Northward Migration

Lady Flicker, Wikimedia Commons

Yellow-Shafted Flickers stop here for suet in late January and early February, flying from southern Texas and northern Mexico to their summer breeding grounds in Canada. I watch them compete with the lordly Pileated Woodpecker for the same suet cake. The much larger Pileated who lives here year-round flaps his wings and waves them away, but the flickers are clever, and they simply wait beneath the suet cage for pieces that fly down to the leaf carpet while the bigger bird drills and gobbles his share. The Flicker is the only woodpecker who will eat from the ground.

Yellow-Shafted are the easterners, and Red-Shafted are the
westerners. They are in my view the most elegantly clothed of all the migrating birds. Wish they lived here all year round. The goldfinches at the seed feeder are still their winter olive green but now with a mention of yellow. The smaller picture shows a little Downy Woodpecker, in a flutter of striped wings, boldly trying to nip the suet while the male Pileated clings to the suet cage with his big crusty feet, and I decided after trying hard and getting no decent photos that this is the year (after 15 years) to set up a bird camera with remote shutter control to capture not only their individual beauty but their interactions.

Someone Fought Here

My sister, when she visited, noticed a male cardinal attacking his own reflection in a garage window and told me. I came out, saw him doing it (he lives with his family and loudly sings his territorial song in a nearby tree) and hollered at him, "Stop that! Do you want to leave your children without a father?!" Problem solved. Until today, a windy April day, when he left evidence that he's been at it again: a red feather left wedged in a garage windowpane so cracked, as it has been for years now, that I had taped it both inside and out to prevent its shattering while the roofers worked. It's not neatly taped, but it didn't break.

It hung together well enough for the cardinal to imagine, today, that he was again seeing a rival in its reflection, and he fought valiantly, leaving one of his feathers. I checked nearby and didn't find a little bright-red body, so I assume he was the victor. I've seen cardinals--killed instantly--ricochet as far as 12 feet from glass they've flown straight into.

The Sibley bird guide says windows are the #1 killer of birds, taking about 998 million lives a year. That's almost a billion, and twice the number of birds killed by feral cats.

Part of the difficulty was in taking this picture, because there are reflections everywhere, inside and out. I went outside a second time to try to compose a single picture that'd tell the whole story, but the feather had blown away.

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.

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.

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.

Wild Turkey on the Wing

I love wild turkeys. This year's Divine Property flock is 2 moms and 7 young ones who by Nov. 1 are nearly grown. Walking up Timberstone Trail I saw the flock crossing the road, gobbling and wobbling. Excited, I lifted my camera and then, hyper-aware as they are, they saw me and fled into the woods. The last one out of the woods, startled by my approach, shot up into the air and flew. Clicking the photo will give you the best view of it.

I Never Give Up

Sure the birdbath bowl was badly cracked (see August 30) so I bought a new bowl at a concrete works, and the birds gratefully took baths and drinks, but that old, more artistic bowl, considering I couldn't move it except to flip it over, sat there and I thought, I hate to give up, I hate to give up, so for the fourth time, to the hardware store. I simply confessed to the clerk: "I'm trying to fix a concrete birdbath. Nothing works," and she led me to concrete putty stuff and DAP quick-crete. I patched a big chip at the bowl's rim with the putty stuff. Bet you can't find the patch in the picture! (It's at the 11 o'clock point.) Then all gloved up, with much unskill I laid readymixed QuikCrete on with a trowel and let it dry overnight. The next morning I poured water into it. IT HELD. Glory be! Some spots were not quite perfectly covered. so I applied a second coat just now, with great skill and in five minutes. When it's dry I'll sand it a bit and find somebody to help me lift it onto the pedestal, and it will be just like old days for the birds and me.

White-Trash Repairs, Example # 37,633,881

Tried to fix it, but most anyone could tell you that this concrete birdbath bowl, much loved but now 10 years old, and been outdoors all that time, is too far gone to save. That didn't stop me, though, from buying a tube of silicone and loading it up in a caulking gun, and somehow not piercing the foil inside the nozzle, and then squeezing the caulking gun harder and harder and getting nothing out of it, then realizing I'd broken open not the pointed end but the bottom of the tube, and a full load of silicone goop was coating and hardening inside the caulking gun chamber.

Realizing I had a narrow window in which to salvage my pride and any claim I have to intelligence, I grabbed craft sticks and smeared the silicone into the cracks in the birdbath. Mess City. Tried valiantly to remove the tube from my orange caulking gun, which was the gift of a former boyfriend who never bought me anything else, may he burn in hellfire for eternity, but it was also too far gone. Got a garbage bag so nobody would ever see it (too embarrassed to take a photo) and wrapped up the tube and caulking gun now stuck together forever, unlike me and the former boyfriend. The one nice thing about trash is most of the time nobody will be able to tell whose it is.

I'd have been better off using duct tape....

He Breathes Mercy

Love pitching my tent in the yard, after mowing to get rid of ticks and chiggers, and sleep in the tent on summer nights. I love to lie on the sleeping bag, through the ceiling net watching the stars chase fireflies. In the wee hours the slight chill makes me pull the bag over me, feeling ever so grateful for it. And when I unzip the tent at dawn I see this. Quiet, beautiful, fresh as heaven. While I took photos I heard an unusual bird call repeated and wondered, "If cardinals sing 'Cheer cheer,' what is this bird saying?" And the answer came: It says "He breathes MERcy. He breathes MERcy." And you know, as good as I feel, and because I'm still alive, I think He really does!

Three Cheers for the Blue

Hiking, tramping along, winded, hoping to find the trail's end soon, hating to stop and rest because only old folks need to stop and rest -- been hiking 40-some years now --and anyway I'm getting dehydrated and need to drink water ASAP (am lazy sometimes about lugging along all the water I might need) and so I asked myself,"What would John Muir do?" Dehydration disorients me, so I looked down at my feet to make sure they were moving. Right then I glimpsed something crisp and refreshingly blue in the earth right in front of me, and saw that a baby had been born. Looked hard to try to identify the bird, but many birds lay blue eggs. Because the egg is spotted, I count robins out, and because of the location in deep woods I count bluebirds out; both robins and bluebirds are field-loving birds. Possibly some kind of sparrow. I wished it a happy birthday.

Pick Up Some Chicks

Every year the hardware store carries baby chicks, not for Easter (that's four weeks away) but for people to buy, raise, and get eggs from, and finally eat. That's just a fact. It's also a fact that a zinc tub full of squeaking baby chicks, all looking like they're made of yellow plush, melts my heart. $1.35 each....

Stilled Life

Warm, cloudy day. Down by LaBarque Creek admiring the wonderfully clear water I saw something large and feathered on the creek bank, and was very much taken aback to find a Great Egret, dead just as you see it. Looks as if it was ambushed. It was in a tight spot, and an egret, with its five-foot wingspan, needs room and time to lift off and get away. So its life ended here.

This egret (Casmerodius albus, identified by its black legs and huge black feet) might also have been a migrant. This first waterbird casualty I have seen on this property is very sad. But if I reported and showed you only beautiful and cheerful things about rugged rural Missouri I would be dishonest. Of course we are all on the side of life, but now and then I get a reminder that Nature is not a "she" or a "mother" but a force, completely impersonal, overwhelming us with all we can stand of both beauties and horrors.

Le Pic-Bois

Okay, I admit it, I wanted to escape the Missouri steam heat for a while, so I went to Quebec City, and there in the old town (Vieux Quebec; you must visit) what did I see on a shopfront but a three-foot wooden replica of my friend the Pileated Woodpecker delightfully translated into the delightful "Pic-Bois." That just means woodpecker, but it sounds so much cooler! In fact, just about everything was cooler in French. I admit too that I spoke bad French if only to say "Je ne comprendes pas" and "Je ne parle pas francais", and "Bon jour" and "Merci," and politely everyone I said it to switched to English except one seventyish man on a bicycle who saw me waiting for a bus in the rain, and stopped and said something, and I said "Je ne parle pas" and he didn't parle Anglais either, so he explained to me on his fingers that the bus would arrive in four minutes.

This huge wooden sculpture is strikingly accurate in every detail except the real Pic de Bois has much bigger and crustier black feet.

How wonderful that someone else a thousand miles away loves my close friends as much as I do!

Father Feeds Son!

Caught in action so quick that it blurred even during the half a second of one shutter snap: The adult Pileated Woodpecker (right), having lunched on some suet -- always available here -- feeds his adolescent son by regurgitating. The parents come for suet each year during nesting, vanishing until around August 1 when they bring and feed the kids and then patiently wait on the tree while Junior and/or Missy practice flying at and pecking at the suet basket. Mastery takes about a month of practice. If the young one continues pestering the grownup for food by getting close and opening its beak, Mom or Dad will give them a sharp peck, meaning "Get your own!" By September the kids have flown and the parents go "on vacation" until frost, not coming by, even for suet, but calling when they see me come out of the house. They resume suet-eating around Thanksgiving.

The female Pileateds have red caps; males have red "mustaches" as well. The younger ones can be distinguished because the head feathers are whiter; the older the bird, the more yellow. The stripes and mustaches on different Pileateds are all unique. Most often Dad feeds a son and Mom feeds a daughter, but I have seen it vice versa also.

Stolen Goods Retrieved

Raccoons grab and steal the wire suet cage that I fill and hang outside for my birds -- that is, if I don't fetch it in at dusk every day. And they drag the cages up to 30 feet away, chop-shop 'em, and gobble the suet meant for my woodpeckers. Of course the little thieves don't return the empties. When the grass is tall, and the ticks, thorns and poison ivy are full blast there is no way I'm going to march through several hundred square feet of that to look for a dark-green suet cage. I buy a replacement for $1.

But today, just before everything goes green (we hope), I tromped through the brushy slope of rugged land just south of the cabin for the first time in a couple of years, looked hard, and retrieved three missing suet cages in various stages of decay. I plan on marking them with neon-orange tape so that when raccoons make off with them they won't take four years for me to find. Needless to say they were all very very suet-free.

Two for One

Taken yesterday. These pileated woodpeckers are both females, probably mother and daughter. They played peekaboo on this oak tree for an hour.

Merry Messenger

This pileated woodpecker was swooping around the house at 8 a.m., joyfully screaming, "Wake up everyone for a mile radius! It's Christmas!" I ran outside to hang the suet for her. After two solid days of rain, the earth has today a very light dusting of snow. A blessed Yule to you!

A Baby Bird Was Born

Probably a sparrow's egg. Found it on a walk along Doc Sargent Road, brought it home because it was so beautiful. Also inspirational.

First Hummingbird of 2009

This morning at eight, sittin on the porch drinkin tea, I hear a loud luscious buzzing that makes me look up at my feeder (new, glass and copper, real classy, from Dickey Bub's) is the first hummer of 2009. Just on time, too. In 2007 they also appeared on April 24. I remembered that and hung my nectar feeders last week.

This year with a tripod I may get some nice photos to share with yall.