Maggie's Farm

The return of the Bald Eagle is a satisfying success story.

With the banning of DDT, protection from idiot shooters, and the transplantation of chicks, the big fish-eaters will be around the US for our kids to see.

This bird can be found, in small numbers, almost everywhere in the US where there are large bodies of water, except in mountains. 10,000 nesting pairs in the lower 48 isn't much, but it's lots more than the 400 in the 1960s.

Read about the Bald Eagle here.

One of the pups just got back tonight from a little pre-beginning-real-job jaunt to Beaver Creek, with photos in hand, as requested.

750 lb. male Griz caught in Montana, collared, and released, near beautiful Choteau, MT - "The Paris of the Rocky Mountain Front."

In reality, if he was looking for a decent meal then downtown Choteau is not the place, but you can buy cigareets and whusky there. I have been there.

Maggie's Farm supports and admires the work of The Land Trust for Tennessee - as we do the good work of all land trusts. 

Photo from yesterday's celebration of a donor of a conservation easement on her working farm. Some things in life mean more than money.

Yes, Maggie's Farm has had a conservation easement for a number of years, and can never be developed.

Nice old farmhouse. What style would ya call that, Sippican?

Sippican: It's "a nice little spindle-style Queen Anne house, a little spare on the embellishment."

The destruction of America's egret population was one of the reasons for the creation of the Audubon Society. The special breeding-season egret plumage made great decorations for ladys' hats.

Our egret populations have recovered nicely. If you have a rookery anywhere nearby, where often many species of egrets nest together, you are fortunate because you will see these fellows all the time, stalking for food in the shallows.

When you see a Snowy, watch for those bright-yellow feet on their black legs. Like Mickey Mouse. You can read about the Snowy here. (thanks, reader, for the nice photo)

Now that we are in June, our birds would rather eat bugs than seeds. Regardless, I am continuing the feeder this summer to see who stops by. Today: Purple Grackles, Mourning Doves in droves, Goldfinch, Redwing Blackbird, Cowbird, House Finch, House Sparrow, Blue Jay, Cardinal, Tufted Titmouse. Oh - of course, Grey Squirrels.

Lurking happily in the rose bushes under the bird feeder: 2 baby Cottontail rabbits and a family of Chipmunks. The young bunnies are too tame and trusting for life, so I try to teach them basic survival fear by advancing menacingly when I am near them.

Photo: Mourning Dove. These lovely, subtlely-colored birds with their soft cooing are now game birds in many states, but not in New England. They taste as good as they look. I was surprised to read that they are among the ten most common species in the US. Read more about Mourning Dove at CLO.

From the National Research Council (h/t Insty):

Domestic cats: 100s of millions a year
. Striking high-tension lines: 130 million - 1 billion a year
Striking buildings: 97 million to 976 million a year
Cars: 80 million a year
Toxic chemicals: 72 million
Striking communications towers: 4 to 50 million a year
* Wind turbines: 20,000 to 37,000

If one must have an outdoor cat, the least you can do is to put a bell on the animal.

June is rose season in New England. Thanks, reader, for sending the photo. I think that color might be called "salmon." Whatever it's called, it is easy on the eyes.

And, speaking of plants, thanks to tropical storm Benny or Benjy or Barry or whoever for the wind, thunder, and rain he carried up here. Much needed, and much appreciated. The annuals (Impatiens) and the hydrangeas (Blushing Bride) we planted yesterday in the heat are surely grateful too. True Yankees love stormy weather.

A reader sent in these nice rattlers caught outside Kingsville, TX., near the natural gas plant. I hope they are planning on eating them...or at least making a belt out of the skin.

A propos of the post of the WSJ article yesterday about the Greenies who want to get rid of the Klamath River dams, here is a photo essay of what one of those dam projects, the Boyle Dam, has done to the Klamath river. It isn't pretty. Photo below of the Boyle Dam.

The subject of the study and handsome Mockingbird, whose songs have fooled many a beginner birder, comes up because of this nifty story about one from Attack Machine. They are remarkable mimics.

The Mockingbird, (Mimus polyglottos), once a Southern bird, is now found across the US and into southern Canada. His repertoire of over 200 songs - copies of the songs and calls of other species - caused him once to be caged as the American nightingale.

The family of Mimic Thrushes also includes thrashers and the catbird. All are fond of tangles, shrubs and borders.

Many of our Mockingbirds in New England overwinter here, and occasionally visit the bird feeder, but they do not seem to like seeds very much.

You can read more about them here.

Half the county was at Home Depot this morning. We aren't into buying Hostas at Home Depot, but their tomatoes are good, and mine are in the ground now. And I have 20 more bags of black mulch to carry around.

But getting back to Hostas, Mrs. BD found this site.

Long-time readers know that we have rules about Hostas - never anywhere near the sun and never less than 5-20 plants of the same type en masse. Done right, they can be wonderful, but done wrong, they can be tacky.

One of their downsides is that they take a few years to fully establish themselves. One of their upsides, besides their preference for dense shade, is the astonishing variety of sizes and colors of foliage available these days.

Here's our previous piece on Hostas.

A re-post from April, 2006.

I recently complained to our web Boy Genius Chris about all of the searches that our Maggie's Farm blog receives for Farm P*rn, but he says there is nothing to be done. To defeat that waste of time for the poor perverted bestiality-fans who are surely not looking for this blog, I posted last month, for their erotic delight, a stark nekked 1950 Farmall tractor, Model C. A dang nice one, too, in decent shape despite her age. That Farm P*rn post, with an "o" instead of the star, received lots of hits, but they didn't stay very long. Somehow, I do not think that they are our core readership. Either that, or they just aren't into tractors, like we are.

The Dylanologist advised me to use stars (*) when we want to say p*rn, or s*x, or things like that, to reduce the search machine links. However, today we unveil some true Country P*rn: M*ting Box Turtles. What is finer than a spr*ngtime r*mance, and p*ssionate, true-l*ve, reptilian am*re in a dewy morning meadow with a s*xy, hard-shelled but soft-hearted, fun-l*ving gal? "Mmmmm-Hmmm. A little to the left".  "My left, or yours?" "Never mind."

In July or August, she will lay 4-6 eggs. The odds are overwhelming that not one of them will reach maturity, but with luck she will have 30-50 years of egg-laying, and maybe one or two of those 200 lifetime eggs will make it to adulthood, to replace herself and her true love in the great chain of being. It's a hard life: you not only have natural predators and the risks of hibernation, but you have to deal with dogs, lawn-mowers, and car tires. 

Cool fact: Like some other turtles, Box Turtle females can contain sperm for a number of years so they can continue laying eggs without benefit of marriage or desire.

You can tell the males by the indented plastron: they are designed, very "intelligently," for l*ve. Bless their tiny reptilian hearts, deeply in l*ve and strongly committed, for the moment, at least. True love, d*ggy  turtle- style.

A re-post from May, 2006

Japanese Wisteria blooms in May in New England. 

It's a sentimental Victorian plant that is perfect for shading pergolas, arbors and porches.

Once established, it grows like a weed, up to 10' per summer. It takes work to keep it under control.

Robins love to nest in their tangles: I have a pair of robins nesting in mine right now, so I cannot trim it until the babies leave the nest.

Like many exotic, introduced plants, it can be very invasive and aggressive: eliminating wild stands of wisteria is a tough job.

I grow sweet-smelling Autumn Clematis up my Wisteria vines, so the vine serves double duty. Autumn Clematis is another one of those strong vines that grow like crazy, with amazing September perfume.

With all of the exciting news about wildfires, I want to make a pitch in favor of wildfire. Wildfire is part of nature, and it's a good thing.

Fire suppression makes natural fires worse when they occur, because kindling builds up on the floor of the forests.

Why is wildfire good? Not just because it is "natural." I am not a pagan who believes that whatever is "natural" is good. But fire is nature's way of creating swaths of ash-fertilized space for plant succession on the land, and new habitats for the species that like newer growth. In fact, mature forests probably have the lowest biodiversity of any non-polar habitat. For one example, the Elk and songbird populations of Yellowstone took a huge jump after the big fires.

Smokey the Bear was wrong. Wildfire is part of the creative destruction of nature. Suppressing it is little more than sentimentalism combined with a subsidy to logging business. Whether millions of taxpayer's money should be spent, and lives risked and lost, to support that sentimentalism and that industry is a political question (to which my answer is "No").

We have written more about the virtues of wildfire and clear-cutting before. 

Why are we getting repeated Google searches for "removing pachysandra"? We have never posted on that subject, although I guess we have posted on pachysandra.

Since there appears to be interest out there, here's my method.

(But first, even though I have some pachysandra beds adjacent to the house, I do not really approve of it near houses or buildings. It belongs at a distance, in full shade - if you must have it at all.)

I am an expert at pachysandra removal. You take a good sharp spade - not a shovel - and with it cut deep parallel lines in the pachysandra bed, about 14" apart. Then you use the spade to cut those stretches into 2-3' lengths. Use the spade to begin to undercut those strips a couple of inches deep, and then you can peel the whole thing up like a slice of carpet.

If you want to replant it somewhere else, just lay those lengths of carpet down, and, with some watering, they will grow in.

Our truant contributor Gwynnie emailed this photo to us from her place in the California mountains south of Lake Tahoe. Took the photo this morning. Message: "This fellow was as interested in me as I was in him." (No word yet on how the pig hunt went, but I know Gwynnie will return to Yankeeland with a ton of wild pig sausage. Always does.)

Our tiny Yankee pal is around in both summer and winter. Often, in winter, he is the only bird you will encounter in the woods, searching for bug larvae in bark and rotten wood. You can read about our Chickadee here at CLO. Their springtime song - pheee-beeee - is a sweet delight. Photo by Gwynnie, yesterday:

Department of Things You Always Wondered About: How does a snake swallow a larger snake? Live Science

North America's handsome King Snake is best known as a snake-eater, hence its name. He is immune to the venom of poisonous snakes.

In the US, there are a number of varieties of King Snakes, including the stunning eastern Scarlet Kingsnake, but the taxonomy is unclear. I have only seen one wild Scarlet King Snake in my life, and I tramp the woods, fields and marshes as much as I can.

Image is a King Snake subduing a Copperhead by constriction, preparatory to dining on it.