Tag Archives: feeding

An hour at a local pond

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There is a pond in the county where I live that used to be a real hot spot for birds and other wildlife. The dairy farm fields around it had lots of native vegetation, which was very welcoming to avian wildlife.

A couple years ago, the farmers retired, and the property was purchased by a vineyard owner to expand his holdings. He cut down most of the vegetation around the pond and along the road bordering the fields. He has turned most of the fields into vineyards, keeping only small portions untouched where birds can still find some refuge.

I used to see a yellow-billed cuckoo return from migration to a small patch of trees there every spring. This now is a thing of the past. However, some pond-edge vegetation had been regenerated, and a little bit was planted, so some birds are hanging in there. They still make for some interesting birding. Here is what I saw on a recent visit.

The largest birds that keep returning to the pond are the great blue herons. Sometimes there is one; other times there are two or three. Occasionally a green heron flies in or over but none stopped by on this occasion.

The heron often has good days fishing there. I often see him/her snag at least one fish and often more than one.

The heron stalks along the pond and frequently flies across to the other side for a change of venue. Perhaps the fish manage to hide well once they realize s/he is stalking them.

It’s wonderful to see the heron’s wings spread as the bird alights and then begins stalking again.

Eastern bluebirds had taken advantage of an electrical installation next to the pond (which also serves as a resource for the local fire department as needed). They not only used it as a perch for bug seeking but also built a nest inside it. I wondered what the new owner would do.

 

   

To my great surprise, his problem was solved by the local electricity company. They removed the birds’ original nest and put it into a temporary nest box!

    

Mom and Dad bluebird were guarding the nest space, but it looked like they were still getting used to the new digs.

While watching the bluebirds, I suddenly heard a commotion in front of me, but I couldn’t see what was happening behind the bushes at the pond’s edge (I’m short!). However, I could tell that a bird was in distress. I wondered if one of the huge snapping turtles had caught a duckling. I walked further along and saw one of the two resident female wood ducks (above) swimming away from the area.

No ducklings followed and I feared the worst. One mother had five ducklings (above) while the one swimming away had lost one a few weeks before. Now I wondered if she had lost others, too. Luckily, I later saw her return to the area and shepherd four ducklings across the water to the other side.

 

In the small bit of meadow immediately adjacent to the pond, red-winged blackbirds are now nesting. One pair has a nest close to the road and they are warning visitors away with constant flights along the pond’s edge, while the male calls repeatedly.

 

The female was taking breaks from warning-off flights to enjoy an occasional meal, at this time consisting of one of the remaining periodical cicadas that emerged recently.

She wasn’t the only one seeking these insect delicacies. Two Northern mockingbirds were also intently examining the area under a tree for them. One finally had success in snagging a cicada. (For more about the cicadas, see my previous two blogs!)

  

The male red-winged blackbird was very busy keeping “intruders” as far as away as possible from their nest. He warned off the great blue heron, who was actually pretty far away. (He is flying away from the heron on the left side of the photo.)

He also went after a red-tailed hawk, who appeared soaring overhead.

Common grackles, often present at this pond, will also chase away these hawks. There weren’t any around to join in the foray this time, but the photos below taken at another pond show how they go after the red-tails.

I looked at a small patch of chicory across the road to see if any bobolinks, grosbeaks or meadowlarks were around. I love this plant and planted some seeds in my own yard, hoping to attract more pollinators and birds. So far, they have not sprouted.

 

Below you see a young blue grosbeak and a pair of Eastern meadowlarks who were in the patchy field spots another time.

 

Usually, several types of swallows frequent the pond, including purple martins, tree swallows, barn swallows and Northern rough-winged swallows. I only saw a couple of the latter this day and only got poor flight photos as my camera began acting up, refusing to focus.

Staring hard across the pond, I did manage to spot three killdeer, four least sandpipers and a couple other sandpipers that I couldn’t immediately identify. I later learned that they were semipalmated sandpipers, which I hadn’t seen there yet. (If you click on the photo, you see it larger; then go back to the blog.)

That hour at the pond didn’t turn out to be a super one for capturing stellar photos, but it was definitely a great one for relaxing, observing the action and appreciating nature again!

My welcome American crow friends

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On numerous occasions over the past months, I’ve had ideas for new blogs and set aside photos for posting. But then other things crop up that need to be handled (health, car/house issues and a monthly newspaper column) and I put off blogging. So when fellow blogger Denzil asked his followers to post some photos of corvids, it was a great opportunity to share with you some of my latest photos of favorite visitors to my yard.

A pair of crows have been coming to visit my yard for many years now. I’ve had numerous opportunities to see them courting and looking for treats at bird feeders (and occasional pieces of apple that I put out when they come by). Above, one of them was addressing me and then gave him/herself a kind of creepy look when s/he covered her/his eyes with the nictitating membrane.

Each year, mom and dad return with their newest brood in tow. Sometimes I think offspring from previous years also join the group as this year I’ve had 6 or 7 of them come by at a time.

They are fond of several kinds of bird food that I put out for other birds, including dried mealworms and my homemade suet.

They hang their big bodies off the feeders and then usually fly down to consume whatever morsels they have gotten.

They are a loquacious lot, communicating loudly among themselves much of the time.

They are loudest, however, when they gather together to chase off the red-tailed and Cooper’s hawks who also live in the neighborhood. The crow family does not like them at all and make it known to all their neighbors, avians and humans alike. The other birds are likely happy with their alarm calls as they disappear when warned of hawks in the vicinity.

And then the corvids can also relax, enjoying drinks and bathing in the yard birdbaths. When they appear to have enjoyed a treat, I sometimes find “gifts” left behind in the  brightest birdbath. One day, when I apparently had not given them something special for some time, they took off with a small ceramic turtle that they often would leave in the birdbath after a visit. I now wonder if they gifted another neighbor with that trinket.

Their visits are always welcome to me, perhaps because I haven’t seen them harassing any of the smaller birds. Denzil’s suggestion to post about corvids was a nice reminder of the birding pleasure “my” family of crows brings along.

Learning to love an over-protective bird

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When house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) first began visiting my yard some years ago, I was not aware that they are extremely protective parents. I didn’t see them as often as birds of other species since they don’t come to my feeders and were not using nest boxes.

 

The past couple years, however, they have become more comfortable in my yard and began building their nests in boxes after all. This became problematic for me and especially the other species who use the boxes — Eastern bluebirds, Carolina chickadees and brown-headed nuthatches. The reason?

House wrens do their utmost to drive other birds out of their territory so that there is no competition for food needed by their nestlings and fledglings. This protectiveness makes them go so far as to peck other birds’ eggs, which they have done with chickadees and bluebirds in my yard.

Very unfortunately (and upsetting to me), they even killed two nestling nuthatches one year. The other two nuthatch babies managed to fledge. This behavior led a birder, Althea Sherman, to launch a crusade against house wrens in scientific journals in the early 1900s. Now, there are instructions online on how the wrens can be discouraged, for example, on a website devoted to bluebirds.

This year, Eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis) were tending four eggs in one box and a house wren tried to invade. The parents were very protective and successfully drove the wren away (photo below). Another pair of bluebirds had nested early and managed to guide their young to fledging. They then abandoned my backyard for nesting and the house wrens had no rivals for nest boxes in that area for the rest of breeding season.

House wrens are one of the bird species banded in my yard each year for the Smithsonian Institution’s Neighborhood Nestwatch program. This year the bird bander noticed their nest with babies in a backyard nest box, so she upped the chances of catching one by counting on their extremely protective nature.

A net was put up not far from the box and the bird bander played the call of another house wren. This resulted in both mama and papa wren getting inadvertently caught up in the net while trying to drive away the intruder. They were both banded and then immediately let go so they could resume feeding their babies.

The four woodpiles in my backyard were like a larder for them because they host a plethora of insects.

 

 

And the house wrens are obviously not that choosy about which insects they eat. Mama and Papa brought a large variety to their ever-hungry nestlings.

   

   

 

The parents were also very good at keeping the nest clean.

The three nestlings appeared to be producing numerous fecal sacs so that mom and dad were constantly checking the nest for them and flying them away.

   

At one point, it was interesting that when the male wren brought a large insect to the nest, he handed it over to the female, who was waiting a bit after having just given the babies food.

 

Eventually, the large meal was delivered to the nestlings.

 

As the days went by, the nestlings became louder and more insistent on being fed and the parents scarcely paused in their efforts to keep the meals coming and the nest clean. It must have been a relief for the parents when the babies finally left the nest box because they could now take a breather now and then.

 

Right after fledging, the parents were still busy. The fledglings had not yet flown far so I could see the first post-fledging feeding session for one young wren.

I had learned that house wrens sometimes incorporate spider egg sacs into the nests they build because the hatched spiders eat nest parasites and thereby help protect the developing nestlings! The parents also fed mother spiders and egg sacs to their young. Just after fledging I caught a circle-of-life moment when a parental wren fed a mother spider with her attached egg sac to a fledgling – the death of the poor insect furthered the life of the new bird.

I could see and hear the parent house wrens continuing to feed the fledglings that afternoon. But after a while they appear to have moved to another yard, where they likely weren’t dealing with humans closely watching.

   

The Eastern bluebirds have a new nest in my front yard now with four eggs, so my nest watching can continue for a while. And the juvenile birds of other species coming to the feeders are entertaining, too.

Our largest North American woodpecker — a real delight!

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During nesting season, we have a good chance of seeing many birds whom we might not notice otherwise because they’re out in the open, collecting nesting material and scrounging for as much food as possible because they have hungry mouths to feed. I was very grateful to my friend Carol when she told me about a pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) nest where the babies might be fledging soon. Pileated woodpeckers are also nesting somewhere near my home, but I rarely see them.

When we arrived at the nesting site, one baby was poking its head out of the oblong nest hole about two-thirds the way up a very tall snag.

 

Above it, a red-headed woodpecker (see right) was maintaining a nest. A red-bellied woodpecker was also visiting higher up.

While we watched, the young one continued scanning the skies while calling out to its parents. The baby persisted in watching from the nest, which was only lined with wood chips. Unlike other birds, pileated parents do not line their nests with nesting material such as soft grasses.

 

 

Occasionally, the parents answered and, after about 15-20 minutes, one flew over to check us out. It was the father, who could be identified by his red crest that extended down to his bill and the red cheek or moustache stripe (right photo). The left photo shows a female who was foraging in a tree on another occasion. Her red crest is only on top of her head and her cheek stripe is black.

  

The young one looked back into the nest; I wondered whether another nestling might be there. No one else peered out at that moment and we speculated as to whether one might already have fledged as two had been seen the previous day. When the father visited the nest, still only one baby showed itself, so we didn’t know whether there might be another one around (nests usually have 1-3 babies).

 

The father fed his offspring by regurgitating whatever he had been eating. The pileated woodpeckers’ diet comprises mostly carpenter ants (40-97% of their diet in various studies), supplemented by other insects including worms, caterpillars, roaches, flies, and grasshoppers.

   

They also eat nuts and wild fruit. If you have a garden and want to attract them, they like persimmons and many berries, including those of poison ivy, sumacs, dogwoods, elderberries, greenbriers and sassafrass.  

Many landowners tend to clear their yards and gardens of fallen logs and dead standing trees. I keep several woodpiles in various spots as the decomposing wood is home to many of the insects that the pileated woodpeckers and other birds need for their diet.

Papa took off again, leaving a satisfied young one behind (at least for the time being).

These woodpeckers are the largest in North America (15.8-19.3 in/40-49 cm), since the ivory-billed woodpeckers have been declared extinct. They are monogamous and luckily have plenty of opportunities to find mates. Pileated woodpeckers had been in serious decline in the 18th-19th centuries as forests were logged for the timber industry and to clear land for ranches and farms. Since then, they have rebounded to just over 2.5 million individuals.

I realized when I looked at my photos later that I had not been paying enough attention to the coloring of the parents and offspring. When I went away for a short time and then returned, mama pileated was visiting the nest. In addition, whereas I had been watching a female nestling first, now a male baby was calling out for food. A view of the two looking up, shows the male’s red cheek stripes were obvious, but I had been oblivious at the time. The female is on the left and the male is on the right.

 

The next time that papa returned, the male offspring stuck his head out for a feeding.

 

Papa didn’t want to play favorites, so he stuck his head in the nest to apparently call them both to come out.

They opened their beaks wide, begging for food.

 

Papa let them ask for a while, sticking his tongue out at them as they begged.

 

He also decided to take out some fecal matter. I don’t know how long the nestlings had been in there (they usually grow in the nest for a month), but a clean nest is desirable.

     

After the babies fledge, they may stay with their parents for up to three months.

   

I’m so glad that Carol and her sister Donna, near whose home the nest is located, invited me to come see the family. It was time well spent as it got my mind completely off an ongoing series of problems complicating my life lately. Hope seeing these photos was also a bright moment for you!

Sunflower fields as critter-friendly habitats — part 2: bees and bugs

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Do you know why the common name in English for Helianthus is sunflower? The common name is the same in Dutch (zonnebloem), German (Sonnenblume) and several other languages. In French (tournesol) and Spanish (girasol), the common names refer to “turning to the sun”, an accurate description of how this plant behaves.

Sunflowers exhibit a phenomenon known as heliotropism — an inclination to turn East in the morning so that the developing buds are warmed by the sun. The plant heads track the sun during the day and, at night, they reorient themselves to face East again. So if you pay attention when you visit a sunflower field at different times of day, you’ll notice they face a different direction in the morning and afternoon.

It’s not only birds, butterflies — and people! — that enjoy sunflowers. When these flowers grow in abundance, plenty of varied insects come to enjoy them and I’ll share something about these “sun worshippers” with you.

Bees of varying sizes were feeding in the sunflower fields that I visited. The large carpenter bees (Xylocopa) were not difficult to spot with their smooth shiny abdomens.

The similar-sized, fuzzy-looking bumble bees (Bombus) were actively visiting one sunflower after another.

American bumble bees (Bombus pensylvanicus) were foraging on nearby hibiscus blooms.

At a different site in neighboring Durham county, where sunflowers bloom later, I saw bumble bees on partridge peas and other yellow flowers.

 

There, too, my attention was caught by a bee that looked quite different from others that I’d seen. It proved to be a leafcutter bee (Megachilid), which has large mouthparts that enables it to cut pieces of leaves, plant resins and soil to line its nest.

The leafcutter bees are interesting in their unique method of carrying pollen. Rather than collect pollen in baskets called corbicula on their hind legs, they gather the substance in a clump of abdominal hairs called a scopa or pollen brush.

Back at the sunflower fields, I observed one medium-sized cuckoo bee (Epeolini) eventually become covered with sunflower pollen. These bees do not have an anatomical structure for carrying collected pollen and the females, like avian cuckoos (or cowbirds), lay their eggs in other bees’ nests.

The much smaller Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) were very numerous. It was interesting to discover that for some time, the NASA website included a section on honey bees! It stopped being updated when the principal investigator retired but NASA maintains the site because of the valued information it contains. Some of the interesting facts they listed about these insects:

  • Bees can fly about 20 mph (32 kph).
  • The highest recorded number of eggs laid by a queen was 2,000 per day!
  • Bees have been on our planet for about 30 million years!
  • To make 1 pound (0.45 kg) of honey, bees need to collect nectar from about 2 million flowers!!
  • The average foraging bee (all females) makes about 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
  • The main way in which honey bees communicate among themselves is via chemicals called pheromones.

The honey bees and common Eastern bumble bees make a good choice by spending lots of time in sunflower fields. Scientific studies indicate that ingested sunflower pollen enables them to suffer less infection from two common parasites, a real boon for bees who might otherwise succumb to colony collapse as a result of disease.

 

Both in the sunflower and other fields, it was fascinating to see other types of small bees as well. The small green sweat bees perhaps prefer more colorful blooms as that is where I mostly saw them.

These tiny non-aggressive bees are attracted to sweat because it provides them with moisture and salts.

There were some other interesting insects besides butterflies and bees in the sunflower fields and surrounding vegetation. While looking at some bumble bees circling a large sunflower head, I had inadvertently photographed a pair of much tinier insects near the center of the flower. I actually only noticed them when I was looking at the photos at home or I would have tried to focus on them better in the field.

When I enlarged the photo, I was able to get a somewhat fuzzy look at them and BugGuide identified them for me as sunflower seed maggots (Neotephritis finalis). These tiny insects have prettily patterned wings, but I discovered there is not a lot of information available about them; some research in North Dakota in 2008 concluded they might be a pest but no other data were easily available. They are a species of fruit fly.

Another insect seen on the sunflowers that many people find distasteful were the green June beetles (Cotinis nitida). The larva can damage vegetable and other plant roots, while the adults will feed on ripening fruit, so many gardeners will try to get rid of them.

A cute little syrphid fly, which BugGuide couldn’t identify specifically (a Palpada species), seemed to be alone with no fellow flies nearby.

There were several slender meadow katydids (Conocephalus fasciatus) to admire with their extremely long antennae.

The most interesting fact I discovered about them is that they have a soft song comprising ticks and buzzes that alternate for time periods of 1–20 seconds.

Sunflower fields are beautiful and spending time observing them as interesting wildlife habitats can really be enjoyable. These flowers also constitute a beneficial cash crop for farmers who can sell the seeds for sunflower oil, for human and avian consumption and the stalks for cattle feed.

And as if all those benefits don’t make sunflowers enough of a value-laden plant, scientific studies have also shown that they assist in phytoremediation, a process that helps remove and destroy polluting contaminants in soil, water, and air. Their deep taproots help aerate soil and make it richer for growing other subsequent crops as well.

Some sunflower fields may still be blooming through August and an online search can help you find them if you’d like to enjoy these wonderful flowers and their wildlife beneficiaries. If you have a garden, you might consider adding sunflowers to your vegetation mix if you don’t have them already. You can still plant some now in hopes of late autumn blooms.

This is a good time also to remember that the Ukraine became the world’s leading exporter of sunflower seeds until the currently ongoing invasion of the country brought this trade to a halt. Farmers who were still able to grow the country’s national flower are stuck with supplies and no income. Consider supporting organizations that are working to provide the Ukrainian people with humanitarian aid: