Signs of Spring, and a Harbinger of Summer, too

Spring is always hectic where gardening is concerned. There's been a lot going on & I've hardly had the time to sit down and write about it. This is the first year of our vegetable garden, so there's a lot of preparation to be done. We've been creating the beds, trying to stay a couple steps ahead of outdoor planting. So far we have two large beds, about 6'x12, and four smaller plots, 6'x6'.


We planted shelling peas and snap peas in the first of the large beds. The second large bed will hold potatoes, which are currently chitting indoors. We have three varieties, including the Maris Piper which we came to appreciate while living in the UK. No more supermarket russets for us (I hope ...) We also started seedlings in flats under lamps: leeks, tomatoes, zucchini, fennel, and rosemary. That's the zucchini pictured. They're off to a good start, and just today we transplanted them into larger pots. Lettuces need to be planted ... hopefully soon. After last frost we'll plant the beans, and then later on the root vegetables (carrots and parsnips). I can't wait to see how this all turns out!

I've been caught up in all this wonderful springtime activity, but just two nights ago I was reminded that summer was on the way. We opened the door to let the dogs out (or was it to let them in? It's always one or the other!), and there was the little fella pictured on the right. Toads visit regularly in the summer months, and always perch on that step between porch and door. The dogs burst in and out, oblivious to the toad's presence (thank goodness). I know we'll see more as the weather warms up; for now I was happy to see this harbinger of summer!

Bird List

A list of birds we've seen on the property, some more often than others! Links to enature.com provide photos, sounds, and more information:
(Updated 9/15/2008)

• Hawk-like birds: Osprey, American Kestrel, Red-tailed Hawk, Black Vulture, Sharp-Shinned Hawk
• Duck-like birds: Common Merganser, Hooded Merganser, Wood Duck, Canada Goose, Snow Goose, Redhead, Mallard, Common Goldeneye, American Wigeon
• Long-legged waders: Green Heron, Great Blue Heron
• Shore birds: Killdeer
• Gull-like birds: Herring Gull
• Pigeon-like birds: Mourning Dove
• Swallow-like birds: Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow
• Tree-clinging birds: Northern Flicker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker
• Perching birds: Belted Kingfisher, Indigo Bunting, Eastern Bluebird, Red-winged Blackbird, Blue Jay, American Robin, Gray Catbird, House Finch, Purple Finch, American Goldfinch, Northern Cardinal, Mockingbird, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Kingbird, White-breasted Nuthatch, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, European Starling, Northern Oriole, American Tree Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Brown-headed Cowbird, Common Grackle, Ruby-throated Hummingbird

News Flash! Heron snatches prey!

I just witnessed the most amazing thing, right from my kitchen window, and rushed to the computer to record the moment while the memory was still fresh.

This heron is a regular visitor to our pond. This morning he sat atop the duck house for hours, his feathers "fluffed up" to insulate him from the cold. Later this afternoon I looked outside and saw that he had waded some distance into the water. I'd never seen him do that before, so out came the binoculars for a closer look.

He was moving: inching along, slowly lifting one spindly leg, and then the next. Suddenly his head splashed into the water. He looked so ungainly, it could well have been an accident. Then I saw the shimmer. He had snagged a fish, and a big one, too!

Now I'm no expert at fish identification, especially when it's flapping about in a heron's beak, but this appeared to be a bluegill about 6" in diameter. It was ginormous. The heron waded over to the edge of the pond and set the fish down. He picked it up and dropped it a couple more times. The next time he picked it up, he waded back into the water. Surely he wasn't going to release it?!

The heron stood in the water for a few minutes, the fish's body glinting in the afternoon sun. Then the heron slowly extended his neck, pointing his beak high in the air. The fish disappeared, all in one piece. The heron remained in the water for a while but didn't catch anything else.

Wow!

Hello there ...

I'm not a big fan of spiders, but isn't this one pretty? This is a Black & Yellow Garden Spider (Argiope aurantia). She had spun a beautiful web on a bush in our front garden. A particularly thick strand of the web is quite visible in the photo, but if you look very closely you can see other wispy strands above and to the left. The background is the wall of our house, several feet behind her.

A week of ups and downs for our backyard wildlife

A couple months ago I wrote about one of our ducks' strange meanderings. A few weeks ago this very same duck started spending a lot of her time in the duck house. She didn't even come out for food. It turned out she was sitting on two eggs. While all of our ducks are quite enthusiastic when it comes to mating, and pretty good at producing eggs, the eggs tended to be left lying wherever they were laid: the front garden bushes, deep in the pond, along the bank, you name it. Up to now, none of the ducks seemed to have the faintest idea about nesting.

Well, this mama duck managed to master the nesting thing and on Monday, hatched two fuzzy black ducklings. It was exciting, but we were apprehensive at the same time. Would she know what to do next? Would they get enough food? Would they be warm enough?

We watched them carefully on Monday and Tuesday, bringing water and some ground duck pellets out to the duck house each day. On Wednesday, she ventured forth with her brood. A bit of drama ensued. Mama duck took the little ones out for a swim, and then proceeded to take them to one of her favorite spots for sitting: the pond's overflow grate. Her spatial relationship skills proved even more suspect than her parenting skills, as one of the ducklings fell through the grate! There was much flapping and panicked quacking, which fortunately caught Chris' attention. He realized what had happened, went into the woods behind the pond, crawled through a wet and spidery culvert, retrieved the little fella, and reunited it with mama duck (all this was even more remarkable given that Chris is all trussed up in a contraption designed to heal a broken clavicle ... but that's another story!).

All seemed well from that point. Mama took her little ones out during the day, and retired to the safety of the duck house in the early evening. On Friday night we went out to visit the little ones and enjoyed watching them splash about. But in the middle of the night, we heard a lot of panicked quacking coming from all 8 ducks. This chorus is usually reserved for really scary and threatening situations. In the morning, the ducks were all clustered together on the grate. But the ducklings were gone.

I know the deck is stacked against ducklings born this time of year, since they are unlikely to reach a suitable body weight before the weather gets cold. But they were so cute and fluffy. It's sad.

What's up, duck?

Last spring we lost several ducks to foxes, but so far this year we have been fortunate and haven't lost a one. Nonetheless, we have a daily roll call. The current "beak count" is eight: 2 pekins, 3 khaki campbells, and 3 cayugas. We may soon be down a cayuga if one keeps up the bizarre behavior demonstrated this week.

The cayugas and one of the khakis have taken to long walks, up our driveway and yes, even up to the end of our street. They've done this before when we've neglected to feed them, but that's not the case this time. They just like sitting in the grass near a house that's under construction. Maybe they're just into the builders. However, this past week Chris was out working in the pasture and could hear a faint quacking kind of sound coming from the housing development that's behind the pasture. He assumed it was the family of geese that have been hanging around our pond, because they travel back and forth between our place and another nearby pond.

Then towards evening Chris heard the same sound, this time out in front of the house. He looked out and watched a cayuga proudly strutting from the main road, down our street, and then down the driveway. The rest of the flock rushed to welcome the prodigal, and there was much quacking all around.

So it appears this crazy duck found her way to the other housing development, possibly by way of our pasture. But then it also appears she returned home via the main road, a 1/2-mile walk with traffic! A day later she disappeared for a full 24 hours, and returned by the same route.

Is someone feeding her? Does she have a secret lover? Or is she just insane? Cayugas, after all, are the same breed as Daffy Duck. We're keeping our eye on her ...

Wildlife sightings

A list of animals we've seen on the property, some more often than others. Well, OK, so far we've only smelled the skunk but that's enough! Links to enature.com provide photos, sounds, and more information:

• Mammals: Red Fox, Gray Fox, Eastern Cottontail, Eastern Gray Squirrel, White-tailed Deer, Common Raccoon, American Beaver, Groundhog, Striped Skunk, Little Brown Bat, Big Brown Bat, White-footed Mouse, Meadow Vole, Least Shrew, Common Muskrat, Virginia Opossum
• Amphibians: Bullfrog, Green Frog, Pickerel Frog, Northern Spring Peeper, American Toad
• Reptiles: Eastern Mud Turtle, Snapping Turtle, Eastern Red-Bellied Turtle, Northern Black Racer, Rat Snake, Northern Water Snake, Common Garter Snake

Spring 2007: wildlife sightings

We've had some interesting encounters with wildlife this spring:

• Groundhogs - there seems to have been a population explosion. We've seen mature, fat groundhogs scurrying across the driveway, and smaller ones burrowing around in the orchard. They're cute, but I wonder why there are so many?
• Osprey - We see lots of birds, and until recently the most unusual was a blue heron, who is now a regular visitor to our pond. But one spring day we saw a bird we didn't recognize. Consulting our field guide we determined it was an osprey. Now that was a surprise! It spent most of the day sitting in a tree looking for food in the pond.
• Fox kits - foxes are commonplace (see: ducks), but coming across fox kits was a real surprise. One day in April, Chris was mowing the pasture, and came across a kit sitting out in the open. He and younger daughter J convinced it to go back into its den, and Chris stopped mowing for the day. The next day we went out to see if all was clear. Looking into the den, we saw two tiny pairs of eyes peeking out at us! Chris decided to mow away from their den. At one point he turned around and both kits were out, sitting next to their den and watching him mow! He later saw their mother at the edge of the pasture. We haven't seen them since and expect she may have moved them to safer quarters.

These three sightings were what ultimately inspired me to start this blog.

Pasture, pond, and other developments

There has been a lot of activity around our property this spring. Chris has enlarged the pasture area by clearning more -- wait for it -- multiflora rose. We have come to realize that all of the lovely, "wooded" areas of our property are covered in multiflora rose that has slowly but surely strangled & killed off many, many trees. Clearing rose and dead trees has been Chris' raison d'etre for several weeks now. The goal is to have a clear view from our house, beyond the pond, into the pasture where we will keep our two horses. Here's a what the view looked like before this project started, in winter & in summer:


Our ducks are still around, but far fewer in number. Their survival skills are not very strong, and many have fallen victim to foxes. As of this writing, the "beak count" stands at 8: 2 pekins, 3 khaki campbells, and 3 cayugas. Canada geese fare much better. Over 3 winters we've come to expect large numbers of geese for Christmas, a couple pairs in the spring, and 8-12 goslings every year. They're wonderful!

2005: Beginnings of a wildlife habitat

In 2005, we decided to introduce more "wildlife" to our property and purchased several baby ducks (pekins, cayugas, and khaki campbells). We kept them captive until they were a few months old, and then decided to release them into the pond. This was easier said than done! We naively thought that after opening their enclosure they would march in a neat parade down to the water. Instead they took off in all different directions, ending up deep in weeds and multiflora rose. One by one we extracted the ducks and carried them down to the pond. They were slightly shocked, but quickly got over it and began to enjoy their new habitat, including a wonderful duck house built by Chris.


Most of the geese that visited over Christmas left in early spring, but a couple pairs stuck around and then one day, there were families! Goslings had arrived! We have also been thrilled by visits from a blue heron, who really enjoys hanging out by the pond.

A plethora of pets

The first fauna to arrive on the scene were domestic. The cast, in order of appearance:

Snowball & Muffin: Two cats adopted from the SPCA in 1999. Snowball was 1 year old at the time, and Muffin was a kitten. Snowball loves to go outdoors and brings "presents" back to us. Muffin is an indoor couch potato.

Midnight: adopted in England in October 2002, after a barn cat at our local stable had kittens. Midnight is pretty aloof but is the best at giving chase when it's time to go to the vet.

Lily: a British Kennel Club registered chocolate lab, joined the family in March 2003 at 8 weeks of age. Boisterous, adorable, and perpetually challenged to keep her weight under control. Lily's name is a nod to our English experience -- short for Lilibet, Queen Elizabeth's childhood nickname.

Pumpkin: the only male in the menagerie, he adopted us in September 2004, just as we were leaving temporary housing to move into our current home. Despite being the last to join the family, he asserts his dominance at all times.

Matching names to pets in the photo is pretty easy, with the exception of Muffin, the grey tabby.