Turkey Vultures and Black Cats

Ok, so I am struggling to get back into good running condition this Spring. I had a good run Monday night, though, so I figured tonight should be pretty good, too. I get 2/3 of the way into it and I am totally struggling to make myself keep going. Then, what should appear overhead - no more that 25 feet up? A Turkey Vulture swooping over me! I could see every distinctive marking on it. The whitish color under the back half of the wings and tail, the red head, the legs. I see them circling high over farm fields around here all the time. But this one seemed to be mocking me! He was just waiting to see if I was going to end up dinner!

To make matters worse, as I continued around the corner, the neighbor's black cat decided to cross the road in front of me. I am not extremely superstitious, but I did get enough superstition from my great grandmother on my Dad's side to seriously consider calling off the rest of the run at that point!

On a brighter note, I had a White-Crowned Sparrow at my feeder tonight. They are just gorgeous. If you see one, the first thing you will notice is that its head looks like it has zebra stripes on it. They are truly striking to look at. I didn't get a photo - in fact I knocked my camera on the floor grabbing for my binoculars (yikes!). But if you click on the link above, it will take you to the What Bird description of it. They aren't year-round residents here. They pass through on the way to their Canadian breeding territory, but I see them at the feeders at least once a year.

Oh, and I was able to finish my run with no great calamity befalling me.....for now!

Grosbeaks at My Feeders

This morning I had a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak pair at my feeders. I had positively identified a female one yesterday with my Mom (they can easily be mistaken for an overgrown sparrow!). We could then hear the male in the woods, but never found him. Today, he not only came to the feeders with the female, he posed for a photo for me! They seem to like the safflower seed in the hopper feeder. Actually, the male liked to scrape around in the tray feeder for dropped safflower seeds more. The males have really striking markings.


So what kinds of birds can you expect if you have feeders in your backyard? Well, if you live in a suburban area in Southern Indiana and put out a variety of feeders, including nuts and suet, you can attract quite a variety. If you live in a rural area with some sort of water and woods nearby, the list is longer. I have 122 birds on my life list and 56 of them have been right here in my yard or on the lake. I'm working on getting that list on the blog.


What do I mean by a variety of seeds? Well, I have a feeder specifically for the finches that I keep nijer seed in. I have two different suet feeders, one upright "tail prop" feeder and an upside down one. My woodpeckers are particularly fond of the Naturally Nuts suet from Wild Birds Unlimited. Of all the ones I have tried, it attracts the most variety of woodpeckers: Downies, Hairies, Red-Bellied, and Flickers. Other birds like Chickadees and Titmice like it, too.


A basic hopper feeder with a blend of sunflower, safflower, and black oil sunflower seeds attracts a wide variety of birds. Everything from Sparrows (English, Chipping, Song) to Wrens (House and Carolina) to Cardinals. If you live in a rural area or at least in a suburb near the rural areas, it may be worth trying an oriole feeder. It usually has a place to put some grape jelly and a spike to put an orange half on. We get Orioles here, but I have never actually seen them come to the feeder yet. Of course, anywhere you live you could attract hummingbirds with a hummingbird feeder. Don't bother buying the commercial food. I just microwave a cup of water to 1/4 cup of sugar to dissolve it, let it cool and pour it in. NEVER add food coloring. It isn't necessary and there are some who believe it might even be harmful to the birds. The bright color of the feeders will attract them.


Wow! I now have two Grosbeaks here at once, as I write this! That's a first for me. This is what is fun about feeding birds. Research shows that even birds that frequent feeders still get the majority of their food from natural sources. There isn't any danger of them becoming dependent on the feeder food. The primary reason to feed them is to get a chance to see them up close instead of having to search them out far and wide (and high up in the trees!). I frequently just sit at my kitchen table watching them at the feeders.

Confession of a Carolina Wren Lover

I love Carolina Wrens. In fact, it was discovering them around our home in the country when we first moved here that got me hooked on backyard birding. They are so elegantly shaped. They look like they would fit nicely in a teacup. They have that beautiful streak above their eyes and the reddish brown coloring on their backs. I hear their calls all the time when I am working in my yard, "Teakettle! Teakettle! Teakettle!" We have had many stories over the years involving them ---- mostly getting into our house when we open the front door and they are nestled into a decorative wreath on the door! One Christmas, we got one in the house twice. One time, we had two in the house at the same time. You know what they say, a bird in the wreath is worth two in the house! Hmmmm....maybe I have that saying wrong.

Well, this spring they have been hanging out a lot in the big Hemlock just outside our garage. There have been multiple times I have seen them in the garage this spring. They seem quite adept at finding their way back out, so I don't worry too much about it. Tonight, as my husband was heading out for his bike ride, he came back into the house, poked his head through the kitchen door and said, "we have a situation." My first thought was that there was an unwelcome critter in our garage . . . not a totally unusual event out here. It was a Carolina Wren. Unfortunately, even though we have switched to a humane mouse trap, we still had some of the terrible glue traps sitting on the bins I keep the birdseed in. One of my sweet little wrens was stuck on it!!!! It was horrific. We grabbed a clean shop towel to put over his head to keep him calm. I held him while my husband gently, carefully pried him off the trap. He settled down as long as we had the towel over his eyes. We ended up having to use a little vegetable oil to free the one wing that was pretty stuck.

I checked him out to make sure his feet and bill weren't too sticky. He was anxious to get away. I hated to let him go back out into the world, but he seemed in pretty good shape. I put him under the Hemlock where there's a bunch of dead leaves from the fall still. He flapped about, then scurried to a bush by our front door. I tried to keep an eye on him but he eventually disappeared. I really hope he's ok because I feel horrible that we try to keep our property as a haven for the birds and it almost became a death trap! We promptly threw away our remaining glue traps in the garage to prevent another tragedy.

A word to the wise, even traps that are poison free can have dangerous consequences for unintended critters.

A Heron in My Tree

I have always thought Herons and other large water birds like Egrets, look a bit out of place in a tree. They are just huge compared to the other perching birds! Anyway, the other night when I was trying (once again) to catch a snapshot of a Blue Jay "stealing" a peanut from the feeder by my back porch, I noticed our one of our resident Great Blue Herons flying low across the lake. They are usually pretty reclusive and keep to the island at one end of the lake. We have seen them a lot more this year - even wading just off the shore behind our house. Then I saw it. There was a large gray blob in a tree at the edge of the woods! It was the back of a Great Blue Heron perching in one of our trees! They are so funny looking from that angle. They sort of remind me of Snoopy sitting on the edge of his dog house assuming his "vulture" pose!

Ours must not vocalize very much. I listened to the vocals on the What Bird site - never heard them before. What I do hear now when the window is open at night is the little peeper frogs. They have arrived now with the warmer weather. I am sure the Herons must love the frogs here. We have always had a large, healthy population of frogs here. We also have a slew of crayfish, which my Peterson Field Guide says is also part of their diet.

Speaking of sounds in the night - I heard the Barred owl again this morning around 5:40. Wanna know why I was awake at 5:40 this morning? We had a 5.2 magnitude earthquake here! Yes, right here in Indiana! I actually bought earthquake insurance many years ago because we live well within range of the New Madrid fault system. This one came from a nearby adjacent fault to the New Madrid. Anyway, I lay there after jumping out of bed from that jolting experience and listened to the owl for awhile. It's nice to know they like to hang around our place. I love knowing we provide a home to so much wildlife. Our place is a refuge for us from the everyday rush of life, and it provides refuge to wildlife from the rapid pace of development.

Well - tomorrow I'll put more whole peanuts in the feeder and try to get a shot of the sneaky Blue Jays and do a post on them. Oh, and for any who have checked out the Falcon Blog link here, they are expecting eggs to start hatching next week, so stay tuned!

Robin Feeder in Training

A pair of Robins in my Dad’s neighborhood have him trained. Each night one of them is waiting near the door to the screened in porch for him to put out the meal worms for them. He bought meal worms to attract Bluebirds, but none came. Knowing that Robins eat about fourteen feet of worms a day, he decided to see if they liked the meal worms. They gobbled them down as soon as they discovered them and kept coming back for more. He puts out about 30 of them each night in a plastic feeder tray on the ground. You have to use plastic so the meal worms can't crawl out. You can keep them in the fridge for weeks in their dormant state - though I suspect Dad's Robins go through them too fast to worry about it! Even though the Robins fly away when he goes out the door, they come right back for more as soon as he goes back in. He enjoys sitting inside and watching the Robins eat. He also scares off any other birds that try to steal the worms. The Robins usually build a nest nearby, so last year he watched them fill their mouths with as many worms as they could hold and fly away to feed their babies. This year they came back about 2 weeks ago. Off Dad went to buy more meal worms. Yep, they have him trained. (story contributed by Nancy Baney)

Here, Birdy, Birdy, Birdy, Birdy!

The Bluebirds (click the link to go the WhatBird site and learn about the Eastern Bluebird) have been hanging out around here for a couple weeks now. The first night I heard their call, I ran into the garage and selected my favorite dried out gourd, cut a 1 1/2" opening in the front, along with some vent holes at the top, cleaned it out and hung it on a post close to the woods. I did one last year, too. We ended up with a house wren in it, which was perfectly fine, but what I had really hoped for was a bluebird.

Want to try your own gourd house? Most farm markets will have decorative gourds in the late summer to fall. You can put them in a decorative arrangement on your porch for the fall, then when you are done with it, store it in a cool, well ventilated place for the winter. I tried hanging them from under my balcony two winters ago. That didn't go too well. They got knocked down by the winter storms, which broke several of them. I ended up with one good one by the end of the winter.

The bonus was that apparently some of them left their seeds behind in my landscaping! More likely, a greedy chipmunk collected them and buried them there. Anyway, the next spring, I noticed something growing in my new landscaping that looked a little like a squash or cucumber plant. Curious - and because I hadn't planted anything in that area yet - I let it grow. Then it got curiouser and curiouser, as they say. It started developing white blooms. Still convinced it may be a squash or a melon, I started pinching many of the blooms to force the energy into the few fruits I let grow. And WOW! did they grow! The vines completely took over that tier of my landscaping - stretching at least 20 feet with multiple vines. I ended up with a bumper crop of very cool decorative gourds. After they had hardened off (the stem starts to die away from the vine), I brought them into my garage workbench.

The key is to keep plenty of air around them (don't bunch them up) and to remove any that start rotting to the compost pile immediately. It's sort of the rotten apple effect. One bad one will start them all rotting in short order. Don't worry about surface mold or other icky stuff. That brushes right off with a stiff brush once they are dried. Only worry about the spots that go through the skin. The tops of the gourds near the stem seem to be the most susceptible to rot. Some people say they will stink up a garage or basement. I have never noticed any smell, but our garage gets a good airing out every time we open the door for a car.

By the time you hear your first soft warble of a bluebird call the next spring, they should be ready to cut. I use a hole cutting bit on our drill to do the trick. It would be ideal if you have a 1 1/2" hole bit, but we happen to have a 1" bit, so I use that and then a file and a measuring tape to open up the hole to 1 1/2". Don't go any bigger than that, because even if a small bird such as a wren or a bluebird were to take up residence there, a Cowbird could get in and lay her eggs for the poor little bluebird to raise! Place the gourd somewhere out of the way of the daily activity in your yard, but make sure you have a vantage point to get your binoculars on the entrance to see who is using it! I spent hours last year watching the wren pair raise two nestings.

Whatever type of house you use to attract the birds, enjoy watching what devoted parents they are as they come and go feeding their young. I especially like that most birds share the baby-rearing duties almost completely evenly! Their survival usually depends on it.

My Friend the Barred Owl

It's that time of year again. The windows are open at night and I can hear the wonderful night sounds from our woods. It reminds me of sleeping in our camper in the Hoosier National Forest when I was growing up. We went to sleep the other night listening to a Barred Owl. The owl seems to like the top of a very old Sycamore tree that got broken off decades ago. We suspect a pair nests there, but have never been able to prove it. It started as a loud call right outside our window in the area of that tree. Then a couple minutes of silence. The frogs haven't come out yet this year. Then another call from a little further away around the edge of the lake. Then another pause. Then a little further around the lake. "Whoo cooks for you - Whoo cooks for you-aaaallll?" That's how you tell the Barred Owl.

This morning, when it was still very quiet, I could hear two talking back and forth. One just outside my window on the other side of the woods from the Sycamore tree, calling a shortened version of the call, and another from across the lake answering with the full call. How sweet! They finish each other's sentences. But that's how it is when you have a mate for life, isn't it? I think that is why I enjoy observing nature so much. There is so much we can learn about ourselves - the good, the bad and the ugly - from the natural environment around us.

Well, it's time to call it a night and listen for my owl again. I am looking forward to posting to this blog - I hope you enjoy it, too.