SPRING AT 78 RPM

That title certainly gives away my age; anyone under 40 perhaps won’t know what 78 rpm means.  “78 revolutions per minute”, that was the speed of those brightly colored vinyl records that generally were children’s songs.  Albums, all you savvy people know, were 33 1/3 rpm and singles were called “45’s” because they went at 45 rpm’s.  So, “Spring at 78 RPM” simply means it is going at full speed, in Texas anyways. 

I am writing this on the last day of March; my hands are sore from stirring wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of soil.  I am already “behind” by Texas gardening standards and should have planted my tomatoes weeks ago. The Hill country soil is a thin affair, a wee bit of scraggly soil that covers layers of limestone, laid down by all those sea creatures when we were one huge inland sea and anything you plant needs you to add all the ingredients that are missing-soil, manure, mulch etc.

Whereas my forearms, hands and back are well aware of how I spent the weekend, if my husband doesn’t feel crippled this morning, he will be revealing his secret that he is some sort of Marvel comic book superhero, for in order to plant 6, 3” pots of salvia, he had to unearth slabs of rocks large enough to build a Greek amphitheater.  Good thing he is an engineer and can figure how to lever things that would normally demand a backhoe to move, so that, once unearthed we could roll them away.

 

All the potted plants: zinnias, petunias, begonias, marigolds etc., are the usual ones I would have planted on the Cape.  And I still plant them in the “usual” containers- 10” terra cotta pots.  At the moment, they look lovely, adding color to the deck, the porch and the steps to the yard.  “For the moment” being the operative word.  That nursery saying that “We grow ‘em-you kill ‘em”, has sadly, too often been true in my experience. 

Perhaps I have too much shade for them to attain the glory you see featured on their info stick in the pot.  Perhaps because I am too cheap to spring for the huge, and costly terra cotta pots that everyone else has (think needing a backhoe to lift them) or perhaps because I am averse to using sprays or even squishing bugs that I find fascinating on their own account.  Whatever the reason, what looks lovely now, will, in all probability be less than glorious a few months down the road. 

The key to accepting this, is to realize that Feb, March and April are what April, May and June are on the Cape and by May we are swinging into the equivalent of August and it will remain August and then some, for the next 5 months.  The plants, if they survive, will look a little stressed to say the least, through those 5 months of August but that only applies to the ones I try to plant.  Another time we will sing the praises of all those wildflowers that thrive on an inch of soil and say,  “just don’t touch me, don’t fertilize me, don’t do me any favors and I will be just fine.”  Ironic eh?

Along with a planting frenzy, the number of baby animals at the Wildlife refuge are   growing exponentially every day, school groups are booked straight through the end of May and company is coming for Easter.So, if you don’t see any new installments here, then know that I am spinning at 78 rpm, and if I DO manage new installments, you may suspect that I have a little of the Marvel comic hero in me too.  

Black Bellied Whistling Ducks - A Spring Treat in Texas

You got to love ‘em- Black Bellied Whistling Ducks; with legs and a bill as pink as any Barbie paraphernalia, extra long legs too, more befitting a goose than a duck, a life long fidelity to their mates, also more like geese or swans, plus a fondness for standing about in trees and a willingness to stare you down rather than instantly fly away.  Charming.  I am delighted to see them back.

Indeed, they have black bellies, and they “whistle” as they fly, ergo the name.  Back in the day they were often called Whistling Tree Ducks, for they do love to stand about in trees, and will nest in trees, so I am not sure why they dropped that part of their name. Too much of a mouthful perhaps when added to the BB part.

They were the very first ducks I saw pass over my backyard when I had just moved here, and I amazed myself by having a flash that they were tree ducks and then finding out I was right.  I had dredged up their image from years ago when I worked at Sea World and they were part of the grand avian collection they had there.  Speak about a buried memory popping up when you need it. 

Looking at their distribution map I can see I am lucky to be here, for otherwise trying to see them would involve a trip over the border to Mexico or Central America.  But they do wander up to TX in late winter and spend the spring and summer here.  As a species, they aren’t really considered migratory, they are happy to stay put year round in Mexico, but some have a wander lust that have led them over the border to come here for the summer.  Could it be even hotter in Mexico?  Perhaps, or perhaps they too are tired of the drug violence.  

When I saw them pass overhead, it was an early misty morning, and I assumed they were headed out for the day, to whatever they considered the best eating-place in town.  As it turns out, it was just the opposite, they were returning home to roost after a long night of gleaning from old grain fields, so although you may come upon them awake by day, loafing about mainly, they do most of their feeding after hours.  All the better to sneak in the farmers fields perhaps.

They lay a passel of precocious ducklings, often having their nest in trees, and the ducklings must take that first scary leap as wood ducks do into the great unknown.  Occasionally females will “dump” their eggs in a communal nest, and I have never learned whether these poor harried surrogate moms who may have 20 or more eggs to brood, manage to raise them all. If they do, they would deserve their own reality show. 

It is getting nice to anticipate who comes when, something that takes a few years living somewhere to get the hang of.  So, the BBWD were on time, the Cedar Waxwings came again in late winter as they have done before, although they will soon head further north, and on the first day of spring, I had my first Black Chinned Hummingbird at the feeder.  I hear the bats are back too, but that is a different story.

Even though the weather may keep throwing winter at you, keep an eye out for those birds; those signs that give you hope that spring is inevitably on its way.  The “konk-ka-ree” of Red Winged Blackbirds, the sounds of Spring Peepers, the fabulous crepuscular dance of the Woodcock, surely they are coming soon to a neighborhood near you.  I have my whistling ducks; you have your peeping amphibians.  Let us all rejoice in a return of life to our own corners of the globe, wherever we are. 

A COYOTE SIGHTING-FINALLY!

 

I know I have mentioned this before, that I found it ironic that I had far more sightings of coyotes on Cape Cod than I have had in Texas.  After all, don’t you consider Texas the backdrop for most Wiley Coyote cartoons? Well, more Arizona, New Mexico landscapes I guess, all those canyons he plummeted to the bottom of, sending up his trademark “Poof”.

 But still, raise your hand if you too would expect more coyotes in Texas than Cape Cod?  Well, it took TWO YEARS, but I finally got to see one, loping the full length of a field, mid-morning, just as we were completing our Tuesday, two-hour monitoring of a Great Blue Heron rookery.  Lovely, a true sense of; well, it’s about time! 

I have found their scats regularly, on the main trails through a prairie that makes up a big part of the Cibolo Nature Center where I volunteer.  I love taking the kids on Nature Detective hikes, but when I do these, I always say, anyone can hike the regular trails, but you are with a “trained naturalist” so lets head where the Japanese tourists don’t go.  So, we tend to hike dry creek beds, a great place to find deer bones that wash downstream in heavy rains and are left high and dry, like a high-tide line, when the creek dries up again.  Exciting finds for elementary school kids.

But the coyotes seem to stick to the main trails, after all, why crash through brush, expending energy, when there is a lovely path already there. And, I believe I have talked about this before; they want to leave their scat in prominent places as a territorial marker, often leaving it where two trails come together.

 But this is all getting away from the point I suppose.  I was just glad to see a healthy looking coyote, and it didn’t cause any ruffled feathers in the rookery and gave us a good long look before it headed back into the brush.

Now, double irony, I am visiting my daughter, the Army Captain stationed at Ft Hood, and her rented home is in one of those nondescript suburban developments where houses pop up row-on-row with only slight variation.  Small yards, few trees, yet because it is close to some open fields, there are tons of grackles and on the fields, I have seen flocks of meadowlarks and once, at sunset, the air was full of nighthawks buzzing over roofs and down these look-alike roads, in pursuit of moths or other tasty night-flying insects; it was sort of surreal.

But, this morning, as I walked the dog, I was musing over writing this blog about the coyote, when, turning back into her fenced back yard, what do I come upon but a “crime scene”!  Grackle feathers everywhere, bird bones etc., and what is next to it?  A huge coyote scat, full of fur and bones!  In her yard, here in suburbia!  Not that that is SO surprising, they don’t shy away that much from suburbia, or cities either for that matter.  It just that here I was thinking about coyotes, or the lack of them, and wham, right in her yard clear evidence of one having dinner here.  If I had been staking out the yard last night, I guess we would have even more exciting things to write about, like the take-down of a grackle.  

Of course with no witnesses, who can say what the true cause of death was. It might have been a bird that ran into a window and was stunned, and made for a easy meal, or maybe the grackle simply had it’s back turned when the coyote pounced, or maybe the coyote caught it in a nearby field where they flock under the high tension wires, and just decided to dine here.  Either way, these sort of serendipitous moments delight me.  And I suppose I can’t continue to complain about how I NEVER see any coyotes, for now I have. 

My wish for you is that your “sighting desires” also be fulfilled, and together, we will hope for more. 

Texas Beekeepers- A Special Kind of Tough Texan

 

When I worked at Green Briar Nature Center on the Cape, part of my job was to develop teaching kits that could go out to the schools to augment the science curriculum.  I had developed one on Honey Bee’s a few years ago, and ever since then, I have thought it might be nice to have a hive of my own one-day. 

The bees, as I am sure many of you know, are in a heap of trouble and it almost seems our civic duty to attempt to raise some ourselves in an attempt to increase the population. No bee’s-no pollination and you can kiss those lovely fruit salads goodbye. 

So in this civic-minded mood, I attended a Beekeepers seminar held by the Master Gardeners at a nearby library.

There I was, all Pollyanna optimism about the joys of beekeeping when the lecturer began his presentation.  Now, I don’t know if he read the description of this course, but it WAS intended to encourage us to become beekeepers ourselves.  But I must say, half way through, I put down my pen and stopped taking notes. 

I knew from beekeeping talks I had heard on the Cape that it was heavy work, lifting those “supers” full of honey takes some muscle.  I also knew of course that it was sticky work, and that one had to be vigilant to keep it clean and free of marauding mice.  Again, those are Cape Cod problems.  But, here in Texas, you have to wear a custom made suit, breathable so you don’t just keel over from the heat and it must be completely sealed so that fire ants don’t crawl up your legs.  Plus, the simple, bee “mesh helmet” just wouldn’t do, for the omnipresent, Africanized bees are super determined and can get in under regular netting and sting you till your face is indistinguishable! Great.

And that suit would cost you about $250, for it has to be custom made, and well, I asked, is it the rare hive that is bothered by African bees?  No, EVERY hive, EVERY bee in this part of Texas has probably been Africanized.  And that’s because they are determined little buggers.  The AHB (African Honey bee) is far more aggressive than the EHB (European Honey Bee) using their swarms to take over EHB hives.  In many cases, it only takes a more aggressive drone (male bee) to follow his nose to the queens pheromone and mate with her, rather than a EHB drone and voila, in 6 weeks you have a new batch of workers that are all Africanized.  They call it having a “hot” hive, one that might turn on you when you go to extract the honey.  Well, sign me up, isn’t this sounding like fun!

The cure for a “hot hive” is to somehow catch and kill your old queen and put in a new one that has already been fertilized by what one article called, the “Golden Retriever” of bees –the EHB and in 6 more weeks, peace will reign again in your kingdom, until of course the AHB drone moves in and you have to start all over again.    

And while you are at it, be sure to treat for fire ants around your hives for they can get in and sting and eat everybody.  Wonderful.  Then he shared another safety tip; if you inadvertently disturb a AHB hive, run for the hills, as fast as you can, and don’t try the trick of jumping in water for they will simply wait until you come up for air and get you then.  He once hid out in an outhouse for 15 minutes and found the bee waiting for him when he got out.  Clearly there are no shirkers among the AHB. 

For that matter, whereas with the EHB, it is only the bees who are pulling guard duty that will come at you, with AHB they have ALL sworn allegiance to the Queen and any threat is dealt with by the ENTIRE HIVE, thousands and thousands of bees.  That is why the end is sometimes fatal.  Yikes.  

It’s a long story to go into how the AHB got here in the first place.  Another tale of what “seemed like a good idea at the time” turns out to be a true disaster.  In a nutshell, scientists in Brazil wanted to breed a bee that could better tolerate their climate, so they imported African honeybees.  As always, some escaped and found the area greatly to their liking and with such an aggressive and hard working attitude (they rise earlier and work later than their European counterparts-no comment on that) they soon took over; bad news for the rain forest and its native bees. And it became bad news for the Southwest too.  It seems the barrier than keeps them out is an area that gets 55” of rain over the year.  Interesting, so all you lucky temperate places shouldn’t have to worry.

But after all that, it really is considered more of a civic duty than ever for backyard beekeepers to jump in the fray here in TX, for with only a few hives to care for it is possible to keep swapping out your Queen.  Something a commercial beekeeper just couldn’t do with hundreds of hives.  I don’t know, they are going to have to really lay on the guilt for me to sign up.  The lecture had at least 40 people in attendance.  Maybe there were a few tough Texans in there who are up to the challenge.  Let’s hope there were.  In the meantime, bee safe out there!