Welcome Home, Hummer

I saw my first hummingbird today at my window where I keep my feeder.  Archilochus colubris , a female ruby-throated hummer flew up and down the window searching for the feeder she knew had been there last fall.  Luckily I had already washed the feeder and I just had to mix up some nectar - 4 parts boiled  water (and cooled, of course)  to 1 part sugar, as the experts recommend.  I have heard some people say that they  mix a more sugary solution, but that is not recommended, as 4 to 1 more approximates the natural nectar in flowers.  It is possible the sweeter mix could do harm to them.

I caught the little ruby-throated female  through my window drinking.  Sorry for the quality, but I haven't had the chance to set up for better shots.
It is always exciting to see the first arrival after its long and hazardous trip north over the Gulf of Mexico and then up from Florida to North Carolina.  I felt as happy as I would be to welcome a good friend after a long perilous journey.

It is amazing how a little bird can manage such a long trip - in the case of here, close to 15 hundred miles.
Actually she could be a traveler who will stick around here to rest up and get nourishment for her trip farther north.  I understand hummers have regular stops on their journeys south and then back north.  I will never know, but I am happy to feed all sojourners.

Flowers and Birds

Hello nature lovers. Spring is bustin' out all over here with the saucer magnolias with their pink blossoms, the forsythia and daffodils with their yellows and azalias, which my wife planted at the edge of the yard almost in the woods.  Also wild redbuds, of which I have one in my yard are in bloom.  I've never understood why they call them redbuds when the color is more of a pink/violet color.  In that same vein, why do they call purple finches purple when they are really red, or as Petersen so beautifully describes them, "a sparrow dipped in wine."  A Melanerpes carolinus, or red-bellied woodpecker has no red belly, just a light peach color.

Speaking of which, I caught two at my feeder yesterday partaking of the sunflower seeds and "woodpecker" suet cake, from Lower.  In the top picture notice that this one has a red head, which means he is a male.  He has  no place to prop his stiff tail to keep his upright position like he does on trees.  It's quite funny as he tries to balance himself at the feeder, sometimes swinging back and forth like an uneven-bar Olympian. In the bottom three pictures is a female with no red head, just red on the back of the neck. I suspect they are mates with, hopefully, a nest nearby with eggs or little 'uns.  I never see them together, so I would guess that one is minding the nest while the other feeds.

I am making an unscientific study of the of the order of bravery, or lack thereof,  of birds at my feeder - that is who will stand his ground when other birds fly in.  I have it in this order: Number one by far is the little American goldfinch.  He will fight away anything in his size range and many larger than himself. The next is the purple finch, quite a scrapper.
Then comes the larger ones, the cardinal, which surprisingly is a bit of a coward according to his size.  I guess he relies on the brilliant crimson to warn others off.

The bluejays will stand down to nothing except the woodpecker.  He is king - when he comes in all scatter.  It might be his sword-like beak that intimidates them.

The most cowardly are the poor Carolina chickadees and the titmice.  When they feed on sunflower seeds, they pick one up and fly to a nearby limb and peck up to 30 times to open it to get at the little seed.  It hardly seems worth their energy for the small reward.  In contrast, the finches sit on the feeder and with their strong beaks crack open the seeds and gorge themselves.  I feel sorry for the titmice and chickadees and sometimes scare the finches away.  In addition they clog the feeder openings with hulled out seeds.  I don't much like them, but that is nature - everything has its own niche.  And I really do admire the spring and summer bright yellow of the male golden finches. In winter he looks like a female, a drab brownish, grayish, sparrow-like bird.  Although cheated out of the brilliant colors of the cardinals, purple finches, goldfinches, hummingbirds and others, she is safer in her nest, as well as at other times of the year.   It seems, everything has a price.

A Rabbit at My Feeder

I went turkey hunting this morning just after daylight over at a creek about 2 miles from my house at the edge of a field which was yellow with wild mustard beside the creek.  I saw 3 hens, which, of course, are protected, but no toms.  I wouldn't shoot a hen anyway,

I refilled my feeder this morning and the usual gang was feeding, along with 2 mourning doves.  A few minutes ago I looked down and saw this eastern cottontail rabbit, Sylvilagus floridanus, eating seeds.  I have seen him around a few times.  For some reason, habitat loss, I suppose, there aren't nearly as many rabbits as they were when I was a boy.  Rabbit hunting back then was a common thing with beagles, but no one rabbit hunts now.  Cottontail rabbit fried in bacon grease is fine eating, but now if I eat any it comes from the supermarket.

As I think I mentioned before, I am about 10 miles east of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  It's beautiful up there any time of the year.  It gets about 20 inches of snow during the winter and I can look up from my house and see the white mountains when we have none here.  Since it is protected from hunting, and it should be, I can drive up there and see deer and turkey about any time.  The best time to see deer is to go about an hour before dark and look in the adjoining cow pastures.  It is better to see turkeys in the early morning.  Two summers ago I was up there and when I rounded a curve, a hen turkey with 12 poults were following her in a line crossing the road, then a second hen was behind her with 11 or 12 more behind her.  Naturally they had the right-of-way, so I just sat there in my pickup and enjoyed the beauty.

Speaking of the Blue Ridge Parkway, it runs from the Shenandoah valley of Virginia south into North Carolina and connects to the Great Smoky Mountains.  It is all  beautiful mountain country with several "overlooks" along the way with great scenic views.  It is 468 miles with the larger portion in North Carolina and at a higher elevation.

The Parkway goes beside Mount Mitchell and Grandfather mountain.  There is a bridge called the Linville Gorge bridge, which is fantastic.  It is an elevated bridge that winds around the mountain and is very high in places.  In its being built, the natural forest below was not disturbed as little as possible. One can look down from the bridge and see great boulders and thick mountain laurel and rhododendron below.  The Blue Ridge Parkway is the most visited national park in the U.S.  If you get a chance to visit, I can guarantee you won't be disappointed.  If you are into camping, there are several campsites along the way.  The entire road is a two-lane, winding, twisting strip of sheer (pun intended) beauty.

One final note: the building of the Parkway was begun in 1936 (or 37) and local people were hired.  It was a blessing for them to get work because the depression was going on.  My father also worked on it.  He was a "powder monkey," one of the dynamite blasters.

To Feed or not to Feed

Hello fellow nature lovers.  I made this blog, with much help from my son, Rob, because I have two unabiding loves: nature and photography, and the two just naturally conjoin.  I included this picture of me so that you would have some idea of the writer. 



I am standing in front of the active volcano, Arenal, in Costa Rica, which I visited in 2005.  Costa Rica, like the other central American countries is a dream-come-true for nature lovers.  But now, back to North Carolina.

iIt's rainy and dreary today, but my feeder is alive with activity.  The usual number of  suspect are feeding.  They are the following: Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, American goldfinch,  purple finches, cardinals, 2 blue jays, 1 red-bellied woodpecker, and assorted ground feeders: slate-colored juncos, several species of sparrows I can't identify, and a couple of wood thrushes.

I am debating whether to feed them this summer.  I probably should take the feeder down around the first of May and let them fend on their own since food is in abundance during the summer and fall months. Some ornithologists recommend not feeding in the summer to discourage dependence.  I love seeing the different summer birds - warblers and such.  But I think I will not feed them this summer.

There is something unusual going on right now at my sunflower feeder.  A goldfinch has been sitting there for close to an hour and not eating.  It's feathers are all fluffed up as in cold weather, but it is not cold today.  I walked close to it and it didn't appear to notice me.  I have never seen a wild bird die, but I suspect there is something wrong with it.  I will keep a close watch on it.

I saw a wild turkey cross my sister's driveway late yesterday afternoon.  She lives up in Ashe county which is around 3000 feet in elevation.  I hunt turkeys up there and will probably hunt sometime this week, as turkey season is open.  I usually kill 1 or 2 a season.  I eat what I kill, both turkey and deer and wild turkey is delicious.

As I write about birds I am reminded about what I witnessed 3 springs ago from my kitchen window. I heard a commotion and looked out into the back yard where my feeder is and I saw a brown bird rushing at something in the grass.  At first I thought two birds were fighting, as they frequently do during the mating months.  On closer inspection with my binoculars I saw that it was a brown thrasher going after a snake.  The thrasher would rush in with its wings spread to appear larger and peck the snake.  The snake would strike at the bird but it never connected. At the time I couldn't tell what kind of snake it was.  After about 15 minutes of this the snake quit moving and the thrasher left.  I went outside to look at the snake and saw that it was a copperhead.  We have quite a large number of snakes here - non venomous ones and a few copperheads.  It was dead, its head a bloody mess.  I measured it and it was a small one, 18 inches long.  I wrote to the Audubon Society and told them of the experience and I got an answer from someone who said that this was quite common with brown thrashers vs snakes.  The snake had probably gotten near the thrasher's nest, which as resulted in its demise.

I never kill the non-venomous snakes - I usually carry them out into the woods beside the house, but they probably beat me home.  I do, however, kill copperheads.  Maybe I shouldn't because it has its own niche in nature, but they can be dangerous.  There are a very few rattlesnakes around here, timber rattlers, but I've only seen two in my life here.  One bit a cocker spaniel we used to have.  The dog survived but it's neck swelled tremendously and the vet saved her.

Hello All

Greetings from beautiful western North Carolina, sometimes called  the variety vacation land.  It does indeed have a variety of features from Mount Mitchell, just over 6683k feet in the west with Canadian-like climate down to the south-east coast to Wilmington, with a semi-tropical climate.

I live in the western piedmont, or foothills,  of the Blue Ridge mountains and the Parkway -which is about 20 miles away.  In those 20 miles the elevation rises from 1000 feet to a little over 3000 feet -- quite a steep climb.  We don't get much snow here.  Last winter we only got a couple inches twice, which melted soon after, but up there in Boone and Jefferson, they got plenty of the white stuff.

I feed birds winter and summer and hummers in the summer.  They haven't arrived yet from their amazing migration across the Gulf of Mexico. (good luck, little fellers!). I expect them shortly and I have to be ready because they fly around the large front window searching, sometimes looking in my window as if to say, "Well, we're here, you do your part."  They have me trained!

A few summers back I got them so tame I could hold the bottom of the feeder and they would alight on it.  But I couldn't get them to land on my hand.  I got some pictures and will post them later.  I have only seen the ruby-throated here, the male with the beautiful ruby iridescent throat, but my nephew who lives nearby says he saw a couple of different ones, but couldn't identify them.

Speaking of hummers, when I was in Peru six years ago, up in the Andes at 11k feet,  I saw the world's largest humming bird, the Andean.  It was as big as a little bird we have here, the ruby and golden-crowned  kinglets - pretty amazing to see a hummer that big.

I'm off for now, but more about my birds next time...bye.