Hummingbirds Have Dirty Beaks, Etc.

Socializing on my porch are three people watching hummingbirds at the feeders. Two of us discover that one is married to a hummingbird expert, now retired, who volunteers to band hummingbirds for the Department of Natural Resources, and does it at state parks where the public is invited to watch.

"People can band hummingbirds?"
"Trained and licensed people with very steady hands."
"Why are they banded?"
"To track survival and how the same ones come back to the same spot year to year."
"Do the bands have radios in them?"
"No, they are just very small pieces of metal. They can't be more than 4 percent of the bird's body weight."
"How do you catch hummingbirds to band them or check them?"
"With a feeder that has a trapdoor you pull."
"That must [annoy them a lot]."
"You have to know how not to stress the birds."
"I fill the feeders with one part sugar to four parts water, boiled together, then cooled."
"You don't have to boil. Just dissolve the sugar in warm tap water."
"I thought boiling was doing the hummingbirds a favor."
"It's not necessary."
"I thought it helped control that black guck that grows in the feeders during warm weather."
"That guck comes from bacteria on the end of the birds' beaks."
"Isn't it like they're sipping through a straw?"
"No. They have an upper and lower beak. The beak is long because it holds a long tongue. It's their tongue that goes into feeders and flowers."
"How come I never see their mouths open?"
"Because having feeders you see them only when they're feeding."

Hummingbirds Can Drown

Out of electrical power for six hours as a huge gigantic terrific thunderstorm seized the world  Thursday night about 6 p.m., turning the sky as dark as 9 p.m., ripping down tree limbs and pouring rain, with nothing else to do I watched as a hummingbird clung, its bill raised and vertical the whole time, to the feeder for half an hour as the feeder swung in the pummeling wind. It did not sip. It did not flinch.

The bird's endurance was so remarkable I even took video that included the thunder, lightning, and slashing rain (and accidentally deleted the video) but fortunately also took still photographs as best I could. Even when drenched and ragged, the hummingbird clung, face to the sky as if in defiance, and only near the end of the half-hour did it waver a little before buzzing away. Hummingbirds come from hurricane country so they know how to adapt their flight patterns but this was the first time I saw this happening: It faced upward so its nostrils wouldn't fill with rainwater and drown it.

Hello, I'm Visiting

The first few days of the month of May sometimes bring this special guest to my feeder. I first saw, this morning, Mrs. Oriole, who is mouse-brown where her mate, pictured here -- and about to fly away and follow her --  is Cadillac black. They don't live here. They are just passing through (to Baltimore?), bringing startled awe and pleasure wherever they go. I'm amazed I got a snap good enough to share. What gorgeous works of art birds are. They fly, too!

Surprise

Whippoorwills and owls are now calling at night, and occasionally in daylight I inspect the bluebird box to make sure all is well (and that snakes and bats haven't invaded it). Removing the nest, I noticed with approval that it was lined with extra white fluff, unusual considering that bluebirds have no white feathers, and I was not expecting, at that moment, to see eggs in the nest, but I did. And was very surprised.

A bird that wasn't a bluebird, more like a chickadee, shot out from the box as I approached, and the rust-spotted ones must be her eggs; they match with other photos of chickadee eggs. Apparently the bluebird couple was evicted after producing one egg, and now their blue egg shares the nest with the other, smaller, spotted eggs. Never seen this before. Put it all back as it was. After the chickadees are hatched and raised I can clean out the box so the bluebirds will return and breed there.

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.

Woodpecker Family Breakfast

This morning as I sat quietly on the porch with tea and phone, having put out the day's suet and seeds and water, a male Pileated Woodpecker swooped in screeching, and landed on the suet cage to eat his fill. But this time was different; his whole family joined him and I caught it on video, activity starting really to heat up around 0:51 -- and all four communicating not through the Pileated's usual high-decibel jungle screeches, but the throaty burble they use for intimate communication. Few ever get to hear this sound.
The pair's two daughters spar on the tree to the right. Some years the pair who frequent my place winter and summer (but not spring and fall!) have one child, other times they have two. Previous to filming this, I watched the girls hassle Dad to feed them -- they do it with regurgitation, a great thing I've watched -- but now that they are old enough to get their own food, Dad gave them a sharp peck and refused. So they fuss and act up as children do. On the left you'll see Mom as she fends off an intruder, with Dad heroically coming to the rescue. When Pileateds feel threatened they open their wings, looking huge (they're crow-sized) and exposing startling white-bright wing linings. All Pileateds have the bright-red caps. Wish the video was as good as National Geographic, thanks for your patience; but it gives you a peek into Woodpecker World and birdish family life.

Ladies Last

At the optometrist a male customer and the female clerk were talking about the fading summer while I, waiting for new specs to be fitted,  read all about Brad and Angelina's wedding.

"Only female hummingbirds at my place now," he said.
"Where did the males go?" she said.
"Males are always first to migrate in the fall. They leave the females behind."
"Why?"
"Don't know."
"Probably so they can take care of all the cleaning and locking up."

I'd noticed that my corps of Ruby-Throats became all female every September before the hummingbirds disappeared entirely, but today I learned from hummingbirds.net something I didn't know: that males also arrive first in spring because "the earliest males have their choice of the best territories, which improves their chances of attracting females for breeding." Being early, they risk  not finding enough food. In fall, males depart up to three weeks before the females and the juveniles so as to give the youth a chance to grow a little stronger before their long and demanding flight to southern Mexico and the Yucatan.

Hummingbirds.net also tells me that my regulars probably already left and the ladies I'm seeing squeaking and dive-bombing each other at my nectar feeders are from north of here and are passing through.

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.

Moving Into His New House

When a tall person visited on March 9, I got his help taking down the old bluebird house, all weatherbeaten and cracked top to bottom, and mounting a brand-new one. Then, with an eye out for those house wrens who load up bluebird houses with sticks and thorns just to be ornery, I watched for a week, then two weeks, and was finally rewarded this morning as I sat in the spring sun drinking tea. Male bluebirds sit atop a bluebird house and flap their wings to attract their mates' attention. If she approves of the dwelling, she creates the nest and they go for it. Bluebirds are shy, so when this one saw me he fled the bluebird house and perched in a tree. I dream all year of this moment when the first bluebirds first nest in the bluebird house and I am the host and witness. This new bluebird box has a hinged side secured with a hook and eye--good design for box cleaning or nest viewing. It's raw pine. You can see it on the right, on the  old wooden post, which is 7 feet high. The downward-curved thing on the post is chicken wire to keep critters from crawling up the post to feast on bluebirds or their eggs. During previous birdhouse cleanings I've found lifeless blacksnakes and live bees in the box. I don't visit or handle the box very often, because that leaves a scent trail that might attract predators.

Every Feather Tells a Story

On the gray-brown carpet of fallen oak and hickory leaves, flashes of blue caught my eye. Treasures! Feathers! Iridescently blue; how lovely and refreshing on these cast-iron January days!

I picked one up and admired it, then saw more of them and couldn't help but collect them, and then grew uneasy. One feather on the ground, all is well, but this many feathers in one place always signifies a fight to the death. I hoped otherwise, but sure enough there was one bloodied feather as evidence. Nature has taught me not to feel sorrow over dead anything, but I became solemn realizing I was at the spot where a beautiful creature parted from the earth, to serve some greater purpose, I hope, or at least I want to believe.

The Kingfisher

I saw him from a distance, short blunt body, boldly crested head, waterbird's long bill, and he was within a few yards of LaBarque Creek: The first kingfisher I'd seen here in ten years. The creek is shallow and slow but it must provide what the kingfisher likes to eat or it wouldn't be there.

Excited, I approached, listening for the kingfisher's distinctive "rattle" of a voice. Heard it. It saw me coming and flew to the top of an electrical pole, leaving me only its silhouette. Wouldn't let me get close even to that, flying away over the bridge into the woods, rattling. I savored its voice for a while, and thought the voice followed me for a bit, but then I continued my walk past the creek along Doc Sargent Road and heard it no more.

On my way back, same route, I listened but didn't hear any rattle. It made sense: LaBarque Creek is slow, shallow and currently frozen in places; there's better hunting in the larger river not far away. I stopped on the bridge over the creek to listen again . Heard nothing. I felt blessed by even this rare scrap of an encounter with a kingfisher, and, filled with divine love, I said to its afterglow, "I love you."

Far away, a rattle. I smiled and knew that I am truly blessed.

Three Kinds of Prairie Blue

Nature news from the Shaw Nature Reserve, where I took a morning walk yesterday with a group called Wednesday Walkers, a self-selected group of people with time for about a two-mile walk, led by a nature instructor, along one of the many paths in the Reserve's 2800 acres of mixed prairie, forest, wetlands, rocky cliffs and glades. We chatted and asked questions as we walked. I heard that 2013 had been an excellent year for bluebirds. Volunteers maintain the Reserve's many birdhouses (pictured: Apartment #74) and count the eggs and babies. In 2013, exactly 203 chicks were hatched in the Reserve's bluebird boxes; 180 of them were bluebirds. "What were the rest?" I asked. "Finches and sparrows," was the answer.

As we walked, sun beating down on a shadeless path cut through stiffly waving five-foot native prairie grasses, someone asked, "What kind of grass is this?"

"Bluestem. If you look way down the stem, toward the ground, the stems are blue." Wow! (Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) is, by the way, the state grass of Missouri.)

"And what are these?" I asked when I saw strange but somehow familiar black walnut-sized pods among the five-foot prairie grasses.
"Wild indigo." Snapping the stem when the wild indigo is young yields blue juice that can be used to dye cloth, a discovery the Indians shared with the European settlers. The seed pods aren't really black; they're dark blue, and they look familiar because florists use them in autumn arrangements and wreaths.

Poor Cardinal

The enormous "thunk" against the window late yesterday afternoon must have been Lady Cardinal. Window accidents happen around here about every four months or so; most of the time the birds survive. But this fatal impact knocked her about twelve feet to the side of the window, next to the stoop. Of course when I found her it was far too late and I could only study her as I usually don't get to study my live cardinals. At first I thought the downy feathers indicated she was a juvenile, because my cardinal pairs have been prolific this season, but that's not so; she has a cardinal adult's red-orange beak. Downy feathers are just the secret vest beneath the elegantly understated suits that female cardinal birds wear. I got to see the gradient of gray into red. I didn't know cardinal birds had such relatively large but fragile-looking, straw-colored feet. Then -- saddest words in the language -- I buried her, near a tree she seemed to have liked. And when I opened the garage door to put away the shovel I got a surprise -- a live turtle was there, apparently got in while the door was open, and it was waiting right on the threshold for someone to raise the door.

Photographing Bluebirds

When I see a blue streak and flutter out of the corners of my eyes, I will neglect all else in life to let you know the bluebirds are raising their second brood of the 2013 season in my bluebird box.

At a day course taught by a Missouri state nature photographer I learned that to photograph wild creatures I should make myself inconspicuous. Animals are threatened by the human shape, so he used to shoot photos from his truck with a huge telephoto lens. With my simpler equipment all I did was put on a hat and baggy clothes of that greenish-brown worn-out sort, and set up my tripod. "What's the difference between an amateur and a professional photographer?" he asked rhetorically. "A tripod." And -- as he advised us -- I waited. He said "If the animal was there before, it'll come back again. So just wait." Sweat  and wait, sweat (94 degrees; but how hot must it be inside the bluebird box?) and wait. This, my best bluebird photo yet, was fortuitiously taken on the day of summer solstice. Happy summer solstice!

The Hummingbirds Are Here

Ever since the big snowstorm three days after the spring equinox, it's been so windy and stormy that the house (and the car!)  feels like a schooner in heavy North Atlantic seas. Today was drippy and dreary. But today the season's first hummingbird drank at my nectar feeder! Knowing that my favorite birds don't usually show up until the wonderfully green and floral dates around April 24 -- but pining for them like a lovesick teenager -- I put up the feeders April 1. Still -- today, a full week early, was the great day! It was a male Rubythroat. I will get his photo and show you his glorious colors ASAP. In the meantime, this is the glory that was ten days ago: my favorite flower, the crocus, during the thaw. The signs of spring come and go so quickly. . .

Hungry Pileated Woodpecker

This male Pileated was hungry enough, in the seven inches of yesterday's snow, to allow me to stand in the open porch door and take his picture while he breakfasted on suet. His mate was nearby, but it wasn't her turn yet to leap onto the suet cage, clutch it with her long black toes, and eat. Not only that, but when they fly back to the tree trunk they wipe their beaks on the bark like it's a napkin.

Spring Bird Report

The towhees, robins and white-throated sparrows are here, but the juncos have not yet left for their homes in Canada. Normally by the third week of March, bluebirds are nesting in their house in the meadow, but this spring they are very few, even around the soybean fields. I'm concerned that the chilly, snowy spring will discourage the hummingbirds who always arrive around April 24, a month from now (with the exception of 2008, when they were very late). Doves have arrived. I made a shelter of tree limbs and branches beneath the bird feeder so the doves can eat without the resident hawks diving and snatching them up for lunch. My year-round cardinals must be either breeding or nesting; they come for their sunflower seeds only very late in the day, at twilight. Owls are calling, but they do this year-round. Eagerly I wait for the whippoorwill or chuck-wills-widow whose nighttime song means "no more frost," but I don't expect to hear one before the end of April. The woodpecker population -- Downies, Hairies, and Pileated -- is normal, which means fat and lazy. The Downies are always first and last at the suet. The Pileateds sleep in until about 9, eat heartily and then go to bed early. This year I have a young pair who don't know me very well and don't yet trust me enough to take their picture.

Found this teacup-sized nest in the blackberry briars when I was cutting a path between them, planning for easier berry-picking this summer. Right now we're awaiting a spring snowstorm, but I am determinedly thinking "spring" and "summer" and "birds" and "berries" while monitoring bird arrivals and departures.

This Year's Birthday Gift

Each year on my birthday I am sent a fabulous bird, so I get up early and wait for it. I know northern migration has begun because the Yellow-Shafted Flicker appeared last week, which was earlier than usual, but I haven't yet seen my Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, who sometimes is my birthday gift. Instead appeared the Master of the Woods, the Pileated Woodpecker, screaming and enjoying suet (pictured) and pecking on the old TV aerial because it makes an exciting noise like mallets on metal (that reverberates throughout my house). Some mornings if the suet isn't there when he wants it, he's my alarm clock. Wow, do I ever have serious problems! Lucky me!

Dates or Mates?

Red-tailed hawks mate for life, but seldom do mated pairs share the same tree or same branch like the pair I saw today; usually they're seen separately, each fiercely defending one end of their jointly owned territory. New pairs of red-tailed hawks build their nests starting in January, so this might be a courting pair. When hawks date, they fly together and hunt together. When they're mated, he feeds her while she's incubating eggs, and when the babies come they both feed their chicks.

The Divine acreage is definitely raptor territory. Mice and other live edibles dwell in the meadow and I've also found evidence of attacks on turtles and songbirds, and the people who lived here before me told me sadly that their cat had a single kitten and while they were outside a hawk swooped down and snatched the kitten. Sad, but that's nature. I've also heard one rabbit death-scream. It was unearthly and I never want to hear one again.