Maggie's Farm

Usually we begin to see the first flocks of northward-headed blackbirds in New England around Feb 15, but in recent years their arrivals are later and later. This year, the first wave arrived here yesterday.

"Blackbird" isn't a species - it's a category. Around here, it is mainly Red Wing Blackbirds and Common Grackle, who have spent their winter in the southern US and are headed for the marshy breeding grounds in the northern US and Canada. Very early migrators, they don't seem to mind nasty weather as long as it does not persist. (In the midwest and west, there are other species of Blackbirds.)

Photo below of male Red Wings. The females are an inconspicuous brown. In spring, the males get up on a branch, flash their red epaulets, and crow, in their territorial ritual, while the drab females skulk around and build nests in the rushes.

I was thrilled and surprised to see one pass by this week, low over my garden. Must be cold up north. I am sure he or she is hurrying north to nest in the snow.

Reposted -

The Snowy Owl breeds around the world at the northern edge of the tundra. Depending on food supply (lemmings and similar rodents), they regularly migrate further south during the winter.

I have only seen a handful of them in New England although they are regular visitors to tundra-like, wide-open places in New England and other areas of the northern US: golf courses, marshes, beaches, large fields and meadows. The last one I saw was sitting on a snow-covered sand dune in Montauk, L.I., but I have seen them perched on farmhouse roofs. They are diurnal owls, and usually perch on a high spot to watch for the movement of little critters.

You can read more about the Snowy Owl here.

Mostly old friends:

Tree Sparrow
Cardinal
Slate-Colored Junco
Mockingbird
Song Sparrow
Blue Jay
Downy Woodpecker
damn English Sparrows
White Throated Sparrow
Great Horned Owl (heard early)
Mourning Doves
Chipping Sparrow
Chickadee
Carolina Wren

and a new friend, a Brown Thrasher, one of my favorite birds. He's a little early to be here, but using his strong beak to punch holes in the snow to find birdseed.

The Oyster Shell Game:

 After seven years of political and legal battles that have grown into one of the ugliest environmental fights in the country, this was the end of the line for Lunny’s oyster farm. "It's been a terrible time," said Lunny, who still lives on the nearby cattle ranch where he grew up and where his grandfather started a dairy farm in 1947. The forced closure of the oyster company marks the end, after almost 80 years, of modern shellfish farming in Drakes Estero, the tidal estuary that lies at the center of the dispute...

One good guy vs the government. Guy loses.

Often, as my Mom taught me, the best way to observe nature is just to sit in the woods or meadows silently and inconspicuously for an hour or two. Things will happen. A Box Turtle will wobble past. An upwind fawn will walk ten feet from you. A Redtail will dive on a mouse. A Blacksnake will slither over your warm Wellies. Dragonflies and butterflies will perch on your hat. A Marsh Hawk will pass just over your head, startling you.

A lot of quiet outdoor sitting takes place on deer stands, in duck blinds, etc.

Yesterday, I watched from my office window, a Sharpie attacking sparrows 5 or 10 feet from my window. That's not unusual. What I had never seen before was the frustrated Sharpie just settle on the ground and to begin stalking the sparrows on foot through the hollies where they had fled for safety. He walked with a long slow stride, very alert, just like a Velociraptor.

Have you ever seen that?

After a few minutes of stalking, he somehow flushed a flock of about ten sparrows from a holly and tore off after one. I couldn't see whether he was successful. Wish I had taken a photo.

Around here, there are three bird species which annoy the heck out of me. They especially annoy me in winter, because they eat most of the bird food I put out to attract native winter visitors from Canada.

The three are The English Sparrow, aka House Sparrow (really a finch), imported from England

The House Finch (not to be confused with the Purple Finch), imported from southern California and Mexico

and the European Starling, imported from England - no photo needed I am sure. The only good use for these three species is to feed migrating falcons and Sharpies, and to provide target practice for kids with BB guns and .22s.

Not many interesting birds around thus far this winter, but a Red Tail Hawk has been screaming at me all day from the top of a Sugar Maple. I've been hauling firewood, which seems to annoy. My regular Great Horned Owls are of course hooting each morning at 4:30.

Which reminds me that on Christmas afternoon a Bald Eagle flew right over my roof. Not an everyday occurrence here. I mentioned it to Mrs. BD and she said "Oh yeah, they have been nesting down on --- Road this summer. Watched them raising their chicks every morning on my morning exercise walk with friends."

Sheesh. Could have mentioned that to me. I, the Bird Dog, would have been interested.

Wonderful to see those big fish eagles coming back. I didn't think it could happen, but then I never expected the Ospreys to come back so strongly either. Or, God knows, the Wild Turkeys. The resilience of nature is a wonder.

A final batch of my pal's pics from his trip to Zambia in August. I requested some pics from town and city but he says they spent their entire trip in tents in wilderness with native guides.

 More below the fold -

My pal who returned from a couple of weeks in Zambia is quite the wildlife photographer.

Wish he had included photos of the people, town life, etc., but these are wonderful.

More pics below the fold - 

At Aeon, Earth is not a garden - Some of the world’s most powerful conservationists are giving up on wilderness. They are making a big mistake. A quote:

 The garden metaphor is particularly loaded. A garden is not an ethical place. Life and death occurs at a gardener’s caprice. Plant or cut, tend or kill, include or exclude: it’s an exercise of morally unconstrained will, fine in a backyard but requiring boundaries both literal and philosophical. ‘Once we shift to a gardener’s mindset, it gives us too much freedom to do whatever we want,’ says the bioethicist Gregory Kaebnick. ‘And I’m speaking as an avid gardener.’

In a garden, there isn’t necessarily a sense that life has any value apart from what we assign. Neither individual beings nor larger entities – populations, communities, species, ecological processes – are intrinsically worthy of respect. The gardener ethic can’t account for that. What Leopold so eloquently advised, that we think of ourselves not as conquerors of life’s communities but as ‘plain members and citizens’, goes out the window.

Nature's alterations to the landscape never end, and mankind gets in the way.

Billingsgate Island, once the site of a lighthouse, a school, and over 30 houses, is now Billingsgate Shoal. It used to be a popular picnic destination, big clambakes.

Some of it is above water now, during low tides. Best explanation I've heard is that destroying the salt marshes that protected it from Cape Cod Bay (for salt hay to feed the critters) is what destroyed it. 

This photo shows what agriculture and deforestation (by the Indians and then by the Europeans with their farms and cattle) did to the soil of the outer Cape: it's down to sand and sweet-smelling scrub now:

Interesting piece on the topic below the fold -

Readers know the BD is a lover of marshes and swamps. They are full of life - more than any other form of habitat.

When a dike was built across the Herring River in the late 1800s, the tidal flow was interrupted and the river began silting up and turning into fresh water. A few years ago, the bridge was reconstructed to permit a full tidal exchange without removing the road dike.

The phragmites is dying out, spartina is returning, and the tidal flow is vigorous. Environmental successes usually come in small pieces.

Deep in town, a railroad dike was built in the late 1800s to carry vacationers and mail to Wellfleet - and to carry fish and oysters to NYC. This dike also impeded free tidal flow and caused the inner harbor to silt up. Tall ships used to dock in there. The pilings of the railroad bridge on the dike remain:

I doubt that the village would spend any $ to remove the old dike.

Here's my challenge to the town of Wellfleet: re-open the dike between the marina and the marsh behind it - the marsh that begins behind Capt. Higgins Pearl and used to stretch back for several 100 acres until the harbor construction closed the salt flow to a tiny trickle destroying a large salt marsh. I'll donate.

All it needs is a simple 30-40' bridge there to de-silt and salinate the old marsh.

Addendum: Thanks to commenters for some corrections.

Took this pic of a clamming boat coming into dock in Wellfleet in September a couple of years ago. The refrigerated truck will arrive just as he ties up.

Those are Sea Clams which are harvested along the Northeast coast by dredging, from deeper water than the Quahog of the tidal flats but much shallower waters than those inhabited by the deep-sea Ocean Clam. Here are Sea Clams up close:

Sea Clams are the main processed clam in the US, and their shells are commonly used as ashtrays.

The hard-shelled clam, the Quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria - why that name?) is the clam of Atlantic US estuaries and tidal flats. It tastes better, in my opinion, than the Sea Clam - especially when you dig them yourself. Unlike the Sea Clam, you eat the Quahog feathers and all: Littlenecks and Cherrystones - and the chowder-sized Quahogs.

This is from Thoreau's Cape Cod:

We found some large clams, of the species Mactra solidissima, which the storm had torn up from the bottom, and cast ashore. I selected one of the largest, about six inches in length, and carried it along, thinking to try an experiment on it. We soon after met a wrecker, with a grapple and a rope, who said that he was looking for tow cloth, which had made part of the cargo of the ship Franklin,(17) which was wrecked here in the spring, at which time nine or ten lives were lost. The reader may remember this wreck, from the circumstance that a letter was found in the captain's valise, which washed ashore, directing him to wreck the vessel before he got to America, and from the trial which took place in consequence.(18) The wrecker said that tow cloth was still cast up in such storms as this. He also told us that the clam which I had was the sea-clam, or hen, and was good to eat. We took our nooning under a sand-hill, covered with beach-grass, in a dreary little hollow, on the top of the bank, while it alternately rained and shined. There, having reduced some damp drift-wood, which I had picked up on the shore, to shavings with my knife, I kindled a fire with a match and some paper, and cooked my clam on the embers for my dinner; for breakfast was commonly the only meal which I took in a house on this excursion. When the clam was done, one valve held the meat and the other the liquor. Though it was very tough, I found it sweet and savory, and ate the whole with a relish. Indeed, with the addition of a cracker or two, it would have been a bountiful dinner. I noticed that the shells were such as I had seen in the sugar-kit at home. Tied to a stick, they formerly made the Indian's hoe hereabouts.

The entirety of Thoreau's report of his amusing 1849-1867 ramblings, Cape Cod, can be read here.

They do love my Trumpet Vines. I have a red one too.

Live, from outside Barrow, Alaska. There are four chicks in the nest. Temps are in the high 30s (F) there today due to the crisis of global cooling, so keeping the chicks warm is important. Devoted parents, and Dad brings home the meat all day long.

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

I heard one, and finally saw him high in an Ash Tree, while working with an outdoor work team on Saturday morning.

Probably breeding around here, but possibly passing through. His call is said to resemble that of "a Robin who had singing lessons." Great description.

This not-uncommon Eastern songbird, which likes deciduous woodlands, is like a large finch. They are even known to visit bird-feeders sometimes. The male is dramatic, while the female looks like a large sparrow with a large beak.

You can read more about them, and listen to their song,  here.

My snap above is the main lodge. As I mentioned previously, it's a barrier island accessible only by small boat.

What sorts of people would spend serious bucks to inhabit rustic cabins built in 1910 on the edge of a swamp with far fewer amenities than home, the air full of skeeters, Diamondback Rattlers and gators roaming around, no elegant plantings other than God's, simple home cookin, no umbrella drinks, and where the evening entertainment is an academic talk on bird migration?

Well, as Mrs. BD pointed out, it can be expensive to get that old-timey vigorous WASPy in-the-woods time these days in remote places. A condo on a beach with WiFi and TV, hotel menus, and Pina Coladas and lounge chairs around the pool would be less than half the price tag, but boring as heck. She believes that my Yankee-types, as a matter of taste, like either grand luxe or rustic roughing-it, and nothing in-between. Probably right. In addition, we do not like to sit on vacations. Go Go Hi Ho.

As she also pointed out, the price at Little Saint Simons is all-inclusive - all meals (no menu choices, of course - family-style), all of the naturalist adventures, all the boats and kayaks and bikes, all the booze and cocktail hours and oyster roasts and shrimp boils at the beach. And the entirely private 7-mile island, just for you. Chef is a grad of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America for those of you in Yorba Linda) but he does home cookin like his grandma.

So who was there (all with spouses)? A self-selecting elite bunch of folks. A recently-retired career Army Ranger from Colorado who discovered an interest in natural history. A retired Memphis cotton broker. A NYC doctor. A high school teacher couple from Salt Lake City. An 8th-grade Science teacher from Michigan. A famous nature artist from Massachusetts. An Ornithology prof from Georgia Southern (not a railroad - a university). A professor of something from Boston. A fund manager from Chicago. A jolly, congenial, and intelligent crew, and a tattoo-free zone for sure. Lots of laughs at mealtimes.

Despite the skeeters, they have a high repeat rate. I would recommend March-April-May or October for a place like this. Too hot and too many bugs in the summertime - for me, anyway.

Our temps last week were daytime highs around 76 and nights high 50s-low 60s. Constant sea breeze. Perfect.

I remarked to Mrs. BD that it must be a rare "resort" vacation spot indeed where, when one of the resident naturalists asks for a show of hands for the next morning's 7 AM birding in the marsh, almost everybody present raises their hands.

"Meet at the trucks at 7 on the dot."

More boring travelogue pics and nature details below the fold -

After the Eastern Box Turtle, the Wood Turtle, clemmys insculpta, is my favorite. Nowadays, it is a treat to see one, since they are threatened or endangered over most of their range, which is the Northeast, south to Virginia and west to Iowa and Michigan.

Illegal collection of these handsome turtles has been a big problem, and dogs can easily kill them by crunching their shell.

I have usually seen them in moderately-sloped small streams with deep pools, but occasionally the pup has located them in the Spring, rambling in wet fields or moist woods, not too far from a stream. He is trained to leave turtles alone: the shock collar did that. He thinks turtles are electric.

When I was a kid, I picked one up and he ate my nectarine out of my hand. Sniffed it first, then went for a big bite. Cute. Then I put him back down after he pretty much ate the whole thing.

Photo is from this Wisconsin Wood Turtle site.

In the Northeast US, now is the time to clean out, or put out, your Bluebird houses for the Eastern Bluebird. I have no advice regarding the Western Bluebird, but it's probably similar.

If you don't have the sort of habitat that Bluebirds like, the houses will likely be inhabited by Wrens, House Sparrows, Tree Swallows (if there is any water nearby), Chickadees - or mice.

The point of Bluebird houses is Bluebirds. They will only nest in holes, and there's lots of competition for holes because lots of critters who need holes are not able to make them.

What's Bluebird habitat? They do not live in the woods, and they don't live in suburbia unless it's 5+ acre zoning. They like woodland edges, hedge rows, meadows with fences and large (5+ acres) lawns, large gardens, old apple trees. They do not mind living with humans, and often seem to like having barns and sheds around. To make it simple, if you see them hanging around in April, it means it's the right area for them. You can't really attract them - they have to want to be there in the first place. Like their competitor Tree Swallows, they like their nest boxes in open spaces, not so much on trees but on barns seems OK.

Another factoid about Bluebirds is that, if you have one pair around, there are probably more, and they do not seem to mind sharing an area: you can put up two boxes per acre, maybe more. People build Bluebird Trails in exurban, semi-rural, and rural areas because everybody likes to see them.

At the Farm, I have my own Bluebird Trail of around 20 nest boxes, mostly nailed to fence posts, some to utility poles. Generally about half of mine are used by Bluebirds, half by other things. In a good year, Bluebirds can raise two broods. Snakes are the main predators of nestlings, so metal poles are probably best but I don't bother much about that.

I recommend the one pictured, via Best Nest. The extra piece of wood is to deter predators. Easy to make them yourself, though. Just make the hole the right size (1 1/2" diam), and place them properly. When I was young, my brother and I made them on an assembly line, using Dad's table saw and the free pine scraps from the lumber yard. If you do, don't paint or stain them. Birds prefer plain wood, rough and un-sanded preferably.

Spring Peepers. They aren't called Hyla crucifer anymore, but I stick with the old name. They are the first musicians in the spring chorus emanating from the vernal pools, swamps, and ponds at night as soon as the ice begins to melt.

People rarely see them because they are so tiny, and nocturnal. After breeding, they leave the water as do Wood Frogs, Grey Tree Frogs, Leopard Frogs, and of course the toads.

Those two pics are Spring Peepers. They are usually grey-brown, but I have seen them turn green on a leaf.

It's worth living near a marsh in the Eastern US just for the two months of free nachtmusik from our amphibian friends. By mid-May, the toads and larger frogs will join the chorus.

Here are the frogs and toads of the Eastern US. Mostly northeastern. I've never seen a Mink Frog, but we have all of the others at the Farm. The Grey Tree frogs make a racket, but they are rarely seen because their camo on trees and bushes changes to match the bark. All you can see are their eyes.

I think it's fun to identify them all by their Spring mating calls, especially because (like owls) you rarely see them. This site gives a brief description and a recording of their individual calls.

Spent yesterday trout fishing with Gwynnie down in CT. We took a few photos to give our out-of-Yankeeland readers a little taste of CT in April:

Trout Lily, in bloom:

A close-up:

There are plenty of them on the market these days, and most people have their favorites. I still have my first Peterson. It's hard-bound. The pages are falling out, but I won't throw it away.

The newer guides are, in many ways, more useful than the original Peterson guides which did often did not include immature, molting, hybridized, or non-breeding plumages. Those things can often confuse the experts - but the experts rely on more than appearance. Experts rely on the gestalt of the bird - habitat, sound, flight pattern, posture, behavior, etc.

I am an amateur, not an expert. Mrs. BD remembers that, when I was first dating her and showing her birds, I told her that bird species behavior is like individual human behavior: they tend to do the same sort of thing all the time so if you see a behavior or habitat once, it's safe to assume that they do that all the time.

Here's the good article about the field guides: Knowing a Hawk From a Handsaw.

Image is from Peterson: male Blackburnian and Hooded Warbler in spring breeding plumage.