A multi-media account of my travels through life
The seasons are beginning to change and signs of spring abound. This lovely female American Goldfinch is showing her new spring suit, looking for a mate. I have no doubt there will be plenty of suitors. ❧
What an incredible winter this has been. On the news tonight I learned that Chicago is likely to break the record that has been in place since 1885 for the longest period of below zero days. The joke in Chicago is -20 is the new 40. How awful.
As I mentioned in my last blog, I have decided to leave it all behind and visit Florida for a few weeks. I have gotten out of Dodge just in time. The heavy snow has already started in the mountains. I’m half way to my Florida destination, spending the night in Valdosta, Georgia. The most amazing part of today’s drive was the endless convoys of electric company repair trucks heading north. Easily a couple of hundred trucks and some of them sported other vehicles “hitching” a ride. These looked like National Guard vehicles. Looks like a rough time ahead.
This picture was shot last night from my back porch. There is some adage about a ring around the moon being a bad omen. It seems that might be the case. ❧
I think practical. The bird seems young and it is probably her first snow fall so why not take as many seeds as the beak will hold? ❧
This sparrow, I think it is a White-crowned Sparrow, landed on the handrail of the deck near my gargoyle. During this frigid weather, that has seized most of the nation, the birds are flocking to my feeders in great numbers. Normally there are waves of birds who will all fly off at once and leave the feeders empty for a while. Now, however, it seems the feeders always have visitors. Some look very ragged and I wonder if they will make it through the night. The wonder is that any of them make it through this cold. ❧
It may sound odd but after nineteen years in Florida but I am enjoying the process of getting re-acquainted with winter in North Carolina. Don’t get me wrong, I am not about to move to Minnesota. It has been plenty cold for me with temperatures dropping into the teens at night and sometimes barely breaking 40 degrees during the day. But there is treasure everywhere and there is certainly treasure in winter. It is an integral part of the automatic earth, a time of slumber and re-alignment. It is also a time of crisp, rich blue skies with low-slung cirrus clouds that seem to materialize before your eyes and quickly join forces to make a bright day gray.
Armed only with the iPhone camera I enjoyed a walk down Potts Branch Rd. today and climbed a pasture hill to enjoy the view and snap this photo. Tango, of course, was at my side and he too enjoyed the smells and sights. Every day is a gift. ❧
Frequent followers will recall the recent post of a Tufted Titmouse with a mouthful of seed. Here is a White-breasted Nuthatch with a similar bounty. The nuthatch and titmouse are often in the company of one another and have similar feeding habits. Our friends at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology enlighten us more on this pleasant bird.
White-breasted Nuthatches are active, agile little birds with an appetite for insects and large, meaty seeds. They get their common name from their habit of jamming large nuts and acorns into tree bark, then whacking them with their sharp bill to “hatch” out the seed from the inside. White-breasted Nuthatches may be small but their voices are loud, and often their insistent nasal yammering will lead you right to them.
The Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescents) always seems so studious to me. It will invariably go straight to the suet as opposed to the Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) who will often swing awkwardly from one of the feeders, flinging out seeds until it finds just what it wants. The Downy knows exactly what it wants.
The Downy and the Hairy Woodpeckers are very similar in appearance with the Hairy Woodpecker the larger of the two. So far I am fairly certain I have only seen the Downy here on Fawn Hill. I have seen the Hairy Woodpecker in the past and it is significantly larger. None of the black and white woodpeckers that I have seen this summer have been that large.
Of course there is the largest of the black and white WPs, the Pileated Woodpeckers and I have to admit I was surprised to see them here in North Carolina. I have often seen the Pileated in Florida and in my head I thought of the Pileated WP as exclusively Floridian. Silly, I know. I think it has to do with their pre-historic look. They seem perfectly at home in the scrub and swamps of Florida. Catching sight of them in the woods around my home here on Fawn Hill was a pleasant surprise. ❧
It seems this Tufted titmouse (Parus bicolor) may have over-judged his ability to swallow but with a prize that large you can understand his inclination. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers this helpful insight:
After reading this helpful tip I watched the birds more closely and, sure enough, they grab a seed (or a nut) and fly quickly away to store the prize and they are back. One enterprising titmouse has begun to stash the bounty in the nooks and crevices of the deck thereby saving time and energy. I have a Turkey Oak nearby that is, no doubt, one of the primary storage spots for the birds. The gnarly bark offers perfect hiding spots although I suspect the squirrels may be finding many of the stash sites. ❧
A few posts back I wrote about squirrels being a pain when it comes to keeping bird feeders full and the truly effective way that some North Carolinians take care of such a problem — they shoot them. My friend Mary took exception with such extreme measures and described how she feeds the squirrels around her house. Her comments resonated with me, especially when I considered that my sister and brother-in-law are currently fostering two orphaned flying squirrels. There is, after all, a yin and a yang in life. We must honor that. So I set up a small squirrel feeding area on my deck using pieces of lumber from our recent tree removal.
As the picture demonstrates, the squirrels have found this solution very much to their liking. They have, for the most part, stopped raiding my feeders. I seem to have 3 squirrels that regularly visit my deck. If they get too obnoxious I set Tango loose on them and they scatter in every direction. He enjoys the romp and its best to keep the squirrels on their toes. My neighbor had some horror stories about squirrels chewing their way through screening to get food from inside the house. I sure don’t want that. ❧
Squirrels are the bane of those who love to feed the birds. If you aren’t careful about the type of feeder you purchase you could be hanging a “Free Eats” sign that every squirrel in the neighborhood will see. My feeders are a mixture of squirrel-proof and non-squirrel-proof so its no wonder that these varmints are hanging out at Alice’s. When things get too bad I take down the easy-access models and the squirrels eventually stop coming.
But here in Western North Carolina things are different. If you are over-run with squirrels here you simply get your 22 rifle and start ridding the world of squirrels one-by-one. That’s what my neighbor has been doing and the neighborhood has six fewer squirrels as a result. Maybe that’s why this fellow has his back to the post.
A part of me — the urban part — is a little squeamish about this practice. But no one is making me take up a rifle and shoot them. And I have to admit that the squirrel traffic has been considerably lighter at my feeders. ❧
Alice's WanderLand 