Tue - September 22, 2009Birdy bitsHummingbirds, late bloomers
Our hummingbird feeder has a wee perch under
each "flower" opening. And they use them. Hubs said, "I
didn't know they'd do that." Well, most feeders don't have perches, most
real flowers don't either, and of course wherever two or more hummers gather
together, there's an air battle (sorry, St. John) so most people don't get to
see them light to eat. I imagine they're bloody happy to, seeing as their
particular form of flight is a high-calorie-burning
exercise.
The little buzzers are smart critters, too. Hummingbirds are migratory to this area, and I thought between the cool summer and the fact that it's equinox, they'd be gone by now. I hadn't seen one for a couple of weeks... ...Until yesterday evening, when one was staring at me through the glass of the breakfast nook bay window, obviously wanting to know why the hell I haven't refilled the feeder. In California I'd had them buzz me and bitch ("Chip! Chip!") when I was outdoors and the feeder was empty, but I haven't had them tapping on the glass demanding service until now. And yes, it was lighter inside the house than out, so it wasn't just looking at its reflection. Five minutes before the kids got off the bus one day last month, there was a constant "Chi-cheap, chi-cheap, chi-cheap, chi-cheap," over and over and over and over right outside the dining room window. Now, I like bird call fine, but, damn.... I looked up to find a wee ball o' gray fluff sitting on the outside window ledge calling non-stop, and a female cardinal in the tree in the flowerbed right outside that window. Luckily, ball-o-fluff has its wing flight feathers (though not much else) and very sharp claws, and can hop-flap its way upward. It was in the dogwood on the other side of the front door by the time I made it out there. Unfortunately, Mama keeps trying to lead it back to the birch in the middle of the yard, and I don't think its capable of getting back there just yet without a trip through the grass and a long climb up the trunk. Good luck with that, youngster. Posted at 03:25 PM Home Fri - August 14, 2009What is THAT doing in here?And why must I always be the one to deal with
these things?
I was on the computer one afternoon a
couple of weeks ago when Daughter, watching telly in the family room, shrieked
then yelled, "Mom, you gotta come see
this!"
I thought there was something on TV she wanted me to see. Alas, no, I was required in my guise of Super-Mom, Disposer of Teh Creepy-Crawly and Buzzy. Daughter pointed over to the hearth and said, "There, on the floor by the fireplace. It moves fast." Well, it wasn't moving at all when I got there, and because I am presbyopic in my old age, it looked from five feet up like nothing so much as a small piece of bark from firewood. So I got my cheaters and eyeballed it again. It had legs. Lots of 'em. Delightful. (/sarcasm) Well, there'd be no scoop-and-toss-out-the-door procedure with this one. (Yes, I do occasionally, when I can get one to cooperate.) And since it was rather hard-bodied looking, and sitting on the wall-to-wall carpeting, a quick smack of my sandal might not do anything except press it into the carpet, after which it might scurry off somewhere where 1) I couldn't get to it and 2) it would send Daughter climbing the furniture shrieking again. Please, no more with the shrieking. This was a squish-it-with-the-fingers-to-make-sure operation. Happy happy joy joy. (/Ren and Stimpy) (/more sarcasm) Since it was rather hard-bodied looking, I opted for a paper towel folded over several times. I reached down so equiped and grabbed the thing, but obviously not hard enough because it tried to slip free. It was really fast. Well, that was almost enough to make me shriek, but I am made of sterner stuff. *strikes tuff-guy-hero pose w/ hands on hips* So I squished down hard on it until I heard the crunch and a couple of legs popped off. Eww. But ya gotta make sure. A body-less leg loose on the paper towel continued wiggling. While completely unattached to anything. EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW. I took it to the outdoors garbage can. The part of my brain that's seen too many horror flicks could just imagine the loose legs climbing out of the kitchen trash and wiggling their unattached way across the floor. Teh Intarwebs tell me it's just a common House Centipede, but it was a lot darker brown than any pix I could find:  Posted at 09:58 PM Home What we have here......is the failure to understand the concept
"fence".
As I was walking past the high school
track and fields one morning last month, I heard what sounded like a hawk
calling, but very close. I looked up at the power lines and the tops of the
trees, but couldn't find anything. It got louder and I realized it was down,
not up.
(not my photo) There, just the other side of the 8 foot high chain link fence, was a killdeer (Latin: Charadrius vociferous, and man, can it yell) in full 'drag my wing like it's broken and call piteously to lead the predator away from the nest' mode. I dunno where she has her nest; there's no gravel / sand there (they're shallow gravel nesters; my dad has them in his chat driveway every year) except the pits for the long-jump and pole-vault. Of course, if this one was dumb enough to nest at a very busy high school facility, maybe she was dumb enough to put her nest in the grass where it would be run over by the mowers every couple of weeks. Who knows. (Oh, what's a killdeer doing at the high school? Well, we're only 5 miles from the Missouri River bottom...) I shook my head at her, said, "I'm not after your babies, you silly bird, I'm on the other side of the fence," and kept walking. Posted at 09:08 PM Home Tue - October 21, 2008Just... Move!Stubborn little witch
Last week, #1-Son came in from taking out
the trash and said, "Mom, I can't put the trash in the garbage can. There's a
praying mantis on the lid, and she won't move. Bring the
camera."
So I did.  She was very stubborn. I tried to "herd" her off the garbage can, and she just ran down and hid on the underside of the lid.  (No, the photo isn't upside down; she is.) I've never been bitten / clawed by a praying mantis even though I occasionally caught one in a jar and fed it grasshoppers as a child (not squeamish, me, even as a young-un.) But I was unwilling to have this be the first time, so I sent him after a stick. It still took several tries of running it under her and lifting before she came away on it. She was quite happy to be where she was, thank you. We set her down in the flower bed behind the garage. Posted at 01:41 PM Home EepWhere'd that come from?
Today I finally brought indoors the
houseplants that l put outdoors during the summer. Yes, we've been going below
50° F at night for a couple of weeks now, but none of them seemed to mind,
and when we started getting that cool the "Christmas" cactus (which blooms at
Thanksgiving) hadn't set on buds yet. My indoor-outdoor plants are a begonia,
a variegated spider plant, an asparagus fern, a Boston fern, and the
aforementioned Christmas cactus. They were all very happy outside this year, as
it was both wet and cool (for us) all
summer.
But we're about to get a rainstorm ahead of a cold front that will send us down to flirt with, if not drop below, 40° F, so in they came. And of course since they've been out during the fall when all the trees are shedding, they're full of leaves and twigs and such, not to mention that I haven't gone out regularly and pulled out their dead leaves, so I was "cleaning them up" after I brought them in. I reached down to take a leaf off the soil in the pot of the Boston fern, and it was a little slick. For less than a second I thought "Slime mold?" And Then It TWITCHED. There's a toad in my master bathroom. He's hunkered down against the inside of the pot, clinging tightly to the exposed roots of the Boston fern.  I am not afraid to deal with amphibians (or anything else slimy or twitchy) but I'm afraid I'm gonna hurt the little fella prying him out of the pot. Of course, he can't stay there. All spring, summer, and fall, I've occasionally been awakened waaaay too early in the morning by something that sounded to my sleep-fuzzed brain like a clock-alarm, but once I was awake I discovered was a "peeper" singing at a pitch and rate that imitates an alarm. A couple of times, it was just enough before my alarm that I couldn't get back to sleep, and I wasn't real pleased with the critter. The hanging plant stand I keep those houseplants on in the summer sits in a flower bed just off the front porch, on the same side as the master suite. Pretty much right under the bedroom window. I think I've found my "alarm."  "Excuse me, I was up all night, didn't you hear me? I'm trying to get some sleep here." Posted at 01:25 PM Home Mon - September 29, 2008Lookin' out my back door(Apologies to Mr. Fogarty)
Er, back windows,
anyway.
A (very wet) doe and her first-year twins were grazing in the common ground along the creek behind the houses on our street late this morning. They could do so unmolested by the dogs owned by nearly every neighbor for the same reason that they were so wet -- because it had been raining buckets, and the dogs were all indoors. I would imagine that any of those dogs that were in the vicinity of a back door or window were making quite a racket, though. Alas, but we are a month into the four months of the year where the deer forget to look both ways before crossing the street: the rut. I haven't ever hit a deer (though I came close once last winter) but my husband has a couple of times. Oh, and I saw Bruno -- our groundhog -- out on the common ground a couple of days ago. He hasn't been in the backyard for a couple of years, since I gave up trying to keep flowers in the planter on the back patio. Apparently he found marigolds quite tasty, but I wasn't up for providing rodent-chow in such a manner. This rain is courtesy of a cold front, and we should have our first lows below 50° F tonight because of it. The boys were wailing at my announcement that shorts may not be worn if it's below that temperature when they head for the bus stop / will fail to make it to 70° F for a high temperature of the day. I need to remember to bring indoors the houseplants that live outdoors during the summer. Well, all except the "Christmas" Cactus -- ours typically blooms the last two weeks in November -- which can't come inside until it sets on flower buds and won't do so until it gets a good chill or two. Some of the trees in the neighborhood, mostly the smaller / softer-wooded ones, have decided "sod it" to waiting for the temperatures to drop and started turning anyway (yes, I know it's predicated by amount of daylight, not temperature.) Typical height of fall color in our little corner of the woods is usually the second or third week in October, so they'd best get busy if they're to meet that deadline. Posted at 08:11 PM Home Mon - September 8, 2008It weeps no moreI must weep for it, now
Follow up to Willow
Neighbor
Are you allowed to mourn when a dream incorporated dies? The death has been long and slow, not unexpected, but still I find it hard to accept. My neighbor to the west had the arborists in this afternoon to cut down what was left of her weeping willow. When I first heard the chainsaw I knew what was happening, even before I looked out a window to confirm it. The ice storm of the Martin Luther King holiday weekend of 2007 was unkind to many of the trees around here, including the willow. Although the softer, easily bent trees are thought of as better surviving winter storms, it was not the case in this one. Two or three of the main branches of the willow broke fairly high up. But like most of us with tree damage, our neighbor only had removed what was broken, because the arborists were working overtime after the storm and because it is impossible to tell in the dead of winter exactly how much damage has been done to a deciduous tree. I don’t remember there being any obvious limb death to the willow last year, just its awkward shape, no longer full and symmetrical. But perhaps it took another winter to cause the trouble, because when green returned to the land this spring, the tree told a different story. The larger of the two main trunks – it bifurcates fairly close to the ground -- was completely dead. This was the half that took most of the damage from the storm, I guess. The shorter trunk leafed out, but the larger one stood stark, dark gray, bare, and broken above it. It was a prize find for a family of Downey woodpeckers; they could be seen running up and down the dead branches, and it was also their destination after they had a nibble at my suet feeder. I’m pretty certain they were nesting there. But a damaged tree is a dangerous tree, even when the only things it will hurt if it falls are fencing and other plants, and I knew sooner or later it would have to go. Then just a couple of weeks ago I noticed them: tree fungus, like stacks of dinner plates on the sides of the trunk from the ground up, smaller ones on the roots where they were raised above the ground out in the yard. Never mind that half the tree still stood green, these were a final confirmation of impending death, like a flat-line EEG on a comatose patient. I didn’t know when my neighbor would have the tree taken down, but I was certain it needed to be done before winter and if she were wise then she’d do it very soon, so that she wouldn’t have to rake up the last round of shed leaves. Today, it was happened. Now there’s a great brown gash in the middle of her lawn where a couple of years ago there was a beautiful tree. They didn’t bore the stump; no need really, if the fungus on the root system is any indication. I knew this was coming. I knew it needed done. It’s not even my yard; it wasn’t my tree. But it seems it was my dream, and now there’s a hole in my heart to match the one in the ground. Posted at 07:05 PM Home Fri - July 25, 2008Oh, hello!A new old friend
 Somebody showed up at the suet feeder yesterday that I haven't seen for a year and a half -- a male red-bellied woodpecker. He's a big-un compared to our Downies and Hairies; he was almost too big to hang on to the cage and still reach the block inside it. A female cardinal sat at the top of the curve of that shepherd's hook while he ate, lookin' mighty pissed. All the birds, no matter what species, love that suet feeder. I dunno if it's because it's there when the seed feeder is empty, or because I buy fruit-and-seed mixture suet blocks. Anyway, the cardinals are used to simply intimidating the smaller woodpeckers into flying off if they're there when the cardinals arrive, but the much-larger red-bellied wasn't the least bit worried about Mama cardinal. She sat and gave him the evil-eye for several minutes before he decided he was done. Aside: My kids all complained about the red-bellied's name: "His head is red, not his stomach." And over and over I repeated, "Yes, it is, down around his legs." Honestly! Like I named the thing. Y'know kids, when that species got its English common name, I imagine the orthinologist didn't know from a Mohawk... Posted at 10:31 AM Home Thu - July 10, 2008BaldyHe's missing something
This is Baldy (he doesn't like to hold
still for the camera):
 Baldy has a pretty good life for a wild bird -- a mate and a constant supply of food and water in my back yard. But Baldy has a little problem. Can you spot it? Here's a hint; Baldy should look like this:  No, we don't know why. Posted at 12:06 PM Home Wed - June 18, 2008Revelations at the zooThings we've decided -- me, #1, and
Daughter
1. Leopard cubs are
adorable.
2. Legless lizards are funny, especially when they try to climb the sides of their glass enclosure. 3. Burrowing owls are precious, especially when you hold a conversation with them. ("Brrrrrr-ip!") 4. Okapis are suffering from identity issues. 5. We'd all three be perfectly content to just sit on the wall and watch the prairie dogs for hours. Especially if we had a box of popcorn so we could occasionally toss them a bite (and yes, the peafowl who sit on their back wall can have some, too.) Posted at 09:16 AM Home Wed - June 11, 2008Bald CardinalPoor fellow
We have a feather-challenged cardinal. A
male. Except for a wee red tuft on the top of his head, he is featherless from
the neck up.
We thought at first it was a juvvie going through molt or something, but his looks haven't changed in a month or more. It doesn't seem to cramp his lifestyle; he has a mate. I just hope he doesn't get the birdie equivalent of sunburn or skin cancer due to lack of covering. BTW: male cardinal skin is gray. Posted at 01:24 PM Home Wed - May 21, 2008It's about timeA female goldfinch finds us
But of course she wouldn't present her
good side for the camera. So you
get:
Side:  Tush:  and Head:  Posted at 11:52 AM Home Mon - May 12, 2008In which it is discovered that my backyard is full of bird stuffFeeders. Bath. Etc.
Well, it seems my finch-feeder idea was a
complete failure. Nobody's touched the thing since I hung it, even when I let
the regular seed feeder go empty. The suet block everybody knows how to use,
and it's the favorite of one male cardinal who keeps pulling out tasty bits to
feed his mate. But the finch tube? Not so
much.
I was just wondering when the hummingbirds would be here, then I saw a bird fly through the chain-link fence without stopping and so discovered they are here already. I immediately bought some more food mix to replace that destroyed by this winter's Niagra-under-the-kitchen-sink. So now that feeder is outside, too:  The suet block isn't being hit as hard as it was earlier in the year. I haven't seen a woodpecker in a month. Here's the bird bath I got for Mothers' Day. I put it in the bed along the west fence, the one with all of my neighbor's day lilies. Let's face it, unless they're blooming, it's a pretty boring view. (It's pretty boring even when they are, frankly, but I can't get rid of the damn things long enough to get anything else to grow, even prettier varieties of the same.) This keeps it from being one more thing for my husband to mow around, too. Here's the view from the patio, past the seed feeder to the bath:  I chose it myself, and being a bit of a classics-lover went the ivy-and-Greek-keyhole pattern route:  Before anybody gets all "standing water = mosquitos = West Nile / St. Louis encephalitis," I have some of that stuff made especially to spray on bird baths; stuff that's safe for the birds but suffocates the mosquito larvae. (Yes, we have our very own strain of encephalitis. Ain't we special?) Posted at 08:21 AM Home Mon - May 5, 2008Birdy bitsLittle notes
I saw a female bunting under the seed
feeder Saturday morning, so I assume we have a pair.
Yay!
A pair of blue jays are nesting in our backyard oak. They're still in the building stage, hauling tidbits of grass, straw, and other goodies to the nest. One of them sat on the fence between our yard and Neighbor-to-the-West's, shredding a plastic grocery bag. It was windy and the bit of bag blew away, but the bird went after it and snagged it in mid-air. Not bad for a non-raptor. Nobody's touching the finch tube. Boo. I know we have goldfinches around, I saw a pair late last week over across from Great Place Elementary, although I admit I've never seen them in our yard. Anybody got a clue as to when I should put the hummingbird feeder out? I didn't last year until I saw one. Posted at 07:25 AM Home Sun - April 27, 2008I has a buntingAn INDIGO bunting
Well, I probably have more than one. But
we saw a male at our seed feeder
yesterday!
 (not my photo) He was actually on the ground under the feeder, because the sparrows, cardinals, and starlings had already tossed the whole feeder's worth of seed on the ground. I'd never seen a bunting before. They're migratory in Missouri; strictly "summer" birds. He's in for a bit of a shock this afternoon. We're due for showers with a cold front. Maybe even a bit of a flurry or two. (Oi, weather, mate -- it's nearly freakin' May. Knock off with the white stuff.) Posted at 08:07 AM Home |
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Total entries in this category: Published On: Sep 22, 2009 03:29 PM |