Ground Exercises

Oh frabjous day, calooh, callay, the baby squirrels have come out of their nests.  There is nothing quite like the crazed frenzy of a  baby squirrel running amok in the yard.  The first time I witnessed it, I thought something was dreadfully wrong, (see very first blogpost in the sidebar archives, but don't judge me by my naive ranting---since then I've learned they fledge twice a year, spring and fall, so that poor little thing was a September fledgling). Now I've seen it often enough to know it is what newly fledged squirrels do when they discover their amazing strength and agility. Imagine the exhilaration of finding a whole new world outside the confines of a deep nest.

Today's little guy had a small stick about the size of a pencil, all covered in green lichen, with which he rolled and tumbled and played so vigorously it's a wonder he didn't exhaust himself. Sometimes he would stop long enough to nibble along the stick, as if eating an ear of corn, then suddenly return to his frenzied antics, wildly leaping and twisting into the air like a crazed gymnast. Sometimes he'd settle on his haunches perfectly still, then leap a vertical 18 inches into the air, only to land straight back down on his haunches like he'd never left the ground.  Then he'd return to tumbling around his stick, tearing partway up the tree trunk and back down to attack his stick again. How cute and white, his upturned belly when he landed on his back.  How giant and furry his tail, seeming way too big for his tiny self. Of course, he's gone by the time I get back with a camera.

More than newfound freedom, these are probably ground exercises, for the purpose of developing the life skills needed to leap safely through tree branches at high altitudes.

Do your exercises well, little squirrel.  You're going to need all the speed and agility you can get when Moe runs you off the deck with his tennis racket. dkm

David and Goliath

What are the odds of another bird and bee story so close on the heels of the last one?  Probably pretty high, considering the season, but I like this one.

My giant of a husband Moe (6'4", 280#), wages constant war with the carpenter bees on our back deck. Because I'm not fond of harmful insecticides, he keeps an old tennis racket handy to whack at the bees when we're supposedly relaxing with a nice glass of wine overlooking the backyard in the evenings.  The ongoing battle of Moe vs the carpenter bees is one of my greatest sources of entertainment.  It's a regular David and Goliath story. And as in the original version, David keeps winning.

Perhaps Moe will be pleased when I tell him about the well-equipped stranger who came to his assistance today.  I had just returned from morning yoga practice with my yayas when I heard the telltale ratatat of woodpecker just outside the bedroom door that opens onto the deck.  I assumed it was the red bellied friend that often comes to the feeder.

But no! Even without glasses I could tell by the size and color it was a pileated woodpecker hard at work on the banister. He stayed long enough for me to find glasses and phone. These shots had to be snapped through the glass, since opening the door would have scared the fellow off.  Hence, they're blurry.  Still, how thrilling, the gift of a pileated woodpecker. Not to mention funny. Wish I had thought to make a video of this guy.  I'm not sure he knew what to make of the bee that kept buzzing around his head.

And I don't know if Moe will be more grateful for the eviction of the bee or upset with the further damage done to the banister, but I was over the moon at the opportunity to observe a pileated woodpecker going eye-to-eye with a carpenter bee a dozen feet from where I stood. dkm

The Birds and the Bees

Pukeko G gets the honors for guessing first what caused my chickadees to abandon house and home. It was a buzzing bumblebee nest deep inside the chickadee nest.  The answer was slowly revealed, and got more surprising by the day as I watched, read, and learned. I originally thought Madame Chickadee had already laid her eggs, but when she abandoned the nest, I assumed she had gone somewhere else to lay them. I read online that chickadees often build several nests as back-up, and it is not unusual for them to move if they have to. So I sent them my best wishes for finding a good place in time for the coming of the eggs, happy in the hope that Nest B, wherever it was, would suit them better.

I did notice a fat bumblebee flying around abandoned Nest A when I eventually opened the house, and even took note of how fearless it was. It flew right to the nest and crawled on the mossy top while I was still peeking, but I thought only that the bee was curious. I didn't know enough then to imagine it was nesting in there.

Notice the blurry hovering bee at the door.

How could I not guess she was going to her nest?  But I didn't.

One article said to remove abandoned bird nests to encourage rebuilding, so after enough days to ensure the chickadees were permanently gone, I talked Moe into helping me with the task.  I don't know what I was afraid of, but I didn't want to do it alone.

He slipped it out of the box on a kitchen spatula. Imagine our surprise when the nest itself began to buzz. Not a soft buzz that could be chalked up to imagination. No. This was a furious insistent buzz that wouldn't quit. Moe laid the nest in the dry bed of a nearby birdbath, and we stood still to listen and wonder. Not only was it buzzing. It was vibrating. I whipped out my phone and began taking a video. One mossy depression in particular was shaking, and as my camera and I watched, out of that spot wiggled a huge fuzzy bumblebee.  It hovered over the hole for a moment with a piece of green moss hanging from its leg. It shook it off, then zoomed over my shoulder and away. I could not have been more surprised, but was thrilled to get it on video, already thinking what a great blog post it would make.



Still, I didn't get that the bee had a nest in there. I just thought it had gotten stuck, and I was its great liberator. But alas, after only one viewing, I deleted the video immediately.  Now I regret the hasty decision, but at the time, my background commentary so embarrassed me, I knew I would never post it. Let's just say it did not represent me well :-).  In the surprise of the moment I lost all pretense of acting like an adult. It's quite shocking to hear oneself in the act of being oneself.

But I digress. We left the box-shaped nest in the birdbath, thinking that was the end of the story. But two days later I heard it buzzing again.  That's when I finally realized there was a bumblebee nest inside and it was likely what had frightened off the chickadees. So I wrote that last blog post, asking for guesses, though it's clear to me now that most people, like Moe and Pukeko G, could figure it out right away. Two more days passed and the buzzing stopped.  A couple of pokes with a stick helped me decide the hot sun had sent the queen bumblebee packing.

Meantime, I read Patricia Lichen's coincidental and informative blog post about the nesting habits of a queen bumblebee, and it made me curious to see if there was such a colony inside our nest, now abandoned by everyone.  So yesterday I raked it apart with a couple of sticks and sure enough, found the remains of a hard waxy bumblebee colony along with another surprise that I didn't notice at all until I looked at the photos in my camera.

Remains of bumblebee colony that fell out of mossy nest when I raked it open.

Bumblebee colony turned over.

But look!  What's that in the lower right hand corner of the photo?

Just one lonely chickadee egg! 

To give you an idea of size.

See how precious and tiny.

Then came the biggest surprise of all.  The nest had fallen apart into two layers—top and bottom.  The bumblebee colony was in the bottom layer.  I had combed through both sections with my sticks, so I was pretty sure there was only one egg.  But just in case, I gently raked through the top layer one more time. And look what I found, carefully hidden under the downy cover.

So special and fragile. So well protected. They were probably doomed from the moment that queen bumblebee began her magnum opus, the great work of her life, but how heavy my heart to discover it now. Are the parents grieving? Will they mate again?  Have they begun a new nest? Oh, the beauty and brutality of the natural world. dkm

What Harm Befell Them?

 My chickadees are gone. Just gone. As in not here anymore. Replaced by silence and mystery. The abandoned nest of green moss, grass, and oak pollen, was topped with fluff of chickadee down. No eggs. No eggshells. No completion of the work in progress. No farewell message. No hint as to what harm befell the poor things, and surely it was harm. What would cause a diligent pair of chickadees to abandon their nest so near hatching time, if not harm or threat to their safety?

I had watched them for only three days. His regular bringing of food to the doorway led me to believe she was keeping eggs warm, if not already brooding newly hatched young. Then on the fourth day all was quiet. Being only two weeks from the time of the building of the nest and not yet having heard tiny chirps, I'm pretty sure it was too soon for nestlings to have fledged. I watched for a few more days, making sure all nest activity had ceased before I dared open the box to peek inside. The only sign of activity was a large bumble bee flying around near the box. At first I thought the mother had died on her nest. On closer inspection, it turned out to be only fluff, or down.

In this day of hi-tech instant answers to questions, it seems inconceivable that we will never know what happened. Still, the wonder and mystery of the natural world is exactly that. Wonder and mystery. Even in a civilized backyard, we can never have all the answers. It is as it should be—and the reason for the magnetic attraction for all of us, is it not?

 I was so looking forward to seeing a chickadee family into the world. Was it my imagination that the mysterious black cat lurking in the bushes across the way on the morning of the fourth day of observation was licking his chops?  But now I have another guess that may be more likely. Will share it next post.  It has to do with what we found on April 7th when we removed the nest from the box, and what still buzzes there today. Anyone care to guess before I post pictures? dkm

Sir Chickadee at the door, March 28

Several days of silence and mystery

April 4th

Closer view, April 4th

Oy Vey . . .

Let me not spend March indoors again.  Carolina chickadees are already well into tending a nest in last year's bluebird house and I almost missed it for housecleaning! Oy vey! I don't know what got into me—some sort of manic preoccupation with organizing every room coupled with the ruthless throwing out of things. Let it not be an omen that something alarming is about to happen for which I need to have my house in order.  More likely, it's that things had come to such a state of neglect, something had to be done for the tranquility of my soul :-).  Even more likely, and as my psychology professor friend Steve believes, it was that I am on the verge of finishing my manuscript, a prospect so frightening I must take drastic measures to prevent it—measures as drastic as organizing my office, cleaning the basement and re-alphabetizing all the books in the house. For real. I did all of those things, but I swear I want to finish my book. Can't imagine why I would so sabotage myself. Steve says it happens all the time. Proving him wrong is enough motivation to goad me into finishing—as soon as I clean off my desk.  That's a project worth two days of prevention.

Whatever, I was vaguely aware of the possibility of chickadees in the birdhouse, because about two weeks ago, my grandchildren and I saw two of them entering and leaving repeatedly with bits of moss in their beaks.  Oh the magic of witnessing such an event with young children—the whispering, the stillness, the rapt attention. When we were sure both chickadees had flown away, we opened and peeked inside the house, thrilling at the freshly built-up layers of pine straw and soft green moss we found there. But I feared we had chased them off because I didn't see them again until today, though I had only glanced briefly on my daily passes to and from the compost heap.

To be truthful I haven't been longsitting outside recently, in favor of watching this year's Spring through window of house and car.  The beauty of spring bloom in Atlanta is so extreme it appears extravagant even through glass, until you sit outside and recognize you've only perceived a fraction of its intensity. Yesterday I sat out for two hours, unable to tear myself from the directness of the sensations. One can do nothing but gasp in astonishment at the cherry petals falling like snow on every warm breeze, the fluffy azalea color at every turn impossible to comprehend, the lacy white dogwood blossoms sprinkled across yards and woods, the inchworms and strands of oak pollen floating by on invisible filaments of silk, the occasional glints of sunlight traveling along the filaments, the aggressive territorial birdsong mingled with flirtatious chase and flutter of mating season, the rattle of woodpecker on the gutter, the cack-cack-cack-cack of nuthatch, the boastful variety of cardinal calls, and the pleasure of all pleasures—chickadees in and out of the copper-roofed bird house.

I think she's egg-sitting and he's tending her. As yet I hear no tiny chirps, but soon. Today begins Nestwatch 2012, this year of Carolina chickadees.  May they see me through the finishing of the fabled "manuscript."  dkm

Madam Chickadee protecting her eggs from the respectful but unskilled photographer.  Click once on the photo to enlarge and see her pretty white cheeks. 

Of Things Haiku

Waycool haiku thankyou

Look
what
my
good
neighbors
put
on
pinked
yellow
paper
in
response
to
last
week's
daffodils.
Thanks, Sara and Ed!


Speaking of  haiku, nature lovers who also like wordplay will like Patricia Lichen's blog.  It's fun, environmentally savvy, literary, and wholly unique. On weekends  she invites her readers to respond with haiku or a limerick to one of her posts from the last five days. She brings a moment of poetic beauty to every Monday by posting a provocative quotation about the environment.  In addition to the midweek tidbits I learn about the environment on her blog, I look forward to the Monday quote and to the opportunity for a little creative wordplay every weekend. I don't know Patricia and Patricia doesn't know me,  but I know you will enjoy her blog. dkm

Kerfuffle in Bird World

Yowza! It's mating/nesting season in bird world. What a noisy lot of activity in the backyard on this seventy-five degree February day in Georgia.  Chase games, male bravado, territory claims, and mating connections. One could almost spin around blindfolded and point, to choose what to write about.

Today I choose a sudden loud persistent eruption coming from a big sloppy nest in the high crook of a tree branch in the way-back part of the yard. From a distance, I could see and hear many small birds flying around the nest in a fury of righteous indignation and effusive scolding.  I approached slowly to see what I could see. There were at least a dozen birds and three species circling the nest and flitting in and out of the surrounding bare branches (still too early for leaves). Tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, and chickadees, the highest percentage of these being titmice. Eventually, they quieted and flew away, leaving me wondering what happened. I went back later with a camera for a shot of the nest.

Not sure, but looks like a squirrel's nest to me. Why the attention from so many small birds?

I will never know the reason for the kerfuffle in a nest way too big for any of those tiny species, but one thing I have learned from previous observations. Whenever such outrageous scolding erupts in bird world, it is not without cause. Somebody had invaded somebody else's rights, and the victim had called for help. In the society of the backyard, it appeared to be the equivalent of a military response to a great social injustice, minus a newspaper account to inform us of the details. In the silent and mysterious aftermath I can only hope the little guys won. dkm

Two Hours Well Spent

The weather forecast warned of freezing temperatures for last Saturday, which meant the daffodils and camellias would all be ruined overnight. It wasn't worth cutting the camellias since they last only a day in a vase, and since the bushes are still covered with buds that will bloom after the freeze. But the daffodils. I couldn't bear losing all the longlasting daffodils in one overnight freeze.

It didn't look like a big job. How long could it take to cut a few daffodils spread around the yard? So I took a couple of pitchers half-filled with water outside and began cutting. Filled the next two, and the next. Went back for more and filled those, too.  Before it was over, I had thirteen pitchers and jars filled with fresh cut daffodils.

Delivered the six fullest jars to my six nearest neighbors before I thought of taking a photo.

Leftovers after the first six deliveries

Gave three more jars to my yayas and still had four left for my own house.

Love the white petaled ones best

And sure enough, it did freeze that night. 

Frozen sugar water in hummingbird feeder

Now, almost a week later, the daffodils are still bright and beautiful indoors. The nine recipients expressed gracious appreciation for the deliveries, and their pleasure multiplied mine by nine.  Still, I wonder how the freeze will affect the remaining spring blooms, especially the cherries and hydrangeas. dkm

Red Glove Mystery

Fair warning: this post has nothing to do with the supposed topic of this blog—nature—unless there's something I don't know about the mating habits of gloves.

So—how can this happen?

1.  The backstory: Several years ago, my sister,  Sally,  gave me a nice pair of red gloves as a gift.  I wear them every winter, washing them in the machine,  maybe once a year, and they always come out looking brand new.  Granted, we have mild winters in Georgia so they don't get worn more than a few times each winter, but they are warm, and I like wearing them because I think of Sally when I do.  I can't remember how many years I've had them.  Many.

2. Last  fall,  I cleaned out the front hall closet, and noticed there was only one red glove.  I wondered where its mate was but didn't give it much thought, assuming it would turn up somewhere, and left the one glove in the glove box on the top shelf of the closet.

3.  This winter, I went away to South Carolina for the month of January.

4. While I was gone, our longtime good friends from Kansas, Dick and Barb, visited my husband for a few days and stayed at our house.  It happened to be the only cold week we had in January.

5. In South Carolina I received an e-mail from my visiting friend, Barb, saying she had borrowed my red gloves to go for a walk one cold morning, and lost one of them on her walk.  She planned to buy me a replacement pair.

6. I e-mailed back immediately to tell her I had lost the glove, not she, that one odd glove had been floating around in the closet for awhile before she ever got there, and that there was no need to buy a new pair.

7. She sent me a funny e-mail back saying, "Okay, but I thought I started my walk with two." :-)

8. Our friends returned to Kansas, and I returned home to discover that Barb had indeed bought a brand new pair of red gloves and left them in the guestroom for me.  They are very nice gloves with a ruffled cuff.  I thanked her, of course, and went to put the new gloves away in the hat and mitten chest (not the box in the closet).

9.  The plot thickens. In the chest I found three old red gloves, all matching the odd one in the closet.

10. This I do not understand. I originally had only one pair of red gloves. Now I have three pairs.  Two old, and one new.

11.  Now the plot gets thicker yet.  I lay out all four old gloves to discover that three of them are lefties and only one is a righty----and worse----the only righty has an unraveled finger.

12. My gloves reproduced in the hat and mitten chest?  Three lefts and one right? How did Barb start with two, then have only one, if there were four all along?  And how did that finger get unraveled? To my knowledge, there are no mice in the house.

13. And then the plot got thicker yet.  I pulled out all the gloves to take a photo for this blogpost---and you guessed it---I find ANOTHER old one.  Now I have five old red gloves, two new.

14. I called Sally to ask if she remembered the gloves. She didn't. Sally is a practical woman. She suggested maybe she gave me three pairs and that Barb did lose one glove on her walk. My response to that: why would anyone give her sister three pairs of identical red gloves?

15. Sally is satisfied with her explanation. The mystery lives on in my mind. dkm

So It's Time

Conk-la-ree! Conk-la-ree! Dtdtdteeeeeeee!  Loud and many.  From the neighbor's tall holly just over the fence. Sounded like red-winged black birds to me—couldn't be—not this early. But yes, on closer inspection, the holly was nearly saturated with blackbirds. So they're already beginning their pass-through on their way to parts further north, soon to be here in huge flocks that cover the ground. Our warm winter has fooled them.

I returned home on Jan 31st, after a month away, to daffodils already in bloom. Earliest I've ever seen them is Valentine's Day, often not till early March.  

daffodils in early Feb, 2012

The winter hellebores have only just bloomed!  Daffodils? Impossible. 

winter helleborus, Feb 8, 2012

helleborus, Feb 8, 2012

I shouldn't have been surprised, because the day I left home, on Jan 2nd, the flowering quince blossoms were just beginning to open—so early I feared they would live to regret it. But they flourished, and I nearly missed them. 

flowering quince, just past peak bloom, Feb 8, 2012

 The camellias that usually show in late Feb &  March are falling all over themselves trying to outbloom each other. 

pink perfection, Feb 8, 2012

pink perfection, Feb 8, 2012

magniflora, Feb 8, 2012

magniflora, Feb 8, 2012

big red, Feb 8, 2012

The cherry buds are swollen and purple, at least four weeks early. I'll be perturbed with Jack Frost if he spoils the backyard cherry blossom show this year.

And just now, as I take my hour of long-sitting in the backyard for the first time since I've been home, who's that I see in hot pursuit of whom? None other than Sir & Madame Bluebird! While I can't be sure it's the same pair I watched through the 2011 nesting season, there can be no mistaking what this pair has in mind today.  Such a teasing and fluttering and darting and chasing and fluffing—in and out of the branches behind the copper roofed bird house. My oh my.

General Beauregard Lee, Georgia's legendary ground hog at Yellow River Game Ranch, who has a 94% accuracy rate, predicted an early spring when he made no shadow on Feb 2, but I don't think even he meant this early.

Wonder what all this says about the kind of summer we're in for, and if the early warming is the certain result of our longterm careless environmental behaviors. dkm