Situational Awareness

From one of our morning walks we kept a sharp eye peeled and took note of the acorn crop materializing on the swamp and bur oaks.  Deer hunting should be good this fall with natural mast food sources.

And we spied a nest.  My first impression was that it was a paper wasp nest.  Yet too small - slightly larger than my clenched fist.  It was of woven grass and paper birch bark bits all-over.  It was a cup-style bird nest and superbly camouflaged. 

Having never identified one previously Google Image tells me that a red-eyed vireo constructed this home.

Another first.  

Welfare Check

 

On our walk we checked-in on the second brood of blue birds.

As predicted they've fledged.

And they really like visiting the bird bath in the kitchen garden... 

Welfare Check

Checked the nest box yesterday. 

Second batch of bluebirds are growing fast.  

Not far from promotion to fledglings.....  

2025 Graduating Class

It's been a terrific year for the birds that come to the oriole feeder; including the Baltimore and orchard orioles, indigo buntings, purple finches, catbirds, rose-breasted grosbeaks and red-bellied woodpeckers.  Sometimes a ruby-throated hummingbird will pay a call.  Anecdotally, I've observed more orchard orioles than in any previous year.  

Best of all, for a couple of weeks the fledglings of all of the foregoing are now coming to the feeders to be fed by mom and dad before figuring it out on their own.  By the time you read this I will have gone thru fifteen, 32 ounce (two pound) jars of grape jelly and a pile of navel oranges.  And taken thousands of digital images with a trail camera strapped to a post on the west side of the porch.

Anyway, here's a selection of this year's graduating class since the last time I've reported on the subject.

Fun Fact: Fledglings of these species oftentimes look like females.  They're all adult-sized. Male orchard orioles share the coloration of a female (the lack the distinctive ruddy brownish red of an adult male) but share the distinctive black hood and bib of an adult male. 

Morning Stroll

From our walk this morning there were yellow (grey-headed) coneflowers, black-eyed Susans and a second batch of eastern bluebirds.

 

Second Time Around

The resident blue birds have commenced their second brood.

Fun Fact:  Young bluebirds, or fledglings, may sometimes help their parents feed subsequent broods of younger siblings. This behavior is more common when the fledglings are from an earlier brood within the same breeding season. 

Another First

First there was The Mysterious Egg Caper; likely solved with the assistance of people who know much more about wildlife biology than I do.

Then there was this from one of the trail cameras.

A Canada goose with goslings in tow.  Decades of trail camera photos and monitoring; this is a first.

We don't (at least I thought we didn't) have geese nesting around here.  The cover is too tall, too thick and too tangled.  Geese prefer manicured landscape allowing them an unobstructed view as a defense from predators.  Don't take my word for it; go visit a park, beach or a golf course.  There will be geese.  Lots of them too.

Never a dull moment around these parts; and another opportunity to learn something new or just be surprised..... 

  

Hiding Spot

Sometimes it’s the smaller surprises that can make your day. 

At the bottom of the first photo is our raspberry patch.  It’s not very large and the variety(s) of raspberries planted there is lost to history. Consequently, it isn’t mown, it sometimes gets a pruning of dead canes and usually receives a fertilizer drench in the spring.  It persists marginally above neglect and below proper husbandry.   Anyway, I picked the first ripening berries before the birds got them all. Nice surprise. 

The second surprise was this nest deep in the middle of the brambles and the briars. 

I’d agree it’s a good location hidden amongst pickers and thorns…… 

The Mysterious Egg Caper

 

 

From the trail camera is a curious couple of photos of a turkey hen with an egg in her mouth.

What gives?

So I sent-off an email to a certified wildlife biologist at the University. 

Hiya Jamie...   From the trail camera is a puzzler.  Why would a turkey hen be moving an egg?  I cannot imagine she could get her beak around an intact egg.  But I'm happy to be wrong on that. Or is this some sort of predatory behavior?  Thanks, as always, for any insights.  Tom 

To which she replied.

Hi Tom,  You always have the most interesting trail camera photos!  From my understanding, hen turkeys do not relocate viable eggs.  I believe that this is a hen removing an egg from the nest that was depredated to avoid attracting additional predators to the remaining eggs.  Predators like ground squirrels and crows may puncture an egg and consume the insides.  While turkey hunting this year, I came across a turkey egg right in the middle of a trail (see attached), this was probably a similar scenario, or a predator carried it this far.  This looks like a crow, or another bird used its beak to pierce the shell.  Starting to see quite a few broods of turkey poults, hopefully you are, too.    Cheers,  Jamie

The plot thickens.  Jamie forwarded the email chain to a colleague for further discussion.

Hi Chris,  I hope you are doing well!  Below is an email I received from a landowner as well as my reply.  It got me thinking and I'm curious if you have any other plausible explanations for the hen turkey with an egg in her mouth.  Have you documented any turkey nest predation by turkeys?   During my master's research, I did have a turkey depredate a grassland bird nest and I know of at least one grouse nest depredated by a turkey... all opportunistically, I'm sure.   I'd appreciate any thoughts you may have.  Have a great week!   Jamie 

And the response from Chris.

Hi Jamie,   Good to hear from you. Things are going well here. I hope you’re enjoying your summer thus far!   Well…this isn’t something you come across every day! I haven’t knowingly encountered an instance where a turkey has eaten an egg, although I have suspected it. I’m aware of colleagues in other states that have attributed egg loss to turkeys on occasion, but none to my knowledge have photos of a bird carrying an egg. I did come across one wildlife photographer who was able to document a similar occurrence and included it in a blog post (https://www.robertgroosphotography.com/home/the-egg-bandit).     Turkeys are very opportunistic. And while eggs are not part of their normal diet, they are eaten on (relatively) rare occasion. I think it most likely occurs when a bird comes across an abandoned nest; or in the case of a hen, if she is bumped off a nest and the eggs are partially eaten by a predator, she may return and consume the remaining egg(s) since they are highly nutritious – which could be especially valuable if she decided to renest. However, I don’t believe that turkeys are actively hunting for eggs, whether it be that of other turkeys or other ground-nesting birds (which comes up way too often in discussions on ruffed grouse). Hope this is helpful.   Cheers,  Chris

So there you have it.  A possibly opportunistic turkey keeping-up with housekeeping around the nest.

Never a dull moment around here and an opportunity to learn something new.

Grandparents

From our walk today a quick check of a couple of nest boxes revealed this.

Blue bird hatchlings...

And mama tree swallow incubating her clutch of eggs...

Somehow, every year we become grandparents, again. 

Bluebird Of Happiness

From our walk today we spotted an Eastern Bluebird. It didn’t take them very long to setup housekeeping.

In the last week we’ve spotted some transients headed north. Still waiting on the resident Baltimore Orioles to arrive….

 

Return Of The Songster

 

Almost to the day this foxy-brown bird with heavy, dark streaking on their whitish underparts returned last week. The face is gray-brown and the wings show two black-and-white wingbars. They have bright-yellow eyes. 

An aggressive defender of its nest, this bird is known to strike people and dogs hard enough to draw blood.  Aggression aside the name of this bird comes from the sound the critter makes when scratching through debris on the ground.

A prolific songster, this bird is endowed with one of the most varied repertoire of any bird studied. A single male can sing over 2000 songs. 

A personal favorite; the Brown Thrasher!

 

We've had a long and enduring relationship with this species and you'll find it has earned multiple turns on the pages of this blog.  Enter thrasher in the search box in the upper-left corner and you can read them all.

 

 

Affordable Housing

Inspected and cleaned nest boxes today. Fifty of them. 

 

Evicted four families of mice and in a Caddy Shack moment Jill was attacked by a squirrel hiding in a box.

 

After three decades of building these this is the final nest box design. Constructed of cedar they’re very durable. The right side wall flips-up for cleaning or inspection.   Took a page from Henry Ford's book on manufacturing - interchangeable parts make for efficient repairs.  Affordable housing for cavity nesting songbirds.

 

 

Our woods was thinned during COVID and now that the canopy has been opened all sorta natural regeneration is happening.  Like these spruce seedlings. 

 

The resident pileated woodpeckers are disassembling this snag.

 

 

Recently deceased coyote. I wonder what the backstory is.

 

 

Fetched a load of firewood from the north forty. Including a Smirnoff Ice bottle from the ditch.  Not from my tribe.

 

A whitetail that didn’t survive winter.   I wonder about the backstory. 

 

 

Me and my side kick catching some rays with a Guatemalan Lager

 

 

Sky Dance

In his classic: A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold characterized the courtship display of the male American woodcock as the “sky dance.”  

Knowing the place and the hour, you seat yourself under a bush to the east of the dance floor and wait, watching against the sunset for the woodcock’s arrival. He flies in low from some neighboring thicket, alights on the bare moss, and at once begins the overture: a series of queer throaty peents spaced about two seconds apart, and sounding much like the summer call of the nighthawk.             

Suddenly the peenting ceases and the bird flutters skyward in a series of wide spirals, emitting a musical twitter. Up and up he goes, the spirals steeper and smaller, the twittering louder and louder, until the performer is only a speck in the sky. Then, without warning, he tumbles like a crippled plane, giving voice in a soft liquid warble that a March bluebird might envy. At a few feet from the ground he levels off and returns to his peenting ground, usually to the exact spot where the performance began, and there resumes his peenting.    

– Aldo Leopold              

Meet Scolopax minor – The American Woodcock – colloquially known as the timber doodle.   Superbly camouflaged this chunky bird - unlike its shore-dwelling relatives - spends much of its life on the forest floor probing with its long bill for insects and earthworms.    

A woodcock’s eyes are positioned high and near the back of their skull. A unique adaptation that allows them to keep watch for danger in the sky while they have their heads down poking around in the soil for food.  This diminutive bird's coloration also makes it difficult to find except during flight at dawn or dusk or when the dog flushes one.  On occasion when you are innocuously walking to or from a turkey blind or a deer stand in the dark - with no advance warning - the sudden explosion in the darkness that originates from the immediate vicinity of your feet will most certainly have come from a doodle bird.  After the adrenaline rush has ebbed you resume your walk. Tiptoeing gingerly.  

 

Witnessing the woodcock courtship display is truthfully more a patient exercise in listening rather than seeing.  As the sky begins to darken or the dawn begins to glow if you are attentive this time of year you will hear the nasal BZEEP.      

The male will perform his plaintive beeping call on the ground followed by launching into a spiraling flight of 200 to 300 feet.  Like a barnstorming acrobat he then tips into a twisting descent.   The air rushing thru specialized wing feathers whistles to the accompaniment of bubbling vocalizations.   

photo - Thomas Gaertner

 

Upon landing the male fans his tail much like a gobbler or ruffed grouse with the hopes that his dance has attracted a lady charmed by his advances.  In case you care to know - the boys are promiscuous and will mate with any and all females attracted to their affections. 

 

  

Woodcock displays can last for several hours between dusk and dawn from early-March through early May.  The following video was taken in the rain.  Turn-up the volume and listen carefully for the peents followed by twittering flight.  Can you identify the other birds calling in the background?  

 

Spring has officially sprung....

Pottery Barn

 During the nesting season there are wasps that hail from the the family Sphecidae or Crabronidae who construct their nests from mud. They are known as Mud Daubers.

Most are long and slender and it is the female who builds the nest.  Unlike insect sociopaths such as yellow jacket hornets mud daubers leave you alone unless you really provoke them.  Stings are rare.

Mud daubers are parasitoids.  As they construct the nest they capture and paralyze another insect which is placed into a single cell of the nest.  They lay one egg with the paralyzed prey and seal it up the cavity.  When the egg hatches the wasp larvae consumes the soft parts of the prey insect, pupates with the remains and emerges from this gruesome insect breeding pottery barn as an adult. 

You can find these mud nests is the strangest of places.

Found this in the spray paint section of a shelf in the machine shed.....

 

We're Grandparents!

Meet Sialia sialis - the Eastern bluebird.  These are cavity-nesting birds and only a couple of human generations ago their numbers were in serious decline in this country as a consequence of limited nesting habitat.   

They’re more common nowadays as song bird enthusiasts have mobilized in the face of that decline and assembled and installed nest boxes for them. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of similarly-minded individuals and you get the drift.  More cavities – more birds.  

Most of the time house wrens and tree sparrows nest in our boxes which is just fine.  They make for good tenants.  Only a few days ago I spotted a flash of blue and upon checking the box discovered this.  They’re nesting in a box just at the edge of the back yard making bird watching from the sun room easy.

A fun factoid about the eastern bluebird is that the young of the first brood assist in raising the young of the second brood.   

While out with the dog for a walk we made a house call to check on progress.

 

 

Update From The Oriole Ranch

Our first oriole sighting was Wednesday.  So I deployed a grape jelly feeder outside the kitchen window at the southeast corner of the porch.

Yesterday, there were orioles coming to the west side of the house looking for a grape jelly and orange treat that wasn't there.  

Do they remember from one year to the next?  Are they habituated to a feeder location?

So I deployed the second feeder there where it belongs.  Including a Moultrie trail camera.

 

And sure as shooting we've got birds coming to both locations now.

Check-in periodically for an update from the oriole ranch...

Return of the Migrators

With the arrival of migratory song birds a week ago we spent an afternoon cleaning-out nest boxes for our cavity-nesting friends.

A couple of 2023 buck scrapes in the foreground beneath the oak tree branches, a box in the background and our chariot.

 

 

This is a remarkably typical house wren nest.

 

Deployed two new boxes, replaced one (bringing a damaged box home for repair).  

 

And we evicted some white-footed deer mice from several boxes too.

 

Fifty-five total boxes available for occupancy.

 

Raising a toast to affordable housing!

Wildflower Show

Twelve weeks following our prescribed burn the seven acres of pollinator habitat out behind the house is thriving.  An extended dry spell hasn't been welcome news for the local farmers but the hot season grasses and forbs are thriving in the dry conditions.  Exceptionally deep root systems are the key to their success.

They are showing-off and making a valuable contribution to the food web of the local Eco-system.

Cardinal flower in the dry creek bed

 Blue vervain

Prairie blazing star (Liatris) 

Bee Balm (Bergamot)

Nodding pink onion

An incredible "forest" of compass plant

And Joe Pye weed

Now that the migratory and year-round primary nesting season is coming to a close all of these blooms are attracting insects which serve as a food source for the young fledglings.  Providing them with a high-protein diet to bulk-up before the late summer and fall migration begins.