When the Swallows Return to.."fill in the blank"

I consider it a banner day, a day with an extra shot of joy, when I see my first swallow of the season cutting through the air with that graceful swoop and dive they are all so adept at. With my New England roots, I don’t expect this recipe for happiness to arrive until April or May, but I am not in New England any more. So imagine my surprise when on Feb 18th I was treated to the arrival of the first Purple Martins at the nature center I am now volunteering at. Yippee, Martins, the largest of all swallows!

This was followed the next day by a sudden appearance of a large flock of swallows
(hmm guessing, Rough Winged swallows but it was too gray a day to be sure) swooping in and out of a bridge overpass. In TX then, it is already swallow time.

The Martins arrived on cue, just as we were showing a group of 4th graders the gourds that hang in a circle, a kind of Condo for the martins when they return. Just as we were explaining how they would be coming up soon from Brazil, (now that Carnival is over,) in zoomed a pair, circling around us and then popping into the gourd to see what had changed over the year. Amazing! We could never have staged such a thing! The kids loved it!

Now on the Cape I wasn’t near anyone with a Martin house, so mostly my joy came from watching the Tree swallows, lying on my back floating in the pond while they swooped in for some tasty bugs. However I have been reading up on Martins and are they ever fascinating. First of all, now wild is this? All the Martins east of the Rockies, which is clearly a good chunk of real estate, will only nest in man-made Martin houses. You have probably seen one, maybe you even have on. A small condo of houses, sometimes built as one unit, apartment like, or by providing separate housing by hanging several gourds in a circle.


Back in the day, maybe hundreds, possibly even a thousand years ago, they nested in old woodpecker holes but for reasons we can only guess at, the Indians began providing gourds for them to nest in. Now a lot of people are under the impression that Martins eat a lot of mosquitoes like the other swallows and therefore it would have been easier than spraying some prehistoric Off around. But the truth is they fly really high when seeking their food and mosquitoes lay low, so never the twain shall meet. Damselflies, dragonflies and a zillion other insects are on their menu, but not mosquitoes.

Stokes has a book devoted solely to raising Martins and he theorizes that because a colony of Martins aren’t shy about mobbing larger birds of prey or vultures, that the Indians may have appreciated their help in keeping scavengers away from their drying hides and meats. Whatever the reason, the habit continued with the settlers and with bird enthusiasts today, so why knock a good thing? The official term is “behavioral pattern shifting” when a species switches to a whole new way of doing business. I just find that amazing. West of the Rockies, where I take it no ancestral people were tending to their housing needs, they still nest in old woodpecker holes like a normal bird!

The ones we saw that day, may linger, or continue north. They have often been mistakenly referred to as scouts but that would imply that they were checking out the route and going back to say they have made reservations, come on down. Not the case. These are the adult birds that are heading back to be the first to get the prime real estate. The subadults come straggling along anywhere from 2-8 weeks later. Now, here is something else interesting, last years young will NOT return to their birth sight, but will look for someplace new. Neither will the ones in their second year, they are staking out greener pastures too. However, by the third year, they head back to their native site and will stay true to that for the rest of their years. Interesting yes? The thought is that this will keep the group from inbreeding and make for a healthier flock. And because all those 1st and 2nd year Martins are looking to relocate, you, the kind person putting up a Martin home, if you situate it correctly will probably get some takers. There are entire books on the subject of exactly how to position such a house and what it means to be a Martin landlord if you are interested.

Depending upon where you are geographically then, you may be anticipating the arrival of your swallows soon, or perhaps you have a few months to go. The Capistrano swallows, which are Cliff Swallows have a whole festival fashioned around their return. They arrive at the mission of San Juan on the feast day of St Joseph March 19th and leave on Oct 23rd the Feast of San Juan. Good Catholic birds it would seem! Again, nature never ceases to amaze.

There is more that could be said about Martin behavior, a fascinating subject too, but we all have our limits to how much we want to hear on a particular subject and I imagine you have reached yours. Till later then… enjoy that world around you that is new every morning.

Time to "Spring Forward"

No, it is not time to put our clocks ahead an hour, but mentally, this Yankee living in Texas had better set her clock ahead by two months. Clearly, Feb is the beginning of spring in Hill Country. In my yard I have two little sticks of forsythia that have bloomed at the beginning of Lent rather than at Easter. Plus I have been treated to some lively chase scenes between the Carolina chickadees, which usually signals the territorialism of the breeding season has begun. Even the Bluebonnets, that the area is famous for, have come up enough that now I know where not to mow. February but is sure feels like April. Probably the best thing to do is to just toss out the calendar and take each day as it comes. Today, Feb 23 its 80, summer in my Cape Cod mind, but tomorrow it will be a high of 60, clearly fall! So lets just forget any idea of four seasons for the next few years.

I know I have mentioned this before, but the Chickadees here, although they look almost the same as my Black Capped chickadees from home, are Carolina chickadees.
And the telltale difference is in their sound. The Black Capped Chickadee gives a two call note when claiming a bit of the woods for his own, “fee-bee”, whereas the Carolina goes for a lengthy oratorio of 4 notes, “fee-bee, fee bay”. Not a huge difference, but enough to make you look twice and realize you may not know what you are looking at. However, both species, when excited or agitated about another pair coming too close get the same excited hysteria in their call and often the chase begins, one pair routing out the other interlopers.

Reading about Carolina chickadees I read that they probably parted from the Black Capped some 250,000 yrs ago. They, like the Black capped, love insects when they can get them, but switch to seed eating at your feeder and elsewhere in the winter. On the Cape mine came to the feeder pretty much year round except when they were nesting and raising the young, then if you are going to be catching insects for the kinder, why not have a few yourself? Happily for the gardener they eat aphids as part of their diet so welcome them in.

The Carolina chickadee caches its food, which can make you feel less guilty about those days you don’t fill the feeder as early as you should. An article said they tended to do this at mid-day and then eat it later in the day, or in the next few days. I vaguely remember an article that was mostly dealing with the elasticity of brains that pointed out that the chickadees brain grows by ¼ the size when it is caching food. Maybe we should put down the crossword puzzles and start squirreling food around your house and see if our acumen improves!

Other signs of it really being emotionally April rather than Feb is the return of Purple Martins to a gourd complex they have at a Nature center I am volunteering at. We had a group of third graders the other day and just the way it often seemed at Greenbriar, the students arrive and it’s time to, “Cue the nature”. With this group of third graders we had just started talking about migrants when in swooped two early arriving Martins, checked out the houses as if on cue and then took off again. But to go into Purple Martins now would task your attention span so, shall we save it for another day? I think we shall. Who knows perhaps by then it will be a different “season” too.

Not Knowing Who to Expect

The trick of changing geographical locations so completely, is that I am pretty much in the dark as far as who to expect, bird wise, to show up at the feeder, or in the bushes, on any given day. After living on the Cape for more than a decade, I could anticipate the arrival of the “first” of this or that species. Noting when the Juncos would first arrive in winter and when they would, almost overnight, decide to leave. A friend has told me that Red-wing blackbirds are in the marshes already, our first sign of spring in that latitude.

But here in TX, I am clueless. I have had robins and cedar wax wings in my neighborhood, and I assumed perhaps they wintered here. But then I was at a nature center where they were calling us out of a meeting just to see the amazing group of 20 or so robins in a nearby tree. So my ho-hum response to the robins in my neighborhood should have been one of more enthusiasm for maybe they only pass through this area on their way to wormier pastures. And of course, I would never want to be a show off and say we had a roost of 8,000 robins on the Cape one winter. It would have been bad form.

I tried checking out a book I got on Western Birds, only to show another deficiency in my knowledge base. Raise your hand if you think of Texas as being in the West. I thought it WAS the West. Not according to the Peterson Field Guide Series. Yes, a small corner of TX is included, but otherwise I guess I would find the who’s who of Texas birds in a southern book. In the small corner of Texas the book does cover, it says Cedar Waxwings are occasionally present in winter. Again, it seems I should have lept about more enthusiastically when I saw them.

On Feb 6th a hummingbird came buzzing by my head. Wow, was it an early scout, or do some over-winter here? It has gotten pretty chilly so they would have to be pretty hardy to survive. I was under the impression that there may be zillions of hummingbirds here, and in the summer maybe there will be. However, it seems, from what I can glean from this book, that there may only be two types. The Black-chinned hummingbird and the Ruby Throated Hummingbird that is said to arrive around March. Googling Black Chinned ones, I see that they arrive before the Ruby Throated. Perhaps then, this was an early scout, or a hardy one that waited out winter. Either way, I did know to get excited about that and wondered if it was time to stir up some sugar water.

And this morning, the first flock of ducks I’ve seen, flew overhead. They had longish necks and in my uber enthusiastic way I jumped to the exciting conclusion that they might be Whistling ducks. Black Bellied Whistling ducks are said to be in this part of TX but the book didn’t say when they were here. In the gray light of morning, and the huge gap in my knowledge here, I of course couldn’t know.

Herein lies the rub. When I was on the Cape, I wrote this blog to share with you what I knew about what I was seeing there. However, here in Texas it seems I will more often be writing about what I don’t know. And who knows, perhaps there is a reader out there who knows all about Texas birds and other flora and fauna here and would like to chime in. Or take over. In the meantime though, with your patience, I will just plod along, sharing what I am learning and what I have yet to learn. Occasionally, there might be something useful, such as , if you want a bird book on TX don’t buy the one on Western Birds! Till later then…

The Insatiable Appetite of White-winged Doves

I will get to the doves in a minute, but may I just say that the dog and I have just returned from an afternoon walk, the dog in full pant mode and myself glowing with perspiration, (that seems the most polite way to put it), and it is ONLY Feb 1st! How will we ever survive the summer??

But I am not here to sing you the refraining chorus that plays in my head 24/7, “You will never survive this summer!” but rather, to share a few facts that are new to me, but common knowledge to anyone living with White-wing Doves in their neighborhood. First and foremost, they are bottomless pits!

How quaint that when we first moved in, I was afraid, due to the obscene number of cats that lived here, that I would never have any birds come to the feeder. How naïve, for now birds, particularly white winged doves are coming in droves and if I were to feed them as often as they empty the feeder, I would soon be in foreclosure.
Several sparrows help them in this pursuit, but because there are also cardinals and juncos, goldfinch and golden fronted woodpeckers, I hate to have them arrive to find the cupboard is bare, so out I go with another bucket of seed.


It turns out the White-wing Dove used to be mostly a tropical bird, which momentarily can make it seem exotic, but like so many other species it has pushed north and is perhaps headed to a bird feeder near you as we speak. They are gregarious grain eaters and love to arrive en masse. And although they prefer to forage on the ground, several of them seem willing to hang on to the feeders, perch on top of the feeders, consequently knocking a lot of seed on the ground where they can eat it in their preferred manner.

Possibly, they may provide some entertainment when the nesting season comes, for at least some of them are likely to nest in the junipers. The nest is not an elaborate affair, mostly sticks, but I read that the male is very particular about which stick he offers his lady, so watching them chose and discard sticks may provide some amusement.
They also are known for their broken wing act when predators are around, so again, something to watch for. And, if its really too hot to do anything else, I can look deeply into their eyes to see if they are adults or young doves. The adult’s eyes are crimson with a blue ring, while the young have brown eyes, hold the ring. Which now that I am looking at them as I write this, most of them seem to be brown eyes. Hmmm, guess I will have to search out crimson eyed ones. Finally, if I can attempt to train my ears to hear the difference in their calls, their usual “who cooks for you” (which where I come from is attributed to Barred owls), can also be a drawn out “hooooh ahhh” if a predator is nearby. With the remaining feral cats still abroad, one would think they might do some “hoohahhhhing” at some point. Mostly I am curious is if sounds anything like the Army Ranger “HooAh!”. Probably not.

See the silly things you fill your time with, when you are not sure what to fill your time with. I will be thrilled to be going to an open house at a nature center 20 miles from here on Feb 8th. They are looking for volunteers for their education program and I can’t wait to put up my hand. It should provide a great way to learn about the Texas flora and fauna and be a great escape from the daily confronting of my non-domestic talents. So stay tuned to see if this little transplanted buckeroo can find a new direction.

Writing as Catharsis

I guess I would have to say I am still experiencing displacement issues. It’s been three weeks, and somehow I thought I would have been more acclimated by now. Perhaps writing the blog, even though I don’t have a lot of new nature to share, might be something that can feel like my former life.

I take that back on not noting any new species, one new species that has been more than abundantly prevalent has been the “Friendly Texan”.
Living up to their press as a more than welcoming people, I have found even a simple phone call to find out where to get my dog’s nails cut ( admission, in the past, I have done it myself and had the kitchen look like a blood bath had taken place, so now , it is the one thing I can afford the luxury of “trickle down economics” ), led to a lengthy discussion of how to cut an aging parrots talons, then on to “Welcome to Texas, but just one word of warning, don’t drink the water or give it to your dogs either”. Ah, good safety tip, I take it, it is so full of limestone that my innards would start to grow stalactites.

Another conversation with a neighbor included the interesting admonishment that I should be sure to feed the resident feral cat, or cats as the case may be. Hmm, out of kindness and compassion? “Well no M’am” and I don’t want to scare you, but that white and orange one killed a copperhead and rattlesnake in your yard last summer so you want to keep him on your side”. O.K. Makes me think twice about tiptoeing through the ivy to retrieve a bird feeder that keeps falling there.

And EVERYONE has warned me about the heat. “Oh you just wait, in a couple of months you’re going to die!” Nothing I wasn’t aware of, but now so many people have told me that that I feel I should start work on my own eulogy. Other’s ask me if I have encountered fire ants yet, which I have a feeling are perhaps everywhere but in a winter slow down at the moment. I suppose all the critters of summer will be something to blog about when they start biting with a vengeance.

Just yesterday I joined a group of people who are in a Master Gardening class, no room for me to take any gardening until next Sept, but again, they were also willing to fill me with information. Most of which went over my head, you know, when you are so new you don’t really even know what to ask. I was trying to figure out which of the lifeless bushes in my yard needed pruning and which were to be left. Unfortunately by the time the kind gardener was done telling me this abundance of things, the bushes were all cut so I am still not sure what they were. Yet I went at it today cutting things to the nub that either will return lovelier then ever, or disappear and not be a worry anymore. I am truly hoping for the former over the latter.

So onward and upwards hoping one day to transition from that ache of missing home to feeling this IS home. It will come. Probably just in time for me to expire from the heat, wouldn’t that be a pity.

Starting at Zero

Moving is a humbling experience. In my case, at any rate, it brings out all my inadequacies for general display; that I don’t know how to organize an overabundance of unwanted possessions, that I haven’t a clue how to shop to replace the unwanted ones nor clout enough to convince my husband that they need replacing and that the idea that I will just resume my role as happy naturalist is maybe a tad naïve. But it will be the attempt to teach this old dog some new tricks that will be my salvation. At least that is the hope.

But I am starting at zero, or almost zero. I know so little about the flora and fauna about me, but shall attempt to pass along what I am learning as I learn it. For instance, I who lament the loss of an ocean realize, if only I had arrived in the Early Cretaceous, about 150 million years ago, I would have been seaside, on the edge of the ancestral Gulf of Mexico. I suppose I also would have been a light snack for a T Rex so just as well that wasn’t my timing. And because it was once a sea teeming with marine life, many of which lived within calcium carbonate shells, the land now is turned to limestone and wherever you look or walk the ground is littered with rocks and outcropping of rocks. Rubble like, not a lot of soil.

Yet in this thin soil somehow Live Oak and Ash Juniper
grow in abundance. We chose the house we chose for the very fact that it had several of these lovely twisting oaks filling the view from each window. They have small sturdy leaves, good presumably for holding onto the water content when it comes, and the acorns they produce are on the main menu for the omnipresent white tailed deer, and if they don’t eat them all, then they are also enjoyed by turkey and jays, titmice and woodpeckers. And the jays are Western Scrub Jays not my blue jay of the east and two have deigned to finally come to some feeders I put out a few days ago. Lovely and slender looking I hear they have a distinctive call; I shall have to listen for it.

I also am lucky enough to have a couple of Golden Fronted Woodpeckers, which are very reminiscent of our Red bellied woodpeckers on the Cape so they feel like a touch of home. Juncos and cardinals too are further down in the yard, but their reluctance to come closer to the house is probably best explained by the fact that there used to be about 10 cats living here! Not sure how long it will take them to get the “all clear”.

My morning quests see me out trying to find a place to let my dog run off leash. He and I are far too spoiled by our previous life to give this up completely, but I am beginning to see the writing on the wall. I am afraid that thanks to the omnipresent deer and my dogs insistence on chasing them, he and I will be chained to each other for all walks here, which is so sad to contemplate. It also means I can expect, after a certain time, to have a left arm several inches longer than my right. But I have been warned of snakes and scorpions, skunks and coyotes, all of which I would consider a treat to see, but I guess I can’t risk it. Why is it so hard for yours truly to accept acting like a responsible adult?

I have driven some places in search of off leash venues, and today I did go to a small park, which had the one big perk of open land without deer, not a lot of room to roam, but it provided my most three star sighting so far. A Red Shouldered Hawk sitting atop someone’s totem pole décor. Gorgeous rufous breast feathers, narrow white banding on its wings and it seemed completely nonplussed by my staring. It’s only a winter resident here in this part of Texas so I shall consider myself lucky to have seen it.

Well then, I am starting at zero, but hopefully I will have some sort of a learning curve here and in time, in time, I shall find the beauty here. But a time of mourning my old life and setting is only natural. Still, may even the act of writing this bring a little cheer.

The "Green" Winter Woods

The Cape is fairly famous for it’s “gray” winters. Gray weather-beaten shingles on the houses, gray-looking marshes once all the fall color is drained away, and gray weather often dominates the winter months. People who don’t get out much see it as the Gray days of winter. Ah, but if you actually go out into those “gray” woods, you might be surprised to find out how “green” they really are.

Before I left the Cape, I brought my camera along with me as I walked the woods behind the bog, with the express purpose of capturing the green. And this is what I found, for starters, electric green moss, made even greener by the dull brown of leaves it shines out from. There is a velvety-green kind of moss that looks like felt that I was never able to get the scientific name of, and then the bushier one commonly called “Goldilocks Moss”. I love watching moss through the year, how it slowly develops its spore capsules, how the dying circles on the moss sometimes give you a clue to where certain animals have “left their mark”. Even just noting all the different kinds is entertaining, even if you don’t know what “kind” they are. I will miss moss in Texas.

There are also all manner of plants in the “wintergreen” family, meaning just that, that they stay green in winter. One that smells like teaberry when you crumble it, called “dah” “teaberry” but also “checkerberry” and simply “wintergreen”. It has a bright red berry that is edible and works as a breath freshener, very wintergreen-like in its taste. But before you go gobbling berries be sure you have the right one.

Another related wintergreen, sometimes called Spotted Wintergreen but also the much cooler sounding, Pipsissewa, stays green throughout our winter. When you see it, the fact that it is clearly striped versus spotted makes you wonder about the eyesight of those original botanists. But I found out that the “spotted” part of the name really means, “to break up” and comes from the fact that Indians used this to “break up” kidney stones. Either way, it’s a lovely plant found in the herb layer and as green in February as it is in June.

All along one trail I take is the pale green, always looking like it needs water, Sheep Laurel, or “lambs kill” for this is a plant one shouldn’t nibble on, at least, not if you are a lamb. Its drooping leaves help it to retain water but tends to make me want to drag out the watering can whenever I see it.

On the Cape thanks to our good air quality, the trees are all coated in green lichens. Lichens of every sort, crusty round patches of sage green, lots of “fuzzy ones” called “Old Mans Beard” or “Bushy Beard” that grow on the bark but do the tree no harm.

Like the epiphytes of the rain forest they get their moisture from the air. In a clever blending of two plants into one, algae and fungus, they can both hang on and make food without taping into the host plant itself. The popular pneumonic to remember this, is “ Freddy Fungus and Alice Algae took a Lichen to each other”. Well, on the Cape they took a lichen to each other in a big way and are a large part of why a gray wood, looks more like a sage green wood in winter.

Add to that the wonderful Reindeer Lichen that often covers the ground near the trail and again you have everything but a gray wood. Reindeer lichen is way cool, first because you can imagine you are on the tundra and real reindeer are right over the ridge, plus, they are such barometers of moisture in the air, that on a dry day they will feel all crunchy whereas on a humid day they are soft as can be.

Of course there are pines to add to the green, and holly. Pitch pines, and white pines dominate our woods, and the holly makes it only about 20 miles further north than the Cape and then says “uncle” to the cold. But the Cape is warm enough for it, and the robins and other birds love the berries, which get a good fertilized start on life when they pass through their digestive system, so hollies crop up everywhere. Oh the “Holly and the Ivy”, a great song to hum to yourself while you leave the mad commercial dash of Christmas and revive yourself in the “green” winter woods.

So, if this winter looks to disappoint in the way of “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” why not take up a new tune, “I’m dreaming of a green forest” just like the one I used to know. Oh, that might be too close to home for me, for I am presently in Baltimore, about to head to TN for Christmas and then on to Texas, where I will dream of the “green forest I used to know”.