How to Help Birds

This is not a good picture but it illustrates what birds want during this droughty autumn-styled-winter: water. There are three birds, robins, crowded on the clay water dish and another, on the left, flying in. Right next to this water stand/bird bath is the hanging cake of suet that used to be the star attraction at my bird buffet. No longer. The very second I put some water out, birds surrounded the water, perching, drinking, flapping, flying in. Birds are thirsty. No wonder they'd rather eat berries than suet or seed.

Set out a dish or bowl of water if you love your wild creatures. For them it's in short supply.

Meanwhile I don't dare start up a nice cozy outdoor fire. The other day I panicked seeing thick woodsmoke crossing Highway FF but it was a homeowner -- I could see him -- burning leaves and wisely attending to the fire. Lack of water is not only causing thirst but the woods are a tinderbox.

A Really Good Morning

This misty morning, 7 a.m,  after thunderstorms last night, was so dreamlike I took the creaky old Nikon (2004) and not the phone, because the Nikon has great optics, to photograph the marvelous drifting clouds of mist. As I approached the bluebird box, a pair of dark anxious eyes appeared at its opening. Bluebirds like and want to settle in the wooden bluebird boxes humans make; they thrive where humans plow and mow, allowing the birds to locate crawling things they can pin down and eat. I remove and scrub out the bluebird box twice a year (have found bats, snakes, piles of thorny sticks, and a colony of bees); and properly made bluebird boxes can be opened by the side panel for inspection by landlords such as myself. I came closer yet, raising the camera, and out the bluebird flew.

Then I unhooked the side of the box and gently removed the nest, and in it found five baby bluebirds in a warm little heap, breathing and sleeping, and took a photo only the Nikon, not the phone, can take, and here it is.

Turkey and Crow Calls

Saw turkey calls for sale in the farm & home store and couldn't imagine how they worked and was too embarrassed to ask anyone. That issue got cleared up this weekend when I got to see and toy with a variety of bird calls. Two of them, top and bottom, work on the same principle: friction creates a throaty squeak. The coffin-like "fool proof" wooden box and the disk that gets scraped with the drumstick sound alike to me, but I'm told that every turkey hunter knows the difference and has a favorite, including the kind that are like a trumpet. The gold whistle in the middle is not a turkey call but a crow call. Why anyone would want to call crows when they could call turkeys, I don't know, and was too embarrassed to ask. Demonstrated also was the very slight difference between a tom's call and a hen's -- hers is warbly, more chicken-like. I am told that upon hearing it the excited tom "will come all over himself" to find the hen. There's so much to learn.

Wildlife Police Blotter: Crime Close to Home

Case 1. Murder. 05/15/2014, 1:35 p.m.:  Deceased headless bluejay found floating in the Divine Property's rain barrel. Body appears to have been deliberately dropped in the barrel, which is 4 feet high but just beneath the roof and gutter. Officer did not care to seek the victim's head for further clues. Suspects: Delinquent raccoons have been recently encountered in the area. All local feral cats will also be brought in for questioning.

Case 1 crime scene

Case 2: Squatting. On or about 05/03/2014, two house sparrows fly into the garage's open door and occupy the premises despite the laws of common sense. Officer orders the squatters out, opens garage doors and leaves them open for hours at a time, advising them of the risk of death by dehydration and starvation. Birds poop flagrantly on Officer's vehicle and resist eviction and arrest. This continues until, on or about 5/12/2014, noises and flapping in the garage cease. On 5/14/2014, the reek of decay fills the garage. Officer says, "I told you so," and has not located the remains.

Case 3: Theft and vandalism. On 05/14/2014 about 7:30 p.m. a raccoon described only as "obese" lawfully crawls on the roof of the Divine Cabin but then attempts to drink from each of the four glass hummingbird feeders, causing the largest and most expensive feeder to drop to the ground and shatter. Armed with a broom, Officer (temporarily insane) confronts the suspect and whups it upside the head to show who is boss. Suspect turns tail and is struck in the hindquarters and is now a Ten Most Wanted fugitive and a suspect in the headless bluejay case. Raccoons kill poultry and wild birds by biting their heads and necks, and decapitation is quite typical.

Happy Earth Day

So I'm noticing bird doo splashed on my front screen door, unable to figure out how it got there and accumulated because birds can't sit or  fly above the front door because there's a gable-like shelter over it, a "porch roof" I guess it's called, with floodlights installed beneath. Yet one night, bothered because the floodlights hadn't been working correctly, I lifted my eyes and -- surprise! -- saw that barn swallows had started on a nest, mainly mud blended with a little dry grass, and tightly molded to the floodlight, requiring a broomstick to break it up and knock it off. This was the first time such a nest has appeared. There were no eggs in it. Now I think I should have left it there, because the usual summer tenants just above the front door are paper wasps, and if you knock at their nest with a broomstick you'll do it only once.

Everywhere, Endless, and Changing

I want so much to share the beauty I see, living out here--daily, my cup overflows. In the city, I got beauty at the museum or in individual plants or trees, and only in glimpses, so I moved and I stay so I can feast on the beauty that is everywhere and endless and changing. On my gravestone please write, "She loved beauty."  Or maybe this, from a North Country British gravestone:

The wonder of the world,
The beauty and the power,
The shapes of things,
Their colours, lights and shades,
These I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts.

(That wasn't written by a Londoner.)

Woke early this late August morning with a head cold returned in full force (darn, but that's life; I'll take it) and peeked outside and the sun was just rising, but I saw turkeys at the meadow's edge, and although it's not a bird-book picture of a turkey, the above photo is what I actually saw. And loved it.

Who Goes There?

I took a beautiful Sunday slog down LaBarque creek when the water was low, and along the creek edges and wet sand bars I saw evidence of wildlife traffic, come to the creek for a drink. Traces of ice were in the water that had been left in shadow; I broke it up like plate glass and pushed it downstream so more creatures could come to the creek edge and drink. What we have here  is raccoon tracks stylized in wet sand and a three-toed footprint of a very large and heavy bird (each toe the length of my ring finger). Wondered what it was -- the LaBarque hosts herons and egrets,  but it looks most like the track of a turkey. If it had been a heron the footprint would have had a less splayed, more slender profile and have a lighter fourth toeprint in back. So it could be an egret, but the fact is we've got more turkeys. Actually we are fortunate to have plenty of both.

Does Suet Suffocate Birds?

I hesitated to feed my birds suet in summer because of rumors that hot weather melts the suet on their beaks, and could stuff up their nostrils so they'll suffocate (they don't have fingers like you and I would use). Researching several birdfeeding sites, I tend toward the conclusion that it is not true. The suet I buy melts on my fingers, which are 98.6 degrees. Birds' body temperatures range from 104 to 109 degrees. People do say what WILL suffocate them is peanut butter, denser and with a higher melting point. Just as gobs of it might get stuck in our own throats, they might get stuck in a bird's throat, any time of year.

Wild birds love peanut butter, but mix it thoroughly with suet or lightly frost a pine cone with it so they can get only bits each time. I assume the risk is low, or there'd be more dead birds in people's backyards, but you don't want to murder your birds by accident.

I buy commercial suet, mixed with seeds. From experience I know it's much softer than natural or rendered suet. I also serve mixed dry seeds and fresh water daily. For the hummingbird feeders, weekly I use dish soap and water and scrub the drowned ants and mold out of them before refilling with fresh homemade nectar (1 part sugar to 4 parts boiling water, 3 parts if you want your hummers livin' large).

When Birds Aren't Pretty

Squawk! Scuffle! This morning I saw my homie the Downy Woodpecker and the visiting migrant, the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, sparring and threatening each other on the suet cage. Not one minute later, when the Yellow-Belly was pecking at the suet, came a Starling, his shawl still peppered with white stars; he and his big buddies all wanted some suet. Flapping his wings scared off the smaller Yellow-Belly. Meanwhile, Hairy and Downy woodpeckers clung to trees at a safe distance, and songbirds, such as Blue Jays and cardinals, and a row of Starlings, waited, clinging to branches...a perfect lunch counter for the Red-Tailed hawk perched on a cedar branch high above the feeder just waitin' to snatch somebody (he likes pigeons).

Then came the biggest woodpecker of all, the spectacular crow-sized Pileated, king of the birds around here, and everybody let him have as much suet as he liked. As soon as he was gone, the fighting and sparring began again, and I wondered (exasperated, like a parent) if I shouldn't just take the suet indoors until they learned to stop fighting and share.

P.S. I replaced suet for a few days with a chunk of shortening, an ingredient in many "make your own suet" recipes. Birds no matter how cold or greedy did not like it at all.

It's Got a Yellow Belly

Northern migration has begun, and that means spring is coming! First Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker of the year arrived at the suet yesterday morning, and I wanted to prove it to you, but I didn't get a decent picture until today.

Sapsuckers mostly live and breed in Canada, but they winter in the South, and just as soon as the days begin lengthening they pass through here goin' on up to home. They belong to the woodpecker family. Sap is not available just now so they'll take suet and I'm happy to serve it, I get so much pleasure from watching birds and learning their ways. I expect elegantly-dressed Mr. and Mrs. Flicker to pass through here any day now.

Woodpecker Apartments

Tried the Flint Quarry Trail hoping to see a flint quarry. But instead I saw Pileated Woodpecker luxury highrise apartments. Woodpeckers pair up, and you'll notice they all have the same address, but each pecks out his or her own place, giving each other space. This must be what keeps them cheerfully whooping and yammering, biggest and noisiest birds in the forest, always raising more kids just like themselves, and my favorite birds of all time.

Nobody was home.

Friend of mine once said the best name for a human apartment building would be "The Balzac Apartments." I never laughed so hard.

How to Render Raw Suet for Bird Feeding

Reeve keeps cattle and gave me 13 lbs. of suet, or the fat from around a cow's kidneys, raw. I froze it but knew I'd eventually have to "render" it, or cook it down to pure lard the way store-bought suet is. Never done this before. Put on an apron expecting grease as I cut room-temperature hunks into one-inch pieces and tore off the "silver skin" or membrane, but it was more like handling cooked chicken breast. Cooked first batch on low flame (45 minutes), second batch on medium flame (20 minutes) until I got a golden liquid, then scooped the "cracklins" out of it...the cracklins are edible but don't taste or smell good. I was afraid rendering beef fat would stink, the way they say sheep fat stinks, but it wasn't unpleasant. Poured the liquid into disposable pans and put it on the porch to cool, and within an hour it was perfectly white hardened clean LARD, aka beef tallow, which because it's purified will stay fresh for my bird friends even in summer. Cleanup was the greasy part, because when that stuff cools -- fast -- it's hard as flint. Will I do this again? Probably not; easier to buy. But I'm proud to have done it for my birds. Finished product at right.

Turkeys in the Mist

The August morning I took this photo it rained again, just enough to bring forth steam from the earth, and to my surprise this brought the wild turkeys out. Usually they visit only at dawn and dusk, and they have a favorite place to hunt, which is the old rotting coldframe that was so well made that seven years later I am still unable to tear it down.

Mom's Roosters

I'm told Mom's rooster collection began with a pair of salt and pepper shakers...and this aint all of em, either. I can understand why people like roosters: confident, crowing, pretty, winged, masculine, symbol of the daytime.

Times of the Signs, Part 3

Nothing heartens me like the sign "Live Bait," and the Eureka Feed Station has that sign up all year. Another sign too, seasonal, mentions Christmas; the only one like it in town! Divine purchases there include birdseed by the sack, bales of straw, cases of suet, deerskin leather work gloves (8 years and grubby-lookin but still good!), mousetraps and poison, salt blocks, tools & fishing license. Run by a father and son. Used to be closed on Sunday and Monday also. One time Demetrius left his wallet on the counter on a Saturday and it was in the same place when he returned on Tuesday. The Feed Station now, somewhat reluctantly, has Sunday hours. Posted on the door:

Sunday:
8:30-10 Church
Open 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.

Signs of Spring This Week

1. Goldfinches molting, turning from olive and gray to bright Easter yellow.
2. Today (Feb. 6), the year's first cardinal whistling/mating song.
3. Today the blue jay calling in the treetops -- sounds like dice rattling in a cup. I bet he was looking for a mate as well.
4. Bunnies suddenly appearing from their magical nowhere.
5. Buds on trees, but especially on the dogwoods.

Blizzards of Birds

Yesterday on my walk up the road I got caught in a noisy blizzard of robins whipping round and round in an aerial whirlpool. They were flocking. Today a flock of hundreds of European starlings AND robins, a mixed group, whirled up and settled in the trees and shrubs right outside the house, bleating and eating dried-out serviceberries plus bird seed. This is the best photo I got, because when I set foot outside to get better photos the birds up and streamed away. Awesome.

Hummingbirds Return

Hummingbirds are back, just about at normal numbers here in eastern Missouri. Ecstatic to see mine. I asked them where they had been, but they didn't answer. That means, "Don't question us. Just enjoy us." and so I do! I hope everyone else who missed their hummingbirds has seen them "come home."

His Lordship

"A spectacular crow-sized woodpecker," says the Peterson Guide. It's rare to see pileated woodpeckers on suet, but pairs live here year-round and come to dine and entertain me from December to May, and again from July (when they train their sons and daughters to eat suet) to September (when the parents take a much-deserved vacation). They live for up to 12 years, and dwell in "singles" apartments in hollowed-out trees. The male has a red "mustache." They all scream for joy. The well-known cartoon woodpecker was modeled on a pileated woodpecker. Photo taken today!