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Strange nesting places….

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Everyone probably has a funny bird nest story to share–after all, some birds are very resourceful and will nest in all sorts of places, including pockets in clothes on the clothesline, watering cans, flower baskets and window boxes. I’ve seen birds nesting up under awnings, in gutters and even in traffic lights. My favorite was the family of house finches that nested, not once, but 3 times, on a boat and fed the babies when the boat was in the harbor and waited for its return. Believe it or not, all 3 broods fledged and survived the transition to land….

Last fall we had to take down our beautiful old sugar maple. It had been sick a long time and finally died last summer. It hung over the street and had to come down according to the town. You can see the little wooden brace on the line that was put there by the power or cable company to protect the line from rubbing against the tree branches. When the tree came down, the little wooden brace remained.

It is a little over a foot and a half long and the hole is probably about 3″ in diameter. We always knew birds nested in it but it was also covered up by branches and leaves which gave the baby birds some place to crawl about and exercise their new wings. As you can see, this is no longer true.

I heard the babies before I saw the dad arrive to feed them with a mouth stuffed full of bugs. The female left when he arrived and this is himself after I ran inside to get my camera. He has already fed the little ones and will soon be in search of more bugs.

These are English sparrows, also called house sparrows and as I wrote in yesterday’s post on birdhouses, these non native birds are very aggressive, very successful nesters. This pair will probably be close to fledging 3 sets of young this year. It’s a long fall down to the road and sidewalk but I know that the sparrows down the road have made it from the stop light in a busy intersection every year so I am betting these little guys will make it, or that most of them will.

And you’ll be happy to know that they get most of their bugs from around my compost pile. I watch them go back and forth throughout the day. Sort of like a fast food restaurant….

Bird Houses…

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Do you put them up? Lots of people do but its a good thing to think about before you do. What birds are you hoping to attract? Lots of people want bluebirds but you can’t just put up a bird house in the backyard and expect the bluebirds to arrive unless your backyard is a nice open field or salt marsh…

This is the kind of space a bluebird loves….but you may also get tree swallows, wrens, titmice, chickadees or….house sparrows! House sparrows, also called English sparrows are innocuous looking sparrows that are actually very aggressive non native birds that will actually take over other bird’s nests in bird houses to claim them as their own…they will actually kill baby birds as well as the parent bird if they can.

A good bird house will probably need a reinforcement around the hole. Some birds like to have a perch but many do not need them.

This is what may happen to a bird house without reinforcement. Larger birds such as starlings, other non native and aggressive nesters, will enlarge the hole and many mammals such as mice and squirrels will also gnaw on them. Squirrels will also attack nesting birds and mice will move into the nest boxes in the fall and often remain there all winter. More than a few human nest checkers have been unpleasantly surprised to find a whole boxful of mice tumbling down when they open the box to clean it out….

It is hard to tell from this photo but this box is much larger and was put up next to this tree to hopefully attract a screech owl. These boxes really do attract screech owls but they also attract squirrels.

If you are going to put up a nest box, please consider the type of bird you want to attract, the time of year, the location and so on. Many suburban bird lovers end up attracting the very birds that are harming the native bird population so doing homework is very worthwhile. Also, even though those houses with multiple holes look attractive in the garden, they only attract house sparrows. Many people remember when purple martins were plentiful and hope to attract them, but again, do a little research to see if they are even in your area.

There’s a lot of great bird house and nest box information out there. Have some fun with it–kids love watching birds feed their babies. And maybe consider planting some of the trees and bushes birds like to nest in and leave that big old tree with woodpecker holes in it as a natural nesting lure.

Blueberries….

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are in bloom…..these are low bush blueberries but the high bush blueberries are also in bloom…

Blueberries are a favorite food group of so many birds and animals, including humans….do you pick wild blueberries?

Black capped chickadees and their nests

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I spend a lot of time wandering around in the woods and at this time of year I always have my eye out for nesting activity and for nesting sites.

Many people have asked me how to find bird nests and the truth is, we walk by bird nests all the time. It is good to leave the birds alone while nesting but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep a stealthy eye on them. Our overt attention to a bird nest can cause more harm than good, by the way, and can also alert predators to the location of the nest so please be discreet if you go nest hunting.

Look at the scene above. There is an active nest there. Can you see it?

Chickadees are nesting in this hole and may even have eggs there. We watched as one came and went with food in its mouth and saw both at one point as one left and the other stuck its head out, leading me to believe there may be eggs. If you look at the larger picture this is the little branch poking out in the middle of the picture. Chickadees tend to nest in holes that are quite small and also fairly close to the ground. If they see you watching them they will pretend they have no interest in that hole so you sort of have to watch them on the sly. I have developed a good sideways glance and suggest you do, too, if you want to watch a nest….

Chipping sparrows….

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are among my favorite spring arrivals. Small, even for a sparrow, they sport a very visible rusty cap and are quite noisy with en emphatic fast trill.

They are quite well camouflaged as they forage in low bushes and on the ground. This bird is picking up nesting materials which you can see better if you click on the image.

Here is another shot of the same chipping sparrow. We saw this little guy at the Skunknett River Wildlife Sanctuary early this morning.

Violets are in bloom

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No matter where I look this week I am seeing violets everywhere. Known as the common violet this little lovely was once a wildflower. It has become so entrenched in our suburban landscape that few think of it as wild any more, however.

The purple ones are the most common…

but I’m especially fond of these pretty little white ones. I have pretty much let the violets have free run in my yard but I know people who spend a lot of time and energy pulling them out, cursing as they do so. As you might imagine, many of my neighbors now have violets all over their yards as well. Fortunately most of them don’t mind.

And of course they make a great drawing and painting subject as well….

Red maples….

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Also called swamp maples are among our earliest bloomers here on the Cape and are the trees that give our landscape that lovely pinkish glow early in the spring. 

These flowers have pretty much gone by already and you can see the little “helicopter” seeds beginning to form. Soon the ground will be covered with them.

Red maples are native to the Cape, unlike many of the other maples we now see here such as the ubiquitous Norway Maple. The red maples like to have their feet wet, as they say, so you often find them in damp swampy places, giving them their other common name, swamp maple.

If you used to climb a tree and sit on a big limb out over the water while reading a book, this was probably the tree you sat in. Every time I pass one of these big old trees overhanging a quiet pond I think of climbing up and just daydreaming the rest of the day away….

Of Frogs in bogs

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Our local frogs spend most of the winter buried in the mud. In early spring they reappear in most of our freshwater areas but they especially like cranberry bogs, whether they be wild ones or cultivated ones. The ditches seem to offer lots of good hiding spaces, plenty of sun and a whole banquet of tasty flying insects that come in to nectar on the cranberry blossoms.

At this time of year they are still looking pretty dark. This coloration helps them blend in to the murky dark backgrounds much easier than if they were the bright green they will be later in the summer.

There is a different frog in each of the two pictures above. Do you see them?

Here is a closer look at one…

And the other. These both appear to be bullfrogs as they do not have the long lateral lines going down their sides. Both frogs were quite small and probably only completed their metamorphosis late last year. Bullfrogs are pretty cool and you can click on their name to get more information.

Shadbush

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The shadbush is in bloom!

Also called June berry or serviceberry, this bush can be found along many of our fresh water and marsh areas and is one of our first native wild bushes to bloom. Called shadbush by the Native Americans, it signaled when the shad, a type of herring was running. This would have been very happy news for it meant fresh fish would soon be on the table after a long winter of smoked or dried fish. The name serviceberry comes a little later from the fact that when this bush bloomed those colonists who had passed away in winter could now be buried and a service held since the ground would no longer be frozen…

Fiddleheads

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For many of us fiddleheads are a sure sign of spring…

and you know times have changed when a whole bunch of kids, including high school aged kids, just stares at you when you try and explain what a fiddle is….really? They’ve never heard of a fiddle? I’m feeling really old these days. When I said, you know, like a violin, one girl asked, ‘Then why don’t they just call them violin heads?’

Anyway, fiddleheads are what ferns look like before they unfurl into their summer glory. Some have a brownish wispy covering, some look quite prickly and all have the shape of the ‘fiddle head.’ Some, like the ostrich fern, are edible but most are not very tasty which is why some people try them and hate them and others can be downright toxic. The ones you can buy are pretty stale and unless you watch a patch for a year to see which kind they are you may be out of luck. It is not wise to eat a fern, fiddlehead or not, that you are unsure of. The ones pictured above are NOT ostrich ferns and are not edible.