Tomato Thief

Large green tomato
missing from vine, found chewed up
and left on driveway

~dkm 361/365

Haiku Departure

To the man who makes
my life more entertaining
Happy Father's Day

*****

When Matt's here you act like two boys
The squirrels on the deck become toys
       You chase them like fools
       Tennis rackets, your tools
Such clapping and yelling and noise

You say you admire their ability
To leap off the deck with agility
       Each squirrel is so skilled
       You say you are thrilled
To cheer and applaud their mobility

To applaud each small acrobat?
Your reason is nothing like that
       It's not the applause
       You do it because
You're hoping to see one go SPLAT

*****

To concerned readers
The squirrels have been victors
In every instance

~dkm 336/365

Click-click-click-click-click!

Found the mystery bluebird nest of last post, but not before days of watching Sir Blue work overtime chasing away squirrels. He and his girlfriend have settled in the little house on the pine trunk afterall.  I was dead wrong about their having borrowed the squirrel's nest.

She is sitting on eggs now and only comes out occasionally, looking bedraggled and small. Is it the stress of growing and laying eggs that has taken such toll on her formerly robust appearance? Sometimes she sits on the doorstep and looks out for long periods of time. Sometimes she flies to a cherry branch for a short spell away from the nest. Imagine how boring, her long ordeal. I wonder if our early summer temperatures (93F/34C degrees yesterday) will affect egg-hatching.  Seems like it might be good for eggs, but bad for mama. The box is in the shade most of the day, but it probably gets hot in there. I'd want some fresh air, too.

 No swing-side observations for awhile because the top of the swing is Sir Blue's post of choice this go-round.  Ever watchful, he sits long and alert on a variety of nearby perches, but most often on the swing.

 I've grown so fond of this little blue daddy for his noble vigilance, I call sweet words of encouragement to him from afar. Watching his valiant safeguarding of his progeny is Moe's and my newest evening entertainment from the deck. He wows us with his protective aeronautics. 

He begins each aggressive chase with a divebomb at the squirrel's head, then follows in hot pursuit after its bushy tail, till the fellow is run off.  His chasing flight is accompanied by a rapid clicking sound. I can't tell if it comes from his wings or beak or throat, but I'm thinking it's his wing feathers hitting against each other. However he clicks, it's an effective defense against squirrels four times his size. They don't stick around to argue, but they always come back.

 I don't think herbivorous squirrels pose much danger to a bluebird nest, unless they've buried nuts in there, but what Sir Blue doesn't understand is that the pinetree is one of their most direct and frequent routes to the playground in the canopy. It's going to be a long and arduous nesting round for Sir, however self-imposed.  

If the first day of divebombing was egg-laying day, and it takes two weeks to hatch, we should have new baby blues by the middle of next week, June 5th or 6th. dkm

Go Bluebirds!

Drama in the cherry tree.  Who knew bluebirds would attack a squirrel?

Earlier observations had given me the impression bluebirds are as meek as they are beautiful. They allowed a tiny gregarious house wren to run them out of their chosen nesting box. They come to the deck feeder only when no others are there and leave the instant another approaches. He offers a quiet murmur of a song—never pretentious or arrogant—more complacent, even timid. They seem the model for quiet contemplation when they sit long on a low branch watching for worms in the grass.

Not this morning. Again and again Sir Blue came at the squirrel, preventing its progress along a branch in the cherry tree. When the squirrel didn't give up, Madame Blue joined in the aggressive flutter and dive-bombing act until the squirrel retreated down the trunk.

I knew the Blues had a nest nearby because he's been ever-present in the yard recently, busy in the relentless search for food. I've guessed she is sitting on eggs, and he's feeding her, but I couldn't tell where.

Not long ago they gave me hope when they investigated the two corner nesting boxes nailed to pinetree trunks in the upper yard near the house. One of those pines stands right next to the cherry in question, but I supposed the Blues chose a more hidden spot when I saw no more activity there.  Nobody has nested in those old boxes for years, I think because the squirrels have chewed the holes too large to be safe, but I don't know for sure. The last nesters were a family of tufted titmice several years ago.




This morning's repeated attacks on the squirrel sent me in search through the cherry tree and environs.  I could find only this messy collection of leaves and sticks. I thought it belonged to a squirrel, but other than the empty birdhouse on the pinetree, there could be no other place.

  Have my good and gentle bluebirds purloined a squirrels's nest? Wahoo! This will be fun to watch.  dkm

Johnny Appleseed

If I didn't know better, I'd think the squirrels  understood our conversations about cutting down their tree. Its roots have buckled the driveway and are beginning to crack the brick wall that holds up our front yard.  It is an old tree in danger of splitting anyway, and our tree man tells us we need to cut it before the new spring root growth causes further damage to the wall.  While I understand the wall issue,  I was resistant to  losing the tree,  first because it is a beautiful tree, and second because of the squirrels' nest it harbors. I had hoped to witness the whole season of birth and caretaking by the family squirrel from my morning coffee window.

Then wonder of wonders, a few days before the scheduled felling of the tree, my brilliant squirrels up and moved!  One morning, not two but three squirrels worked together making multiple trips up and down the trunk of the pear tree carrying clumps of dry leaves in their mouths and leaping into the neighbor's magnolia tree across the driveway.  The magnolia leaves, being evergreen, dense, and opaque offer much better cover, so yay, the squirrels will be safer from hawks there, and it lessens the sting of losing the pear tree.

On the day Johnny Appleseed arrived with his trucks and saws and cranes and ropes, he said they would take great care with the nest in case it was still in use.   To my surprise and delight, the workmen were beyond careful.  They roped and cut and set the branch down gently in the yard, and seemed happy to do so.   They confirmed the nest was abandoned, but it did my heart good to see them so respect it.  Not to my credit is my surprise that men who operate such heavy equipment would exhibit enough tenderness of soul to preserve a pesky squirrels' nest.  But in a world so full of bravado and aggression, the tender moment uplifted me.

The tree was in full spring bloom on the day of its death.  I grieved its loss.  We filled the house with its stinky blossoms.  dkm

Shalom to Winter . . .

. . . and honor to the squirrels of the nest in the Bradford Pear outside my window---the same nest I wrote about on Dec 13 in "Hey, Hawk!" Usually the squirrels build their nests too high in the trees to observe closely on a regular basis, but this one is low and near enough to the window by which I drink my early morning coffee that I've observed it all winter. I didn't see it being built, and only first noticed it when the leaves of the pear tree fell away in November. Watching a squirrel's nest on any given day could never be considered a rewarding habit, but in the course of a winter of morning meditations over coffee, enough activity has accumulated in my memory to be worthy of comment.

First there was the Dec 13 invasion by the Cooper's hawk who stabbed at the nest and threw out dry leaves amid the outrage of the house finches. I wondered at the time if the nest was active or abandoned, because as far as I knew, the hawk only searched it, and did not find a meal there before the finches chased it off.

The next noticeable activity came on the morning of the third day of continuously below-freezing temperatures after our January ice storm, in an observation that touched my heart. Two house finches were clinging to the underside of the nest, apparently gleaning the warmth that leaked from the nest's interior. I assumed this was an indication that at least one warm-blooded squirrel was burrowed inside the nest, and I liked to think it hinted at a cooperative living arrangement whereby the squirrels lent warmth to the finches in January in exchange for the favor of chasing the hawk from their nest in December. Whether by agreement or random response to a need makes no difference. That it happened at all was a phenomenon I found sweet and paradoxical, given the otherwise brutal nature of life in the wild.

Later we had a week of unseasonably warm weather between our Jan & Feb snows, and during that week two squirrels busied themselves bringing leaves to the nest in an industrious display of homemaking activity that I observed on only one morning. I know not if they were fortifying for another possible cold spell, or preparing for an upcoming birth, but I'm committed to watching them throughout the spring season, which seems suddenly to have arrived, if today's warm air and returning orchestration of birdsong are any indication. dkm

p.s. The photo of the nest in question was taken on the day after the light snow of Feb 9 & 10.