Behold The Mighty House Wren

One of the drawbacks of devoting much of the weekend to birding is that you tend to fall behind on certain yardwork. There are a couple of chores in particular that I find especially disagreeable. The first is cleaning my gutters. They get filled up with those little twirly-bird maple seeds that, when saturated in stagnant rain water, makes a particularly nasty organic soup. Another is removing the strangling weeds that wrap their evil vines around the hedges. No matter how cautious I am in approaching this task, I always end up getting a a Poison Ivy rash. It's probably just me. I'm sure for some people this type of yardwork would be their idea of a good time.

This weekend I finally managed to complete these dreaded tasks. As I was working, I noticed the House Wrens were also busy working, singing and gathering food. Somehow, I felt comforted by the fact that I wasn't the only one who had responsibilities to take care of.

These little House Wrens start singing before daybreak and don't stop until after dark. I enjoyed watching them try to fit oversized sticks through the hole in the nestbox. It took them a while to get the hang of it. They are also known to be very aggressive to other birds that try to nest near their territory. They don't have much competition in our yard so that's not really a problem. I found it interesting to read that they add spider eggs to their nests. When the spiders hatch they eat the parasites in the nest and the wrens have an added food source to snack on.

Afterwards, I sat in the shade to watch the birds, butterflies and insects that visited the gardens.

I keep very small gardens so they are easier to maintain. Wrens are supposedly good to have around gardens as they eat some of the insects that might otherwise be damaging to plants. So far, I've sampled some red leaf lettuce and basil. Pretty soon the yellow squash will be ready.

I'm always hearing people talk about honeybees and how important they are. What about bumblebees?



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For the last couple of years there hasn't been many honeybees in our yard (which is kind of concerning). It's the bumblebees that have been doing most of the pollinating.

 

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Behold the mighty House Wren

as it flies from tree to tree

with a bold and bubbly song

that cries out "Look at me"!

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Finding spiders in the hedges

and ants beneath the brier

the skill with which it gathers food

is something to admire

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He perched upon the nestbox

then sneakily flew in

checking briefly on his family

then its off to work again

Moving At The Speed Of Summer

I've had enough of trying to fight the summer. Instead of fighting it, I'll just move at the speed that the summer dictates.

I've taken the same approach with my summer birding. Instead of struggling to find the birds, I'll let them find me. On Saturday, I visited the Pine Brook Bog in East Hampton. When I first arrived, there didn't seem to be many birds around. Great Blue Herons, a few Wood Ducks, and an Eastern Phoebe were the only species to get my attention. I leaned back against my truck for a few minutes and listened to a New York sports station as the callers talked about the Yankees and Red Sox Series that is going on this weekend. That's when I noticed a big, dark, butterfly playing hopscotch across the sandy soil. I didn't come looking for butterflies but the butterfly was there. So why should I ignore it? I don't know much about butterflies but I do recall someone telling me last year that this particular species is a Spicebush Swallowtail. Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

After watching the butterfly for a while, a dragonfly landed on my antenna. I'm probably less interested in dragonflies than I am in butterflies. After all I'm looking for birds-right? The thing is, with the current heat and humidity , I was not about to go bushwhacking through the woods. At the same time I was listening to callers arguing about the Red Sox and Yankees on the radio, two dragonflies were fighting to gain position on top of my truck antenna. I'm not sure what species these dragonflies are. I think the top and bottom photo might be the same species even though they look very different because of the variation in lighting.

This one almost looks like it has a smile on its face is it happy because its summer or because it won the battle for control of the antenna?

Do you know what species of dragonfly this is?

I never did get very close to the birds this weekend.

How many Great Blue herons can you find in this photo?

I never seem to be able to get close-up photos of Belted Kingfishers. I'm thinking that this is a male because it doesn't show the rusty orange color on the breast that the female has. Most of the time it's the males that end up with the flashy colors so Belted Kingfishers are different in that way.

I also made a visit to The Rocky Hill Meadows which is a series of farm fields along the Connecticut River. Unfortunately for me, the roads were flooded out from all the rain we had . For the next couple of months, the meadows are a great place to observe migrating shorebirds. I took a short walk along a nearby trail there and was scolded by a House Wren. It didn't take much convincing for me to turn around and head back to my truck.

On the way back, I came across a nice patch of black raspberries. Shortly after I took this photo, the raspberries mysteriously disappeared.

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I made a brief visit to the Portland Fairgrounds this morning. I was impressed with the the swarm of swallows feeding on the wing as they skimmed across a giant rain puddle. I'm not very good at trying to identify swallows that are in the midst of flight. The usual species at these fairgrounds include Tree Swallows, Northern Rough-winged Swallows, and Barn Swallows.

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I caught these Barn Swallows in the middle of a conversation but it looks like one of them is doing most of the talking.

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So that was it for this weekend. A few birds, a couple of dragonflies, one butterfly and a bush full of fruit- (I'm not taking a crack at our president-I would never say that Bush was full of fruit). I put in minimal effort and just enjoyed watching whatever happened to be in front of me at the time. Summertime and the living is easy.

Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder.

This morning, a co-worker asked me if I had heard about how all the honey bees were dying. Then I remembered mojoman's comments on this post. It all started sounding kind of ominous to me, so I thought I'd check it out.

Colony Collapse Disorder occurs when worker bees stop returning to their hives, leaving juveniles and other bees to die. No one has figured out the cause yet, but obviously the impact could be very serious. We count on honey bees to pollinate flowers ,nuts, fruits, and vegetables.

There have been a few theories thrown out there about what the possible cause might be. agricultural pesticides, parasites, diseases, stress, genetically altered crops, poor nutrition, and a lack of genetic diversity among bees. It could be a combination of these factors or something totally different.

The recent problem with declining numbers is different than in past years. It seems that bees are losing their natural ability to find their way back to the hive. Something is seriously wrong here. I hope it is a fixable problem.

Up In the Tree-Is That a Honeybee I see?

As I was walking along the river late last summer, I looked up and saw this nest of honeybees?

I'm wondering, why are they all on the outside of the nest? What is the yellow stuff-wax ?-If anyone knows about such things, I would like a bit of info.-thanks

From what I am told, the name of this dragonfly is the Widow Skimmer. I took this picture at Nehantic Forest in Lyme Connecticut last August. I couldn't seem to get a picture of a bird so I resorted to insects.