Irake

Before this world turns green, it's taupe. And this portion of meadow was covered with fallen oak leaves all the way along this tiny flagstone path to the back area where stands the bluebird box.

Bluebirds begin hunting for homes in late February, but  won't settle anywhere that's covered with leaves. They need bald earth, mown grass, or plowed soil -- because they seize bugs and worms and pin them to the earth, and that's how they eat. No bare ground, no bluebirds. Last year, after securing the bluebird box in a concrete foundation, I was too lazy to rake and had no bluebirds. As you know, they bring happiness. Thus raking equals happiness.

This might not look raked, but on the photo's right see the carpet of fallen oak leaves I've cleared away. The gray brushy stuff needs a chainsaw or, better, a controlled burn. The white things on the left are opaque ground cover held down by jugs of water. Ground cover will retard the growth of grass and weeds on those spots so I might plant collards there.

So this is really a picture of potential. In my mind I see it green, blue, and thriving.

Worth the Effort

Rain saturated the earth this month and after 10 winters (or more) the 2x6 holding the bluebird box tilted in the softened yellow clay. Despite my many shims, finally it fell and I let it lie there until reminded by an online post that male bluebirds in Missouri start seeking their housing in late February. And I panicked. I need bluebirds.

Only one solution: Quik-Crete concrete. Never tried it before. At the hardware store the smallest bag was 50 pounds. Stunned when it was carted out to the car and I saw 50 pounds of Quik-Crete is no bigger than a party-sized bag of potato chips.

At home I slid the bag out of the back seat onto an old shower curtain and dragged it to the site. Oh my, it really was 50 pounds. Thinking I might have a heart attack I prepared by securing the phone on my person and then opened the garage door so I could crawl into it, shut the door and die there without being eaten by coyotes the same night. Then read the instructions on the bag.

Shoveled most of the water out of the hole. Dug wet mud out until it was two feet wide. Shovel caught on some roots somehow growing through the clay; clipped the roots out. Took breaks, gasping and sweating. Frantically drinking water so as to keep my blood volume. Bluebirds are among the two or three things beautiful enough to die for. Dropped a shovel full of gravel into the hole's very bottom. Unable to figure out how to hold the post upright while pouring, I dragged the trash can into the meadow and leaned it. Now then. Donned breathing mask, gloves, long sleeves and eye protection as the instructions recommended.

The YouTube video guy poured the Quik-Crete directly into the hole, so instead of mixing it and then pouring I wrestled the bag to the lip of the hole, slit it and let the material pour in, fast as possible, face averted from its dust, then poured in water measured into my watering can, meanwhile holding the post upright until the Quik-Crete hardened (mere seconds!) and then fled to the house to shower, leaving tools, bag, mask, etc. in the yard because surely the dust would turn to concrete in my lungs. Relieved to think I would never have to do this again. Now I know why people leave stuff to rust and rot in their yards: They are too exhausted to pick it up.

Fifty pounds of Quik-Crete exactly filled the hole and now it's perfect.

Janitor of Eden

After two weeks away, the first thing to do is empty the mousetraps. Very fortunately there was only one mouse cadaver, fresh thank God, because had it been two weeks old it'd be stuck to the floor. I'd left May 20, just when there's so much to do to ensure a good summer here. Like:

• repair the porch screen. My sworn enemies, the squirrels, chewed through it and gnawed the plastic gasket from the metal step-can I store those delicious sunflower seeds in -- but failed to get to the seeds. Nyah, nyah.
• buy basil and dill plants and soil for repotting into the pots they'll occupy all summer, pots carried into full sun every morning and sheltered next to the house at nightfall, because otherwise the squirrels overturn and uproot them out of pure spite.
• clean and refill hummingbird feeders. I almost didn't want to leave for two weeks because the empty feeders would disappoint the hummingbirds, but I'm hoping my extra-sweet nectar recipe will persuade them to return and trust me; I don't intend to leave them again.
• retrieve the seed feeder from the underbrush where raccoons had dragged and left it; soap and rinse it, dry it in the sun. Acquire a poison-ivy hickey on my left leg.
• greet new young turtles and rabbits who have no idea I live here too.
• witness a high-speed chase: Miss Turkey in hot pursuit of a hefty blacksnake sidewinding itself across the grass at top speed and beneath the propane tank, thus winning that round.
• pull and dry the spring onions before they form heads.
• refill those clever little outdoor mouse-poison dispensers with green-turquoise blocks of mouse poison. They work; they've cut the indoor mouse war by 75 percent.
• approach the bluebird box to clean it. Yes, one must clean one's bluebird box. I didn't want to. Last time I looked, the nest held three baby chickadees and a baby bluebird. This is unusual. I feared finding the nest holding one or more dead. With gloved hands I unhooked the box and pulled out the nest. It was empty. Everyone had fledged! I was overjoyed.
• inspect the forest floor where the summer mushrooms grow. Despite an inch of rain, found nothing. It's still quite early in the season. On the way, saw butterflies enjoying the blossoming milkweed.
• check blackberry brambles for incipient blackberries, due in about three weeks. There are indeed little blackberry bullets. Last year's drought meant we had no crop. This year I hope for better.
• buy at the fruit and vegetable stand every sort of fresh tasty thing: beets, apples, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, kale, berries, mushrooms, red onion, bananas, peppers, grapefruit, romaine -- to refill the fridge and to purify myself after two weeks away. And oh, yes, buy a bottle of wine, a rose, but I won't admit to that.
• clean the picnic table; apply a tablecloth.

All this activity was joyful. Give me a new computer stand and I'm in Eden! I'm so glad to be home, among the plants and creatures.

Bluebird in the Chickadee's Nest

On 28 April 2018 I photographed an anomaly in the bluebird box: One bluebird egg, and the others, much smaller, white with copper spots. Bluebirds had built the nest -- I watched them. But after one egg (usually they lay five) the bluebirds split the scene or were evicted and a black-capped chickadee took over. I confirmed it was a chickadee when I saw the mom flee the box as I approached, and bluebirds don't have downy white feathers to line their nests with.

I check the bluebird box about every three weeks to make sure all is healthy and clean. (I've found snakes in there, bees, a bat, etc.) I thought, surely the chickadee mother would ignore the bluebird egg or starve the bluebird baby, or peck it to death,  if it survived. But on 19 May I opened the box again, thinking I'd surely find at least one dead baby bird, and maybe all of them, considering. I found a nest full of life.

Here's the egg photo, what it looked like three weeks ago. We might have lost some baby chickadees, but gained a bluebird:

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.

Masterpiece Eggs

Monitoring your bluebird box is a duty, said The Michigan Bluebird Society site; those who don't monitor should not own one because a bluebird box must be clean, dry, safe, free from mites, blowflies, and wasps, not ant-infested, and the owner must check that the eggs aren't broken, and also watch for house sparrows that will fill the box with sticks and thorns. Don't worry, it said, about your "scent" -- birds have no sense of smell. But I read elsewhere that predatory animals can pick up any scent trail I leave going to and from the box, so I do that as little as possible. Today I checked the box responsibly, and for this I briefly removed the nest, revealing these five masterpiece eggs. As instructed, I did not touch the eggs, simply admired them, and replaced the nest. And my cup runneth over: The hummingbirds returned to their feeders on April 24 this year, perfectly on schedule

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.

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.

Fledge

A curious young being, so young it isn't blue yet, peeks out of my bluebird box. I would love to know its thoughts about the green and blue world outside the box. Tomorrow I will try for another photo.

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!

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.

The Day We've Waited For

Sunday, February 20, was the most blessed day of the year, the one I hope and hope for, the day the first crocuses bloomed-- right in my yard beneath the hickory tree. Here they are! A freakishly warm day, about 70 degrees. Nobody complained! And even better, it was the first day of the calendar year that I heard spring peepers, the world's most wonderful sound. And even better, a pair of bluebirds were claiming the bluebird house in the meadow. That is wealth!

Somebody asked me what was the most beautiful sentence in the English language and I thought a while about the sentence that made me happiest, and then quoted them from a cookbook: "While the second batch is baking, frost the first batch."

Well, that's culture, and here's nature. God am I happy!

Bluebird Box Mystery Solved

A bluebird pair flitted back and forth and checked out my bluebird box. But they didn't settle. By now they should have lived there a month. But no.

I'd cleaned the box in early March but decided to take it down off the pole to see if a snake might be coiled in there (as there once was) or if it might be filled with thorny sticks, courtesy of a jealous house wren. As I picked the box off the pole I heard a faint buzzing.

Strange. I listened. More buzzing, like a very faint dial tone. If I'd been carrying a cellphone I would have thought that might be it.

Opened the box top and teased out a partially completed yellow-teacup bluebird nest -- topped by wads of tangly moss, still green. This I poked all apart, finding nothing.

Went and planted some spinach. Returned to spot and saw a fat, fuzzy, good-sized bumblebee dazedly crawling out of the moss, getting its bearings and then finally feeling good enough to lift off into the universe.