Fox News coverage of that.  The fact that the troops from Alaska came to Ft Drum for winter training was pretty telling.

So, Happy Birthday to me, and again, I took the liberty of just prattling on rather than playing the instructor.  If you are in the path of this blizzard, I do pray you are safe so I don’t have to feel guilty about being excited about it.  And for information on how the snow is a blessing to some animals, you might want to look back at “Life in the Subnivian Zone” that was originally written on Feb 5, 2011. The salient facts remain the same. 

I can’t wait to hear from my daughter who will be my “snow boots” on the ground and see the pictures of what heights the drifts will achieve.  Stay warm everyone and may we all, in some part of our brain stay “Forever Young”.

  

A Worthy Resolution To LOOK Where You are Walking

 

Perhaps you think this is an admonition to take your eyes off your cellphone and look both ways before you cross the street.  Good advice surely, but my intention here, with what might become a series of blogs, is to encourage you, for your mental and physical sake, to take a walk in the woods, or the field, or your neighborhood park. Not a power walk but a walk where you stop and LOOK at what lies around you.  This kind of walking may not lower your weight, but I can guarantee, it will lower your stress.

When I worked at a nature center on the Cape, I started a weekly walking club with that exact intention.  I think my promo might have said something like, “This is not walking to raise your heart rate, but to lower your blood pressure”.  And it did.  We met weekly for 3 years and became the Wild Women of Wednesday, walking through the many fabulous conservation areas on the Cape.  And lower our blood pressure it did, plus it created bonds of friendship that continue to this day even though I have been in Texas these past four years.  But the whole point of our walk was to LOOK!

 As a naturalist, I am always looking for signs of animals, for to me there is something thrilling knowing, for example, that an otter was here and recently, as evidenced by the still steaming otter scat, even if I didn’t get a chance to see the otter itself.  

Now, admittedly, telling you what to look for when I don’t know your location or what flora and fauna is common to your area is a bit tricky. I have lived most of my life in a temperate zone so if you share that habitat there is a good chance that you can see what I see.  For instance, if you have oak trees in your neck of the woods, and acorns are still visible on the ground, not all sequestered away by squirrels or covered in snow, then here is an assignment for you. Pick several acorns up and look for a small but perfect hole somewhere on them.

 If you find one, you are seeing the sign of a curculio beetle, an insect that is as prevalent here in Texas as it was on the Cape.  It is in the weevil family and I love that it reminds me of Gonzo on the Muppets.  I have NEVER seen an adult curculio but their progeny in their larval state are often present in that acorn with the perfect hole. 

Remember learning the complete insect life cycle in 4^th grade -egg/larva/pupa/adult?  In this case, the egg is laid by the female curculio in summer when the acorns are developing. She uses that Gonzo-like beak to drill a perfect hole through the acorn shell and deposits one egg per hole.  Often you will find acorns with several holes and whether they are laid by the same female or multiple females, I honestly don’t know.

When the egg hatches, the larva will feed on the nutmeat until the acorn drops in the fall.  Then it may take 3-5 days to exit the acorn and burrow into the ground where it will spend the winter.  Some articles say they can remain underground for as long as 5 years before pupating and emerging as an adult to start the cycle all over again. 

Whether you are walking alone, or with a child, finding these hidden insects right at your feet can be pretty exciting.  This is not an endangered animal; feel free to crack the acorn open and look inside.  If it is fall, you may meet the larvae itself, all white and wiggly with a distinct head, just place him on the ground and no harm is done, he will continue on his way underground. 

If it has exited, stage left, you can see the tunnels where it ate the nutmeat as it grew.  If you find an acorn that has been only partially eaten, say just the top, than more than likely this was a squirrel going for the protein of a tasty grub.  I love that there is a study out there that says squirrels prefer acorns with curculio grubs in it 3-1 to plain acorns!  What Federal Grant funded that research! Birds too, love to eat the larvae, a hammered on acorn is sign of a jay or other bird getting a bit of protein.  So, how cool is that!  Honestly, there is so much to see in the world at your feet if you just LOOK, and so much to discover if you have a curious mind to boot. 

Perhaps if I can share some of these most common “finds” with you, we could all start off the New Year with a desire to look less at our cell phones or at headlines that warn of disaster at every turn, and more at beauty, wonder and the intricacies of life that are present all around you. Sound like a plan?  I think so.  Next time, “Looking for Latrines”.  Who would want to miss that?

Happy New Year everyone, may it be a year of improved “Sight”!