Category Archives: Birds

Birds, Bunnies, In the neighborhood, Whatever

Drama in the driveway

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I’d thought there must be a cat prowling through the garden with all the fuss the robins and bluejays were making. I went outside, flip-flop in hand (they’re excellent flung at neighborhood strays) and found that the fuss was due to a red-tail on our roof. Strange, I thought. It flew to the black locust in the neighbor’s yard and I watched it for a while and cheered the robins for their bravery in dive-bombing it.

An hour or so later the DH whispered, “Come here, quick!” from beside the kitchen window. The red-tail was back, this time on the ground, high-stepping through the grass beside the driveway. Hawks look so out of their element on the ground, don’t they?

Then I noticed the tiny wriggling baby bunnies on the driveway. Three in all, spread out beneath my car, one in the shadow of a tire.

Hmmm. What to do?

Dutifully, bunny-lover that I am, I stepped out the door and the red-tail flew off to the neighbor’s roof.

The nest had been dug weeks ago and then abandoned. Too close, I’d thought, to Luka’s run of the yard. Looking inside it now, I found two newborn kits in the middle of a hastily covered scrape. Following the trail of newborn bunnies under the car, I saw the mother rabbit crouched beneath the transmission.

I returned the babies to their nest and wondered what had happened. Was the mother interrupted in her birthing by the hawk – does that explain two in the nest and three others spread out in the driveway? Had the hawk discovered the nest and the momma bunny caught in the middle of moving them somewhere safe? Was the hawk on the ground after the babies or the mother? Odd the mysteries that play themselves out if we’re paying attention, I think.

I wonder if they’ll survive, if the mother will come back to nurse them as she should. I wonder, too, that the red-tail won’t come back.

Birds, Wanderings

I know, I know… it’s a Swainson’s

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I can be… um… slightly hard-headed at times. I want very badly for this to be a Ferruginous Hawk. Not that I think it necessarily looks like one, just that I want it to be one, you know?

I went all the way to North Dakota and deserve to have seen a Ferruginous, don’t you think? I had my life Swainson’s Hawk in Cape May years ago and a textbook-looking one that Bill of the Birds showed us on my birthday on the first day of the Potholes and Prairie Festival.

Then, we surprised this hawk the following day in the hills of the Coteau Region. Tell me what makes this a Swainson’s… maybe I’ll take your word for it.

😉

As an aside: I’d thought separating Eastern hawks was difficult. Pfft!

The Swainson’s has 3 age classes and is polymorphic (whatever the heck that means!) The Ferruginous has 2 ages classes and is also polymorphic. (I think!)

Birds, Garden

Juneberries

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The Juneberries are ready for picking…

The robins and their babies are happy.

Juneberry Pie

Filling:
3 ½ c juneberries
¾ c sugar
2 T flour

2-crust pie shell:
2 c flour
¾ c Crisco
dash salt
5 T cold water

Mix flour, Crisco and salt in mixing bowl. Add cold water one tablespoon at a time, and do not overmix. Split dough into 2 pieces. Roll out first crust dough onto floured surface and place into pie pan. Mix filling in a mixing bowl and place into pie pan. Roll out your second crust and place on top of pie filling. Fold over crust edges, press with fork, and poke fork holes on top to allow pie to breathe. Sprinkle top with a bit of sugar and bake for one hour in preheated 400° oven. Cool for 2 hours and serve.

No pie for me this year; my juneberries have that rust… is it cedar-apple rust or juniper rust? Whatever… most of them look just awful. Birds are happy though.

Birds, PSA, Wanderings

Dakota Driving

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I think the people behind Birding Drives Dakota must be pretty smart: they understand that those of us from more heavily trafficked parts of the world are awed and befuddled by the emptiness of the prairie pothole region. It’s as if they anticipate that we’ll bliss out with the scenery and forget that we might just need directions to find all those prairie specialties.

They’ve conveniently created a couple maps and a glossy brochure to lead the directionally-challenged (like me!) to the best birding spots. I’d imagine it easy for more left-brained folks to navigate the right-angle distances, but I found myself constantly distracted by something… a group of pelicans kettling overhead… a jackrabbit running through a farm field… a pleasing look at cattle at the roadside… you name it! North Dakota was made for daydreamers like me, I think.

That being said, I was glad for the maps detailing the more than 600 miles of birding possibilities in the Jamestown/Carrington area alone. They make it easy to wander at will at your own pace and on your own schedule, which is the way I prefer to bird. I can handle only so much time spent in a bus with strangers peering out through dirty windows. Sure, I did some of the planned events with the festival, but there was also lots of time spent exploring in solitude, wondering what might be found at the next “X” on the map.

I wonder about the rest of you that’ve had the opportunity to attend a birding festival or two: would you rather have every minute of your trip planned and scheduled for you or, like me, do you appreciate the chance to be a little more adventurous?

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings

Love in a pothole

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Western Grebes were the first *western* birds found on the adventure that was getting to North Dakota. A makeshift dinner beside a lake somewhere in Minnesota was accompanied by their whistling between dives for fish. They’re really striking birds – click on the pic for a better look at those red eyes!

Try as we might, we never picked out a Clark’s among the Western’s that populated the larger lakes and potholes. Nor was there much of their famous courtship display; they’re said to rise up and run across the water’s surface – might’ve been nice to see that! I like the suggestion of a heart in the space between their graceful long necks in this pic; maybe they were just beginning to think of love in that moment.

The breeding ducks were the biggest draw to the region, I think. There’d been more than a cold winter’s day or two spent searching the small local ponds and inlets in NJ for wintering ducks – to see Ruddies again; now with their ridiculously bright blue bills or a pair of Blue-winged Teal in every puddle and Canvasbacks and Shovelers and more Redheads than I’d really imagined possible – I’d felt lucky to find a single pair this winter – and now here they were, again, for our finding. The only real miss, in the breeding duck department, were Hoodies. I’m sure they were out there, we just didn’t find the right pothole.

😉

Birds, Wanderings

Faking it

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What’s that ahead in the road? That bird looks like it might be broken…

Have you ever seen a killdeer do its distraction display? To a car speeding along a dirt road in the middle of Nowhere, North Dakota?

😉

The abundant killdeer taught an early lesson in exploring the prairie: slow down… look around… tread gently…

You never know what treasures you may find if you look closely enough.

For you non-bird folks: Killdeer and some other birds perform distraction or broken-wing displays to lure predators away from their nest or chicks. The adult bird fans its tail and drags a droopy wing along the ground so that you or I or a fox will think it an easy meal to catch. Soon enough, once the young are out of danger or forgotten, the parent flies off thumbing its nose for having faked you out. A great trick!

Birds, Small truths, Snapshots, Wanderings

Why North Dakota?

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I’ve always imagined the place we grow up to sink into our bones and set the course for where we feel most comfortable in life. For me, that’s meant the shore and the scent of a salt marsh at low tide… traffic and malls and lots of people. Something, though, has tugged at me to see a place where all the oceans are equally far away; a place where long stretches of land flow for miles unfettered by anything but my imagination.

Other places I’ve traveled to make the world feel small by comparison: the sky hemmed in by mountains or trees or buildings. The prairie is different. The landscape doesn’t shout out its beauty here, but entices you in small ways… the winnowing of snipe overhead, the soft huff of horses grazing in the predawn light, the starkness and loneliness of it, a velvet bowl of ink black sky so full of stars it makes you wonder what it might feel like to count so many, clouds that stumble across an unbelievably big sky, the long soft blur of sunset shadows that cross a patchwork of farm fields and prairie: where a few trees and a grain elevator are the only comfort for the eye in all that emptiness.

Maybe I like the challenge of finding beauty where others would see none… the black backbone of road and the faint lines of light at the horizon that mean there’s a town off the interstate, the nothing between me and a three wire barbed fence and a pasture of horses or bison, the wind that carries the grace notes of a meadowlark or a bobolink. This, this middle in the middle of nowhere, is a place of quiet where birdsong and the gentle whistle of wind are the only music and me the lonely audience.

There’s something here in the intersection of land and light, sky and the ever-present wind, the dark earth and the cerulean water in each and every pothole with its breeding ducks that communicates the language of this place; words of solitude translated by a yellow-headed blackbird hanging from cattails in a slough beside the road or the sight of ancient purple lilacs watching over deserted dooryards. There’s all of this and yet, sometimes, you need to bend close to the ground and pull the soft dusty green sage through your fingers or catch sight of prairie smoke blooming among the short grasses, with kingbirds squabbling on the fencerow behind you, to know that emptiness looks like this and that the place that one calls home need not be the only place a heart resides.

(Written mostly as a response to the cross-eyed glances of friends who wondered why I wouldn’t choose Hawaii as a vacation destination instead of the frozen land of North Dakota.)

😉

More to come…

Birds, Whatever

What’s that song again?

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I hear much better than I can see, especially when it comes to finding birds. Because I have trouble spotting the movement of birds, I’ve come to rely on my ears more than my eyes and have tried over the years to develop my knowledge of bird songs. It’s a handy skill to have and a good way to impress non-birding friends!

I’m reposting this poem cause it’s a good one and some of you may have missed it when I first shared it here.

A LISTENER’S GUIDE TO THE BIRDS by E.B. White

Wouldst thou know the lark?
Then hark!
Each natural bird
Must be seen and heard.
The lark’s “Tee-ee” is a tinkling entreaty.
But it’s not always “Tee-ee” –
Sometimes it’s “Tee-titi.”
So watch yourself.

Birds have their love-and-mating song,
Their warning cry, their hating song;
Some have a night song, some a day song,
A lilt, a tilt, a come-what-may song;
Birds have their careless bough and teeter song
And, of course, their Roger Tory Peter song.

The studious ovenbird (pale pinkish legs)
Calls, “Teacher, teacher, teacher!”
The chestnut-sided warbler begs
To see Miss Beecher.
“I wish to see Miss Beecher.”
(Sometimes interpreted as “Please please please ta
meetcha.”)

The redwing (frequents swamps and marshes)
Gurgles, “Konk-la-ree,”
Eliciting from the wood duck
The exclamation “Jeeee!”
(But that’s the male wood duck, remember.
If it’s his wife you seek,
Wait till you hear a distressed “Whoo-eek!”)

Nothing is simpler than telling a barn owl from a veery:
One says, “Kschh!” in a voice that is eerie,
The other says, “Vee-ur” in a manner that is breezy.
(I told you it was easy.)
On the other hand, distinguishing between the veery
And the olive-backed thrush
Is another matter. It couldn’t be worse.
The thrush’s song is similar to the veery’s,
Only it’s in reverse.

Let us suppose you hear a bird say, “Fitz-bew,”
The things you can be sure of are two:
First, the bird is an alder flycatcher (Empidonax traillii
traillii);
Second, you are standing in Ohio – or as some people
call it, O-hee-o-
Because, although it may come as a surprise to you,
The alder flycatcher, in New York or New England,
does not say, “Fitz-bew,”
It says, “Wee-be-o.”

“Chu-chu-chu” is the note of the harrier,
Copied of course, from our common carrier.
The osprey, thanks to a lucky fluke,
Avoids “Chu-chu” and cries, “Chewk, chewk!”
So there’s no difficulty there.

The chickadee likes to pronounce his name;
It’s extremely helpful and adds to his fame.
But in spring you can get the heebie-jeebies
Untangling chickadees from phoebes.
The chickadee, when he’s all afire,
Whistles, “Fee-bee,” to express his desire.
He should be arrested and thrown in jail
For impersonating another male.
(There’s a way you can tell which bird is which,
But just the same, it’s a nasty switch.)
Our gay deceiver may fancy-free be
But he never does fool a female phoebe.

Oh, sweet the random sounds of birds!
The old-squaw, practising his thirds;
The distant bittern, driving stakes,
The lonely loon on haunted lakes;
The white-throat’s pure and tenuous thread-
They go to my heart, they go to my head.
How hard it is to find the words
With which to sing the praise of birds!
Yet birds, when they get singing praises,
Don’t lack for words – they know some daisies:
“Fitz-bew,”
“Konk-la-reeee,”
“Hip-three-cheers,”
“Onk-a-lik, ow-owdle-ow,”
“Cheedle, cheedle chew,”
And dozens of other inspired phrases.

Now go back and read it again out loud!

😉

Birds

Here birdy-birdy

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I struggled for years to get goldfinches at my feeders, but once I finally attracted them, they’ve been regular customers. I don’t see much of them in the wintertime, but come spring they’re back in the neighborhood and looking for me to fill their thistle feeder. I’ve never had the huge numbers that most people tend to get, but I suspect that may change as a neighbor who also offered thistle has sold their house and moved away. No more competition!

A bird I would really like to get at my feeders is the baltimore oriole. I hear them in the neighborhood singing invisibly from the treetops – how can a bright orange bird be invisible? – but my offerings of halved oranges or grape jelly have been ignored by everyone but the ants and the squirrels.

Is there any common bird that you’d like to see at your feeders, that you can’t seem to attract the eye of? Mostly I’m amazed with the feeder birds I see on other’s blogs – especially Jayne’s – and wonder what you all do to attract such beauties that I’m not doing. Do tell!

Birds, In the neighborhood, Pastimes

Nesting plovers

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“A problem cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness in which it was created.”
– Albert Einstein

With my back to their nest scrape and its symbolic fencing, I spent yesterday watching the beach crowd grow around this one plover nest that I was charged with *protecting* and was struck most by contrasts: the natural dune grass and pebble strewn high beach where the plovers make their nest amid bits of drift sticks and broken clam shells and in front of me the ocean with its equally vibrant and churning masses of bikini-clad sun-worshippers.

It’s a wonder to me these birds manage to survive at all here in NJ, but survive they do. For my first 7 or 8 hours spent watching them, most everyone was respectful of the fencing, so long as they noticed it. Wayward balls and children tended to wander beneath it freely, but most responded nicely to my calls beginning with, “Sweetie… you can’t be in there!” – though there was this one little boy – crossed arms and all – who refused to budge. That’s when the teacher voice came in handy.

😉

Those hours also gave me the chance to watch some bits of plover behavior that I’d not seen before. Mostly I felt badly for the bird left to set on those eggs in the blazing sun; I wonder what it does to occupy itself for all those hours. Every so often I’d notice there were two birds; switching duties, I guess, and I watched the other walk to the end of the fenced area and then fly off to feed in the intertidal zone among the kids playing.


Kite-flying was a problem, as it mimics predators like gulls, but I had a hard time convincing people to move far enough away to not frighten the plovers; plus that resitriction doesn’t seem to be posted anywhere on the beach that I could refer them to. Never mind that the plovers are invisible to anyone without binoculars… I could only find them because I had that stick near their nest to use as a point of reference!

It was a wonderful day at the beach… the osprey and oystercatchers kept my eyes to the sky… and the terns were the perfect background music as they fed just off shore. I’m spectacularly sunburned for my efforts and didn’t want to leave yesterday before the crowds of people did. Funny that I should feel so protective of these birds so quickly.