Avian roundup

Yesterday: Good-sized flock of American robins hanging around the backyard and feeders.
Today: In addition to the robins, which are still around, we have a mixed flock of redwing blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds. I think they've actually been around a couple of days; two days ago I noticed a blackbirdy-looking (and sounding)flock in the trees on the next street over but they were too far off for me to get a good ID. I think there are a few common grackles among them as well; I've only seen one of those at a time so far.
There was a female ruby-crowned kinglet hanging around the front-yard feeder this afternoon--I only see those occasionally so I'm hoping to see more of them.

Starting Off the Year With Yard Eco

There was a flock of cedar waxwings in the front yard this morning at about 9:30. I hadn't seen any in quite a while. They didn't spook easily; some of them sat coolly above me in the Bradford pear as I strolled up the front walk. As I got to the door the lot took off and headed across the street to another cluster of trees. Peterson says they eat berries and insects, both of which we have plenty: holly, nandina, juniper, and those oddball little Bradford pear fruits.

A robin has been hanging around the yard; I first noticed it yesterday then again this morning with the waxwings; that's the first this year. If the weatherman is correct, it'll wish it had stayed farther south next week.

When the hummers fly back to Central Georgia

A hummingbird showed up at the kitchen windows yesterday morning, apparently looking for the nectar feeder that normally hangs there over the summer. Call me Aethelred, for I was unready--there was nothing there but the extra seed feeder I had hung up for winter. I got the hummingbird feeders out of the mudroom, washed off the dust, and made up a batch of sugar water pronto. I'll be watching for her return.

It's heartening when the old customers come back.

Miscellany

Following is a really, really bad segue that should be avoided by every responsible radio dj, but that I heard anyhow yesterday:

"Ohio" by Crosby, Stills and Nash
followed up by
"Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen.
Auugghh!!!

As last weekend was the Great Backyard Bird Count, I submit the stats from our backyard feeders:

Saturday, 2/14--1:45-2 pm

dark-eyed juncos-15+
goldfinches-2
northern cardinals-2 (a pair)
Carolina wren-1
chipping sparrow-1
tufted timouse-1
Carolina chickadee-1
white-throated sparrows-2
house finches-2, both males
mourning doves-3

Sunday, 2/15--around 9:30 am

goldfinches-6
chipping sparrows-3
dark-eyed junco-1
Carolina chickadee-1
Carolina wren-1
tufted titmouse-1
house finches-2 (the guys again)

To my chagrin, the great thundering herds of assorted finches and the yellow-rumped warbler didn't show themselves until Monday, after the official count ended.

Yard Eco, Jan '09 Edition

The American Robins turned up Sunday, along with a big flock of blackbirds: mostly or entirely redwings, as far as I could see. I had actually been hearing the blackbirds in trees around the neighborhood since late the previous week; they just hadn't visited our yard. Yesterday there were quite a few common grackles around and one pair hung around the feeders a bit, the male actually on the feeder while the female kept to the gound nearby.

A few goldfinches have come back to the feeders recently after a brief hiatus. They are just beginning to get their breeding plumage. I only see about three at a time, usually, though I suppose things will pick up as it gets warmer. Several house finches are also hanging around. One of the females had awful conjunctivitis with the left eye swollen shut. She may have ridden it out as I later noticed a female with a sticky-looking patch of feathers just behind and below her left eye. Dark-eyed juncos have been hanging out under the feeders, occasionally flying up to browse there directly, in groups of perhaps a dozen. Chipping sparrows are frequenting the feeders as usual, as are quite a few mourning doves.

As always, there is the local pair of cardinals. I think they are a new pair. The male that held down our yard last year lost all the feathers on his head (whether through disease or an encounter with something bigger and meaner than he was I'm not sure) and looked like a pint-sized red vulture for several weeks before we lost track of him. It's possible he grew them back, I suppose, but the male there now looks more youthful and less battered. Could be offspring, I suppose, as the old pair seemed to be pretty successful at fledging youngsters every summer.

The Return of Yard Eco

The first nesting of brown thrashers fledged this week, and thus we have had ungainly juvenile birds with fuzz still clinging to them crash landing around the yard. We lost one Sunday -- while I was busy discouraging our retriever mutt Bud from trying to knock them out of the shrubbery with my best malocchio, our latest rescue, a terrier/boxer sort of mix, nailed one that landed in front of her. We noticed at least two more, and have managed to keep the dogs off them. We got a good look at one when it settled on a privet bush for a rest. Baby tried to get a pic of it, but the parents ran her off and then executed one of those parental bird shrub-to-shrub maneuvers and got it out of sight.

The hummers arrived today, and of course I wasn't ready for them. The finch tube I have up in the backyard has a bright red cap, and the hummers, knowing to expect a nectar feeder in the area, were taken in by it. On realizing that there was nothing but seed in the feeder, they looked about as nonplussed as hummingbirds can and flew off. I quickly got a small tube of sugar water out and they noticed it, but didn't drink -- the water was still kinda hot at the time. Then off they went to try to figure out the finch feeder again--I'm going to have to cover the darn thing lest it drive them to distraction.

The cardinal pair in the backyard brought a juvenile to the feeder this morning.

Garden report: The faux Vidalia onions are growing very nicely. I pulled one green last week to cook with -- boy, are they strong at this size!

Trials of the Arche-Bishop, Wyth Sum Byrd-Countynge Toss'd In

I haven't read all of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan William's remarks on the place of Sharia in the English legal system yet, and it's often hard to judge what exactly was said based on news reports. Just ask Benedict XVI. Thus I'm disinclined to weigh in on whether it's fair to start addressing the man as "Archbishop Neville Chamberlain."

Nonetheless, we enjoy nothing better than a well-done satire in parody form here at the Minor Premise. And as the Chaucer blogger hasn't been penning lately, I really, really appreciated being able to get my Chaucerian fix courtesy of the irreverently literary Iowahawk. So rightly or wrongly, I had a very good laugh with a twist of schadenfreude at the expense of the aforementioned unfortunate archbishop. Perhaps it's just as well that confession season is upon us. An excerpt from Heere Bigynneth the Tale of the Asse-Hatte: An Archbishop of Canterbury Tale follows:

1 Whan in Februar, withe hise global warmynge

2 Midst unseasonabyl rain and stormynge

3 Gaia in hyr heat encourages

4 Englande folke to goon pilgrimages.

5 Frome everiches farme and shire

6 Frome London Towne and Lancanshire

7 The pilgryms toward Canterbury wended

8 Wyth fyve weke holiday leave extended

9 In hybryd Prius and Subaru

10 Off the Boughton Bypasse, east on M2.

11 Fouer and Twyntie theye came to seke

12 The Arche-Bishop, wyse and meke

13 Labouryte and hippye, Gaye and Greene

14 Anti-warre and libertyne

15 All sondry folke urbayne and progressyve

16 Vexed by Musselmans aggressyve.

Read it all here. Hat tip to MrsDarwin, who, like myself, wold she had ywriten yt.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch:
Baby and I forgot and got into the Great Backyard Bird Count a bit late (and wouldn't you know it, our previously plentiful yard birds weren't cooperating the first day of the count anyway.) As I seem to be having some trouble getting the Count website to load, I figured I might as well get our notes from the rest of the weekend off the back of a postcard and on here.

Our results, mostly from 15-minute intervals at the back window, but including some time Baby spent on the boardwalk out at the Swamp:
2/16--Swamp
8 Mallards
3 Blue-winged Teals
4 Great Egrets
3 Chipping Sparrows
--Yard
3 American Goldfinches
1 Pair Dark-eyed Juncos
2 Chipping Sparrows
1 White-throated Sparrow
2/17--Yard
3 Am. Goldfinches
2 male House Finches (one was my bud with the pinkeye--he was looking a little less goopy today!)
2 American Robins
1 Carolina Chickadee
1 Tufted Titmouse
1 Yellow-Rumped Warbler
1 Mourning Dove
2/18--Yard
2 Am. Goldfinches
2 Carolina Chickadees
1 female Northern Cardinal

Yard Eco

I'd noticed him once before, several days ago. This afternoon, he returned to the feeder. He is a male house finch who looks to be in the throes of conjunctivitis. On my first sight of him, I noticed his left eye looked swollen and a bit crusty. Today, I got a better look. The left eye was definitely in the thick of it; it was partly filmed over and at times oozed a yellowish discharge. The finch blinked much more than usual.

On the brighter side, he still looked fat and stalwart and seemed to be able to fly all right. I got a look at his right eye; it appeared clear. Maybe not an ideal situation for aviation, but at least it hadn't grounded him yet. As I understand it, the conjunctivitis itself isn't fatal, but can lead to fatality if it grounds the bird or prevents it from foraging. I'll be keeping an eye on this guy. He looks to be the type that could ride it out if his eyes don't become completely obfuscated.

Just to be on the safe side, though, I gave the perch a good thorough swabbing down with vinegar. I don't want the infection to spread if I can avoid it. Recently we've been inundated by a small flock of goldfinches; fortunately, they seem to prefer the finch sock I put out to the feeder. As they are also suceptible, that's just as well.

The goldfinches threw me at first. I looked out the window one morning, and there was what looked to be yellowish warbler. I had a hard time getting a good look; I thought at first it might be a pine warbler. But getting out the binocs threw me. There were patches of black on the bird's brow! After several of them started showing up, there wasn't room for them all to hide behind the sock and I was able to get a positive ID. The goldfinches are in winter plumage right now, but some of them are starting to turn. That explains those wacky black patches.

Late last summer we had a goldfinch trio stop by for a while. One of the males was leg-banded; so I've been scrutinizing the gang that's here now for a banded bird. I haven't seen him, though. At any rate, it's a nice-sized little group; we've counted up to eight at a time with at least two that look to be changing to mature male breeding plumage.

I put out some lettuce plants last weekend, and some radish and beet seeds. We'll see if the beets get to any size worth picking before the heat kills them. At least the bunny likes the leaves. No sooner had I put in the lettuces than the wind picked up and the temperature plummeted. I'm hoping they didn't take it too badly. They weren't looking great this morning, but perhaps the watering will help.

This weekend, I have some onion sprouts of Vidalia stock to plant. I've never tried them before; we'll see what comes of them.

Yard Eco Update

I finally got around to putting out suet last week, and was rewarded with a very good view of a downy woodpecker working its way down the Bradford pear to get to it. The house finches have been at the feeders again after having abandoned them for a stretch, and a dark-eyed junco was prowling under them the other day. There must have been no lack of wild goodies around during the fall, because most of the birds and even the squirrels were snubbing my feeders for a while. Of course, there was a bumper crop of acorns this year.

With the cold weather rolling back in after a warm stretch, the birds have been pretty active. Yesterday, around 2 p.m., I glanced out the front window to find the yard taken over by common grackles. There were easily two or threescore of them; many on the ground tossing leaves in search of food, some up in the trees. Any disturbance--a car going by, me approaching the window too quickly--would send them all into the air in a mob to redistribute themselves in the safety of the trees. I noticed a bright red epaulet on one of the crowd hopping around on the ground and suddenly realized that the grackles were intermingled with redwing blackbirds--a couple dozen at least, from what I could make out. Most of the usual frontyard birds--brown thrashers, chickadees, cardinals, house finches and the occasional titmouse--stayed clear during the assault. After the grackles and redwings had moved on, I noticed the thrasher and later a female cardinal hanging around in the pear tree. Checking things out to make sure it was safe, no doubt.

Ten to fifteen minutes after the grackle/redwing mob took to the trees, I looked out the back window and found the backyard taken over by a couple dozen robins. One was so fat I wasn't sure he'd be able to take off if necessary. Baby and I watched them briefly, then noticed a number of smaller birds loitering in the trees. We spotted two or three cedar waxwings, which I hadn't seen around the house in a couple of years since a large cedar two doors down was cut. Then the grackle/waxwing gang landed and took over the backyard. They seemed to have picked up a few brown-headed cowbirds between yards as well. The robins were not terribly fazed, and for several minutes the backyard was awash with birds flipping dry leaves.

This morning we spotted another feeder first, notwithstanding the pouring rain. It was a beautiful little ruby-crowned kinglet, browsing under the shelter of a lawn chair. Thanks to the grackles and redwings, which threw seeds from the nearby feeder everywhere, he probably had easy pickings.

Recently Read, & Some Yard Eco

An interesting, (and I think rather timely) perspective on militarism from Chesterton:

Now, Mr. Kipling is certainly wrong in his worship of militarism, but his opponents are, generally speaking, quite as wrong as he. The evil of militarism is not that it shows certain men to be fierce and haughty and excessively warlike. The evil of militarism is that it shows most men to be tame and timid and excessively peaceable. The professional soldier gains more and more power as the general courage of a community declines. Thus the Pretorian guard became more and more important in Rome as Rome became more and more luxurious and feeble. The military man gains the civil power in proportion as the civilian loses the military virtues. And as it was in ancient Rome so it is in contemporary Europe. There never was a time when nations were more militarist. There never was a time when men were less brave. All ages and all epics have sung of arms and the man; but we have effected simultaneously the deterioration of the man and the fantastic perfection of the arms. Militarism demonstrated the decadence of Rome, and it demonstrates the decadence of Prussia.

G. K. Chesterton on Rudyard Kipling from Heretics, 1905.
Page By Page Books (Also available at several other sites.)

*****
A thoughtful opinion piece by Fred Thompson on Cuban health care and Michael Moore's latest "documentary."

*****
Yard Eco: A very handsome male
Rose-Breasted Grosbeak dropped into our backyard feeder yesterday and was back today (he really seems to enjoy the spread chez minor premise! Must be the sunflower seeds.) Rose-Breasteds are northern birds and we don't see much of them around here; this was the first one I've seen since I started birdwatching. Our grosbeak is likely en route to points north; the species migrates to the tropics over the winter. I called up a local wildlife expert of my acquaintance yesterday about the sighting. She assured me that, notwithstanding the heat and the fact that the local wild birds settled into nesting some time ago, those birds from boreal climes are still on holiday and he might stick around a few days before heading north. I'm enjoying watching the feeder--he really is a thing of beauty!

Time to Fly

It is Fledgling Central here at the minor premises. The first round of nestling birds are moving out of the nest, and we, having dogs, are on tenterhooks every time the back door is opened.

Last year, having lost a nestful of thrashers, I fenced off a large rhododendron bush and the stand of privet behind it. Last week, Baby spotted a cardinal chick in the privet. We could see a nest that looked to be tilted farther up in the underbrush, and the adult cardinal pair were frantically searching and calling above.

The chick sat very still, thankfully safely behind my fence. It had been cheeping back at the parents at first, but fell silent on our arrival. It was quite recently molted into its fledgling plumage but was still feathers short of full flight plumage. Its partly-sprouted crest feathers stuck out in all directions, giving it the appearance more of a miniature harpy eagle than a cardinal. We're lucky to see cardinals at this stage at all; their parents don't normally parade them around in public. The juvenile cardinals that accompany the males to our bird feeders have long tail feathers and are fully able to fly. I'm still kicking myself for not thinking to get the camera and trying to photograph it; online pictures at this stage seem to be fairly uncommon although there are plenty from a slightly later age. As the chick was fenced in and didn't seem to be in any distress, we decided to get out of the way for a while so its parents could find and tend to it. We rounded up the dogs and took them inside.

About half an hour later, we slipped outside again. The parents were still moving back and forth across the yard, and the chick was gone from its perch. Baby located it again after some exploration; it was now sitting in another clump of privet behind the back fence. I wish I could have seen the parents move it; there are a fair amount of yard and a large shed between the original perch and its second location. It would have had to travel a good 45 feet, either flying directly across the part of the yard without underbrush or in short hops from shrub to shrub around the other side of the shed.

The parents were farther up a nearby pine tree, and calling loudly. We again backed off, and on our return the chick had moved once more and was nowhere to be seen. We could still make out the parents moving to and fro between the pine and the neighbors' shed roof nearby and guessed that the chick had been relocated somewhere in the tangle of branches and vines in its crown. We haven't seen it again since, although the parents move around the yard daily and the male energetically evicted a potential claim jumper this morning. (Male cardinals establish territories and will keep out other cardinals.) We're watching the feeder with interest for the social debut of the new cardinal family member.

Yesterday was the turn of the brown thrashers. We spotted a fledgling toward evening sitting atop one of the smaller rhodos, outside the safety zone. It was, alas, another perfect photo op that didn't occur to me until after the fact; young thrashers aren't what you'd call subtle. The yard being full of dogs at the moment, I scooped it up (this took a few tries--while you can practically touch them when they're sitting still, they'll try to jump out of your hands if you grab them) and moved it inside my fence. It hopped out of my reach and sat on a branch until one of its parents came for it.

Our next-door neighbors have a large, overgrown privet bush in their backyard which provides excellent cover and is home to all sorts of wildlife (and of which the root system is probably responsible for the proliferation of still more privet around our yard) including the thrashers' nest, but the fledglings seem to like to disperse over our less dense undergrowth. This can be problematic as fledgling thrashers are big and ungainly (according to Cornell's All About Birds site, they fledge a little earlier than most of their relatives) and for a few days at least their flight is slow, clumsy, and unpredictable. Being undergrowth birds they are generally close to the ground as well. Our retriever mutt figured out last year how easy it is to knock a thrasher fledgling out of shrubbery, to the detriment of our yard thrasher population. They will land on open ground and aren't always quick enough to get out of harm's way, which is how we ended up losing one this morning. We're determined not to lose any more this summer. For now, the dogs are going out in pairs instead of all four at once. They will have to get acclimated to the dog run, of which they aren't fond; hopefully nobody will rip out the chain link with his teeth this year. I've got the run located across the yard from the underbrush, so I'm hoping no thrasher fledglings decide to fly in there. I'm afraid it will just be a matter of natural selection for any one who does.

Another good account of fledgling thrasher behavior may be found here.
Audubon's account of thrasher defensive mobbing behavior is here.

Ken Hanson of Hawks Ridge Images has posted a large selection of really nice pictures of many birds, including brown thrashers and Northern cardinals. Images include juvenile cardinals, some of which are probably only a little older than the one we spotted in our account above.
Chipperwood has nice closeups of adult male and female and juvenile Northern Cardinals.
I am looking for a good image of a thrasher fledgling, and will post it when I find it. As the dogs need an escort these days, I may start carrying the camera outside with me. Maybe I'll get lucky!

UPDATE 4/30 9:20 p.m.: I may have glimpsed the cardinal fledge this evening at sunset. It was hard to tell for sure as I was viewing it against the setting sun, but it seemed to fly fairly well. Still sticking to the trees and shrubbery, though.

my personal green revolution

I am not a lawn person. Striving for perfect turf and weighing the relative merits of Bermuda versus zoysia are not activities that interest me. I do not believe in devoting hours to uprooting every dandelion in the yard. In fact, I kinda like dandelions. I reserve the potent chemicals for the likes of fire ants (a nasty invader, anyway) and poison ivy (which isn't an invader even if it is invasive, but will make you itch. Besides, my neighbors have never really gotten the hang of identifying it, so I just do their yard too and save us both a lot of trouble.)

It therefore took about half a dozen years of living here (not counting the drought years, when trying to grow anything new would have been a waste of time anyway) for me to come to the conclusion that it was really time to try to grow some grass. Having a yard comprised mainly of a dozen different varieties of weeds didn't bother me, but having sizeable bare patches and erosion did. So did the proliferation, after a few wet years, of an annoying woody-stemmed weed I couldn't identify that threatened to take over the entire back yard and couldn't be controlled with the lawnmower. Having occasion to call a local tree surgery outfit over some unavoidable pruning, I gritted my teeth and made an appointment with their turf guy as well.

When the turf guy arrived, he surveyed the backyard.
"This'll take us a year of treatments. You've got poleanna," he announced. I was intrigued. Being an occasional listener to a Saturday morning gardening radio show, I'd heard quite a bit about poleanna. The impression I had was that almost everybody seemed to have some, and everybody was anxious to get rid of it. Other than that, I was in the dark.

When we arrived in Geawgia, it was quite a novelty to be in charge of our very own yard. The novelty wore off a bit after the numerous oaks and hickories dropped several tons of leaves on that yard over the winter, but we were determined to make a good go of landholding, even if the plantation was a mere third of an acre. So we listened to the gardening show for helpful hints. Poleanna was a topic that seemed to come up quite often. The show wasn't a whole lot of help to us in figuring out what exactly it was, although it offered plenty of remedies for it. I think Diazinon was the standard recommendation. At least, I know it got about as many mentions as poleanna. Still ignorant, we soon came to use the name for any weed we couldn't identify:
"What's this?"
"Dunno. Must be poleanna."

It wasn't until recently that I acquired some idea what the mysterious herb might be: our county Extension Service agent published a column on it on the newspaper's garden page. Poleanna, it turns out, is actually Poa annua, or annual bluegrass. Not that I would have figured that out from the standard pronunciation down here. Everybody, to include the folks with graduate degrees in horticulture and botany, seems to call it "poleanna." (I've observed that it's risky to assume too much about folks here in the South based on their diction. That guy you're talking to who sounds like he just fell off a melon truck might be a lawyer, surgeon, or college dean. Phi Beta Kappa to boot.)

"Really? Which one is it?" I asked, scanning the weeds around my feet. Finally, I was up close and personal with real poleanna! Turf Guy pointed at a vividly green clump on the ground between us. One of those that I had previously classified as "what the heck, it's grass."

I examined it. Then I stood up and eyeballed the backyard. From the looks of things, the greater part of what constituted grass in it was poleanna. I still wasn't sure why we didn't want it in the yard, since it was green and mowable. I figured if it looked like grass, I wasn't too concerned what shade it was. But he was the expert. Maybe an annual grass, even one of a genus popular with Kentucky-bred horses, wasn't the best thing to have holding down the soil in a yard prone to erosion. And there was still the matter of those darn woody weeds. Turf Guy pointed out the other delights of the yard:
"You've got dandelion," (say it ain't so!) "chickweed, nutweed..." he rattled off several others familiar and unfamiliar.
"What's this?" I queried, pointing out the dried stems of my woody-stemmed bete noire alongside the fence.
"I'm not sure, but it's real common."

The tree guy arrived, but didn't know, either. Darn, I thought. If I can't get rid of it, I'd at least have some satisfaction in being able to call it something.

We've since been pruned, Diazinoned (or some such,) and limed, so hopefully our scraggly tufts of centipede or whatever the original ground cover was will soon spread out into an attractive green lawn. I'm gonna miss the dandelions, chickweed and sorrel (but not some of the more annoying weeds,) but I have confidence that they will be back in force next spring. Whether my woody nemeses will be controlled this year remains to be seen, as it is too early for them yet. In the meantime, I suppose I should hit the field guides at the library and try to I.D. the darn things. In the worst case, I'm advised to take a sprig to the Extension Service office, where they will surely be able to satisfy my curiosity. They'll come in handy as a resource when I start on my new book idea. I'm thinking of calling it The Field Guide to Extremely Common Weeds No One Knows.

YARD ECO: While much of the country digs out from under drifted snow, I strolled out this morning and found the car lightly dusted with pollen. Ain't the South grand!

kicking and screaming

...but finally on the new Blogger. As this has left me feeling in need of prayer, I submit for the benefit of all the following list of "Insta-Prayers For Each Meyers-Briggs Personality Type," courtesy of The Ironic Catholic and various others:

ISTJ: Lord, help me to relax about insignificant details beginning tomorrow at 11:41:23 a.m. E.S.T.
ISTP: God, help me to consider people’s feelings, even if most of them ARE hypersensitive.
ESTP: God, help me to take responsibility for my own actions, even though they’re usually NOT my fault.
ESTJ: God, help me to not try to RUN everything. But, if You need some help, just ask.
ISFJ: Lord, help me to be more laid back and help me to do it EXACTLY right.
ISFP: Lord, help me to stand up for my rights (if you don’t mind my asking).
ESFP: God, help me to take things more seriously, especially parties and dancing.
ESFJ: God, give me patience, and I mean right NOW.
INFJ: Lord, help me not to be a perfectionist (did I spell that correctly?).
INFP: God, help me to finish everything I sta
ENFP: God, help me to keep my mind on one th - Look a bird! - at a time.
ENFJ: God, help me to do only what I can and trust you for the rest. Do you mind putting that in writing?
INTJ: Lord, keep me open to other’s ideas, WRONG though they may be.
INTP: Lord, help me to be less independent, but let me do it my way.
ENTP: Lord, help me follow established procedures today. On second thought, I’ll settle for a few minutes.
ENTJ: Lord, help me slow downandnotrushthroughwhatIdo

Not sure which to choose, though. Thought I was INTP, but I redid the quiz this morning and came out ISTJ. Maybe I should say them both for good measure.

Yard eco: Beaucoup juncos, mourning doves, robins, mostly on the ground. Carolina wrens, chickadees, & chipping sparrows at feeders; some house finches, titmice, & of course, the occasional cardinal. Mockingbirds & brown thrashers hanging around as well. Baby thought she heard a catbird a few days ago; it had one of the squirrels' undivided attention. Yellow-rumped warblers, front and back yards in the last couple of days; great view of a downy woodpecker yesterday in the front yard! Wonderful stuff, that suet!!

GROUNDHOG GREETINGS TO ALL WHO VENTURE HITHER!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Yard eco: Late Thursday night Alpha dog wasn't in any of her usual nap spots. She didn't come when called. Yelling from the back door availed not even an answering bark or whine. So I took a flashlight out into the backyard to look.

I found her silent and sphinx-like, at the back of the yard near the composter. Quivering with excitement, she gazed intently above, eyes fixed on something midway up a small cherry snag. She had a young opossum treed.

Didelphis virginiana, North America's only marsupial mammal, is extremely common around here and lives as well in suburbia (barring encounters with those pesky autos) as it does in the woods. It is, however, shy and largely nocturnal so unless you're up late or early in the morning, you might not know it was around save for the unlucky ones that fall to late-night drivers. It was a real treat to look up the trunk and spot this little one looking back. We figured they were in the neighborhood; now we know they're also raising litters and dispersing them throughout. Ours, I suppose, was lured by the overripe eggplants I had tossed in the composter.

Alpha, quite carried away with her find, wouldn't move. She was deaf to commands; wouldn't budge when I grasped her collar. I gave it up and hoisted her sixty pounds back to the house, gingerly avoiding the fallen branches we haven't yet cut up. Thank goodness the Nordic genes make her compact.

The 'possum can have the eggplants, with my compliments.

Harvest: No lack of bell peppers, though they are small. The insect damage seems to have stopped, but then it's been cool for a change. Still lots of cayennes, which I am drying in small bunches. Now I just need to find lots of people who like spicy food. Thinking of planting some radishes and beets tomorrow, now that the heat's mostly past. Certainly radishes, which grow quickly.

Knitting: Baby gift finished, except for snap closures and name, which I am v-stitching on. Stuck on my second sock; am going to have to relearn the German twisted cast-on.

Credit Where Credit is Due, and other musings

No one will ever nominate him for "Husband of the Year," but the Godfather of Soul demonstrated this weekend that he can be a real class act. Though no one would have faulted him for politely declining to perform at local wannabee politico Charles Walker, Jr's ill-conceived and abysmally organized James Brown Soul of America Music Fest--especially given that its taking place at all was no guarantee even a few weeks before--Brown, who after all is no spring chicken, flew home from a paying gig at his own expense and trekked to the Fest to perform a short program. It is too bad that the gross lack of planning and local disinclination to trust Walker's grandiose claims for the three-day event resulted in lackluster attendance. Shamefully, Walker wound up the event nearly getting it shut down by quarrelling over payment with local deputies who were working security for him. This guy shouldn't be trusted with so much as a moderate-size Tupperware party in future.
Thank you, Mr. Brown. Your community spirit is admirable.

***

Dog Bud dispatched three--three!-- brown thrasher fledglings Saturday. Initially I didn't catch on to what the clever fella was up to; he figured out that he could, by pouncing on the big rhododendron bush in which they were sitting, knock them down and then scoop them up before they could recover. While he doesn't seem to have any interest other than carrying them around awhile, that itself is (unfortunately) pretty quickly fatal to them. Once I got wise to what he was doing I took off to the home & garden and picked up several fencing stakes and a roll of mid-gauge 2" wire mesh, and fenced off a 10 x 15 foot section of the backyard around the rhodo. While pounding stakes (and having my ankles eaten by the no-see-ums that have cropped up with the arriving heat) I could not but muse on comedian Jeff Foxworthy's assertion when the Olympics were held there that the locals might be inclined to bring nails and barbed wire to the Fencing venue. Future thrasher nestings should be safe now; Bud seems to have accepted that he's not gonna get past that fence. We don't have this problem with other fledglings, but thrashers are comparatively big and tend to nest and forage in low shrubbery so I guess they're more vulnerable. I don't think Donna Reed ever did fences. I may have to turn in my Domestic Goddess card.

***

The Ironic Catholic has posted a news item reporting on Benedict XVI's Polish trip. It seems that take-away cream cake sales in Wadowice have been stopped during the papal visit due to fears that they might "go off" in the heat. One of the IC's commenters helpfully explained that this is a British idiom equivalent to our "go bad" or "spoil;" still, for those of us on this side of the pond the image of cream cakes exploding all over Wadowice and whipped cream raining down on the faithful is just too much fun to give up! (Gosh, I hope they do Boston Cream in Poland!)

***

Harvest: Anyone out there want some zucchini? Tomatoes in fruit. Picked one large cuke today, several small ones coming along.
Environment: The fireflies are out!
House painting: Don't even ask...

Georgia Squirrel Revival

It about figures that once I start theorizing about something publicly, something happens that forces me to revision. Yep-- it happened, and not a week after my last posting--squirrel's nest down. Second time in the seven years we've lived here, and the first time anything could be done about it.

Friday afternoon after my last posting we were finishing up Baby's schooling and getting ready for a Girl Scout meeting when our male dog, Buddy, appeared at the back door. We, suspecting nothing, let him in.

Bud is a big, friendly, dribbling mop of a retriever (golden, or possibly yellow lab) cross with hints of large terrier and maybe shar pei. My stepmother once aptly described him as "Benji on steroids." His personality runs heavily to the retriever, as does his obsession with carrying things. (He loves shoes.) His penchant for carrying things has, unfortunately, been fatal on occasion--we have found that grounded fledgling birds and the occasional conjunctivitis-blinded house finch do not stand up well to Buddy's handling. Aside from these infrequent instances, however, he never gets to do any REAL retrieving. Until...

The other dogs, of course, noticed first that Bud had something in his mouth. Anxious to keep his prize to himself, he loped across the living room and up the hall with his mouth shut and the girls at his heels. Baby realized what was up and got my attention: "He's got something--I think it's a mouse!" I nabbed him by the back door (oh, for some opposable thumbs! he was doubtless thinking) and grasped his collar, bracing myself. The girls gathered around.

Okay, say it's a mouse, I thought. What am I going to do when he lets it go? Well, figure that out later. Can't just stand here indefinitely. I took a deep breath.

"Leave it, Bud."
Slowly, he let a furry dark mass drop to the floor.
Baby tells me I let out a pretty good scream at that moment. I'll take her word for it though I don't recall. My thought process over the next several seconds (which I recall vividly for some reason) went thus:
1. My God, that's the biggest darn mouse I've ever seen!
2. No, stupid, that's not a mouse--it's a rat--no it's not. We don't have rats in the shed. Anyway, have you ever seen a rat that looked like that? Oh no, it's dead--look at it, curled up and with its eyes shut...
3. Oh. Wait a second. Curled up. Fetal position. Eyes shut. Wait. Rats don't have... furry tails.
4. It looks like a...squirrel. Baby squirrel. Duh.
The girls, thank goodness, must have been as nonplussed as I was; none of them moved while I was sorting all this out in my head. Junior, on the other hand, finding himself free and exposed to the glaring light of day and the air again (not to mention coated with slobber,) did. He let loose with a piercing, infantile scream.

This shook me back to action. Maternal instinct fighting its way through revulsion (parts of my brain had yet to let go of the notion that he was a dead rat,) I ordered the girls to stay. Surprisingly, they did. I grabbed a tissue from a nearby box and gingerly lifted him up. I hollered to Baby for some kitchen rags, which she brought. We wrapped him up. Probably exhausted from his effort, Junior did about what any infant does when it's been subjected to undue stress--he conked out.

I, meanwhile, was still in panic mode (a little James Joyce here:)
Baby squirrel oh my God it's going to die there's not a thing I can do it's too little I can't possibly raise it it's mother will never take it back now that it's been in a dog's mouth it can't last very long I can't let it suffer maybe I should euthanize it wait I don't even know how to do that properly except with ether and I don't keep that around the house I know--I'll call the vet.

Having got one of the vet's assistants on the phone, I stammered out the whole story.

"What should I do?" I asked. "It can't survive, can it?"

" Oh, yes it can," she replied with calm assurance. "Squirrels are fighters. I've raised a couple myself. I can take care of it if you want to bring it in."

Finally, a plan! This calmed me down enough that I found myself beginning to think straight--well, sort of. I decided to have a look around the backyard and see if I could determine Junior's tree of origin. Tucking him blankets and all into a plastic mixing bowl, I consigned him to Baby and slipped past the dogs through the back door. There might be more downed squirrels around, and I didn't want to give them access . In retrospect, I probably should have let Bud out with me, and followed him. He, after all, knew where Junior came from. He also had a far better nose than I do.

I looked around for several minutes with no result. A large nest in a nearby hickory appeared to have some material dislodged from it, and an adult squirrel sat on the branch beside it, seeming to look around. I approached, but saw and heard nothing. I went back inside.

We were heading out the door when D. arrived home, having taken a half day. He, poor soul, had figured on a quiet afternoon with his family. Instead, he got a pilgrimage to the vet with a soggy bedraggled critter that his city-boy instincts associated with a rat. Into the car we piled, Baby deftly balancing the makeshift squirrel cradle on her lap. Twenty minutes and one long detour to avoid an excruciatingly long freight train crossing later, we were turning into the vet's parking lot. Baby, over the previous several minutes, had been treating us to periodic bulletins from the back seat:

"He's breathing," (well, thank goodness for that.)

"He's starting to move; I think he's waking up,"

"He's moving his mouth,"

Darned if he wasn't, too. Back to the world of the living and ready to chow down. Junior squirmed around and rooted, making sucking motions with his mouth. We trooped into the office, where K., the assistant I had spoken to earlier, was waiting. We peeled back the rags.

Finally dry and with a good nap under his belt, Junior was looking pretty chipper. K. lifted him out of the bowl and competently draped him, belly-down, across the palm of her hand. Junior clung there with his front paws, still rooting. With his fur standing up, he no longer looked rat-like. He looked squirrel-like.

"Well," remarked K. "Better set up the incubator."

We got a Junior update a week later. K had passed him along to a friend who was taking care of him. That made me a little edgy, but I had to defer to her judgement in this matter. At any rate, he had made it that far, and would be released when he was old enough to survive on his own. That I could get behind. Squirrels, males especially, were not cut out to be house pets.

I got to rethink my previous examination of the yard when we got home. While I was distracted, the ever-determined Bud had persuaded somebody to let him back outside, and that somebody hadn't brought him back in. He was waiting for us at the back door in a characteristically retriever state of excitement. I opened the back door.

Bud had not been idle during our absence. There, on the threshold, unfortunately deceased but entirely undamaged, lay Junior's two siblings: one about the same size, the other noticeably smaller. I suspect exposure on the cold porch floor must have finished them off. Alas, if I had only made use of my squirrel retriever in time!

Postscript: After the fact, I did some online research to edify myself on better ways of handling downed baby squirrels. There are several helpful sites; all of them (in the strongest terms) advised contacting a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. If one is not immediately available, hydration (using some form of electrolyte solution) was recommended over immediate feeding. Long-term care is a LOT of work, which is why a rehabber is advised. Baby squirrels cannot be raised on any old food or in any old way, and like most young mammals they need to be stimulated to relieve themselves. Don't try this at home, unless you don't mind spending several minutes a day swabbing a little squirrel bottom! These websites give information on basic care until you can get babies to a rehabber:

Squirrel Wildlife Rehabilitation

Baby Squirrel Care

Mother squirrels often will attempt to rescue their babies if they can do so safely, and are not themselves injured. Human scent on the babies does not necessarily put them off. The following website includes an article with thorough details on attempting to return baby squirrels to their mommas:

How to care for baby squirrels