Nature is Never Spent

Summer solstice came at the end of a long, busy week for me, and I barely had a chance to mark it. The morning after -- this morning, quite early -- I was awakened by a semi-regular clicking coming from the floor around the dog crate. I dragged myself over, moved the crate, and confirmed what I had suspected: an Elateridae or "click" beetle. (Maybe Sylvanelater cylindriformis?) These tiny fellows can snap their bodies between the abdomen and thorax, which enables them to flip up or right themselves when they're turned upside down. In this case, he was stuck between the carpet and the plastic tray of the dog crate, so his "click" was even louder. Amazing, the creatures you can discover right in your own house.

I went back to sleep for awhile, and when I woke again, the sun was higher, the sky a hazy light blue with a few small white clouds scattered across the north. A hawk was circling in my view. Very hot, very alive. Very summer.

This looks like new life to me: blood, a struggle, and an empty shell.

On Saturday, we had strong thunderstorms early in the morning, then gentle rain most of the day. It was such a blessing, so pleasant and so rare, I wanted to remember it with pictures.



( More wet images )

Over the past few days I've been seeing a hummingbird flitting up to the feeder on my balcony, which I admit I never bothered to take down all winter. I had left it up through November just in case there were any individuals around, late migrators, and then I just forgot. It wasn't like it was in danger of freezing at any point! So last night I went ahead and brought it in, cleaned it up and filled it. This morning quite early, there were already two busy hummingbirds having a feast. I could see them easily against the overcast sky.

Apparently it's National Bird Day in the United States. I never know how these things are declared, but I'm happy to participate. The birds I've been focused on lately are the waders and waterfowl in the pond at the farm. Since early December I've been seeing wild ducks down there. They're not at all accustomed to human presence, which has made them hard to photograph; they fly away the moment my shape appears in the distance, and I haven't even managed to get close enough to positively identify them. (I need to take binoculars!) I'm sure I saw some mallards once, and another time the distinctive white patch on one bird's head makes me think they might have been teal.


Just left of center in this shot, there are four ducks flying away.

Slightly less shy, or at least slower, is the Great Blue Heron. I can watch it for awhile behind a thin screen of privet branches before it lifts up and beats away, landing just beyond the barbed-wire fence up the hill to observe me for awhile. We're encouraged to see it there, because it means that even after the pond dried up this summer, there are still at least some small fish and frogs to make attractive hunting.

At the farm last weekend, I went to find the hand spreader and got a surprise. The spreader is a plastic mechanical device that helps broadcast small seeds or other granular material more quickly and evenly than doing it by hand. It has an open hopper in the top. I suppose no one had used the spreader in more than a season, because built snugly into it was a beautiful bird's nest.



It was made of pine needles, oak twigs, moss, oak flowers, horse tail hairs, and even a few tufts of what looked like cat hair. Inside was an empty, abandoned eggshell. It wasn't cracked all the way open, it just had a small-ish hole in it, so I imagine the egg was raided and whatever was inside was eaten. I like to think perhaps the nest contained other eggs that hatched and the chicks were raised successfully.

Last year, when I was watching a lot of hummingbirds come to the feeder outside my apartment, I was amazed and charmed to read that some hummingbirds make their nests soft and flexible with spiderwebs. Tonight, I learned many more amazing facts in the PBS Nature special "Hummingbirds: Magic in the Air," even answered some of the questions I had back then. You can watch hummingbirds for years but the only time you see them is when they're hovering at a feeder or a blossom. How do they mate? Where do they sleep? Where do they build their nests?

* They only live in the Americas. I'm sure I knew there weren't any in Europe or Africa, but I might have thought there were some in the tropical Pacific islands.

* They can't survive on just nectar, they need protein. So they catch bugs. They do this by acting like swifts (a bird with whom they have a common ancestor) and opening their mouths wide, even bending the bottom of the beak so that they can open the mouth wider.

* Some have been recorded living 12 years.

* A biologist described their eggs as being "like little tic tacs" and he weighed a recently-hatched baby that was the same weight as a Post-it note.

* Their energy requirements are so high that any time they aren't feeding, they are in danger of just... expiring. So that they don't die in their sleep, they go into a "torpor" in which their body temperature lowers almost to the ambient temperature, then warms up with the rising temperatures in the morning.

* One variety of hummingbird build their nests clustered around a hawk's nest, because the hawk's prey are the animals that prey on the hummingbirds' eggs.

* Charmingly, a licensed hummingbird bander who was handling a male right before migration time described the bird as "porky"; at 3.4 grams he was especially fat so he could make his long journey.

* The male Anna's hummingbird's mating display involves an incredibly fast dive--so fast, humans can barely see it. At the bottom of the dive, he makes a "chirp" that is actually produced by spreading his tail feathers so that air vibrates them at exactly the right frequency, like a woodwind reed.

On my walks in city places, I've been coming across a lot of small, empty eggshell halves. So delicate-looking, like miniatures for a dollhouse, but really quite strong for their size, I'm sure. Most of the shells have been a blue-green sky color, what I've thought of since childhood as robins' eggs, though I may be wrong.

Only one I've come across was whole, a blue egg with brown speckles. I wondered if it had been pushed out of the nest by a brood parasite like a cowbird (or in Europe, their cuckoo), and now some random bird parents are raising a cowbird baby.

From the cosmos seeds I planted last month, the first flower bloomed today! It's a shockingly bold color of pink.



I finally put out the hummingbird feeder this evening. It's been about three weeks since I first saw a hummingbird and I've been feeling guilty that they keep stopping by and finding nothing.

A couple of days ago I was out in the yard early in the morning, and I heard a bird call that has puzzled me for a few years. It's a warble that sounds like water dropping into a deep pool in a tin tub. A very distinctly water-related sound. I'd never been able to spot the bird before, but this time, it was early spring, no leaf cover, and the birds were right overhead: brown-headed cowbirds. I'd been seeing them at the bird feeder a lot lately. I stood there until they called again to confirm it.

Triumph! My field guide describes the call as "a liquid 'glug-glug-glee.'" You can listen to calls here. I also learned that brown-headed cowbirds are parasitic, like cuckoos: they lay their eggs in other birds' nests and let the other birds raise their young. So it's hard to tell exactly how they learn their species song!