WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT NOTES

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT NOTES
February 7, 2008

Weather
More unusual weather continues to carry us deeper into summer. We had a very dry May, with only 1.9 inches all month and 1.41 inches since June 1st, from some intense, sporadic storms. The heat has been oppressive, in the upper 90’s last week.

Vegetation and Wildlife
The rain gave a powerful impetus to our flora—the place is lush and green and growing. In some places, you can barely tell that we’ve been burning hot through a drought for six years. Young longleaf pine candles are now loaded with long green needles, and the hardwoods have emerged from their varied springtime leaf color to a deep consistent green.

Bill has had to hold off on mowing the trails in many places because of the amazing crop of Spiranthes or “ladies’ tresses” that emerged recently. Other wildflowers that made a nice showing were squareheads, butterfly pea, white and orange milkweeds, and daisy fleabane. Right now American beautyberry is blooming, as are bluehearts, tread-softly, and passionvine. The insects are responding in kind, with bees and butterflies feeding everywhere.

Ponds and Swamp
Our aquatic ecosystems are thriving. High water levels have been sustained and aquatic plants are blooming profusely everywhere.
The Upper Pond is loaded with blooming yellow spadderdock. The formerly exposed Holly Woods bank is still inundated and we are pleased to see this has drowned some of the encroaching pines. The Little Blue Herons are still active here, feeding young, and there are dragonflies everywhere.

The Farm Pond is just showing off. The west end is covered with Brasenia in full bloom, with its unusual maroon flowers protruding above the surface. Right alongside are expanses of lavender Cabomba flowers on their fine little stalks. This major showing has reduced the open water area so now turtle and martin activity is more concentrated in the middle of the pond.

Purple Martins
The martins, our part-time residents from Brasil, are in high gear raising their families. Overall they’ve had a good season—they all produced 2 to 3 babies per gourd and all the young look sleek and filled-out. There have been years, especially during drought and/or ultra-hot weather, when babies bailed out of the gourds too early, emaciated and loaded with mites. On such occasions we undertook to feed them crickets to get them fattened up and preening properly, and then release them back to the colony when they could take care of themselves. This has not been necessary, thank goodness, for a number of years.

It was somewhat distressing therefore to last week find a baby on the ground, with the whole colony swooping and scolding and worked up. The odd thing was that the baby was in superb condition—better than any I’ve ever seen come out of a gourd too early. It just couldn’t achieve any elevation when attempting to fly. We tried putting it back in a gourd several times. Martin parents are very inclusive once babies start leaving the nest, and they will all pitch in to feed and teach any baby to fly. In this case we found this baby dead the next day, out in the grass.

Since lack of food was clearly not the issue, we decided to try something to reduce the overwhelming afternoon heat. We rigged up a sprinkler on a PVC pipe and duct-taped it to the pole so it would spray out a perfect circle of “rain” over the gourds, cooling not just the gourds, by evaporation, but the entire column of air surrounding the pole

It has worked beautifully. The adults were appalled at first, we think because the coiled hose resembles a snake, but then they settled down and appeared to actually enjoy sitting in the cooling spray. The young ones still in gourds actively lean out and face into the mist, appearing to obtain some relief. So far we are unaware of any other babies bailing out, unable to fly.

Every day it appears that more babies are leaving the nest and are being loudly exhorted to fly. Mornings are a very noisy time, and the parents are extremely busy and have no patience whatsoever with people in the vicinity and will buzz you, complaining loudly.

Once the young are out and reach a nearby tree, or the barn roof, they will take a break or stay there, but the parents keep urging them on. Eventually they make it down to the Farm Pond for bathing lessons. Martins are, of course, very elegant fliers, capable of marvelous, high-speed maneuvering, and they appear to really enjoy bathing. They will swoop down to splash hard into the water, fly out, circle back and do it again. Reluctant babies have to be encouraged loudly out of nearby trees for that first swimming lesson—martins are indeed a vocal group!

You can come watch all these proceedings too; they are highly entertaining. It will be a relief when they get that last baby out of its gourd—this whole experience makes me feel like an anxious, protective mother myself.

Bluebirds
If you want a wonderful nature experience come and monitor the bluebird boxes with our monitoring team. Alice Honea, Bob Bearss, and David Jones are the core team members and are delighted to have others come along. You’ll be glad you did. These folks, thanks to mentoring from long-time team leader Larry Herring, can offer you an educational experience extraordinaire. Every single time they come back from the field Alice has some scientific/natural phenomenon to report and the team comes up with very insightful possibilities for why these unusual things may be happening. Plus, you get to observe the bluebird (or chickadee, wren, or brown-headed nuthatch) life cycle from start to finish, up close and personal. What a photo opportunity, or grandparent/grandchild bonding experience!

The team meets every other Wednesday and Saturday mornings at 8:00 am. See page 5 for dates.

Land Management
There are a number of mowing projects to work on during the summer months, so Bill will be busy this season. We will be doing brush control in a variety of sites and featuring the Gin House Field terraces with some mowing. Right after our burn season the place always looks so open, as if maybe we burned more than we needed to. By now it’s hard to tell we burned at all and we’re listing places to burn hotter next year!

Butterflies
It’s a great time for butterflies. Please see the article on our “new” Butterfly Garden. It’s definitely worth a trip. We can now actually guarantee plenty of butterfly sightings, as soon as it warms up in late morning through the rest of the day.

We hope you’ll join us for the Butterfly Festival—it is a very pleasant opportunity to see some gorgeous winged creatures and to learn about butterflies. We also promise a shady place, with fans and a mister to keep you cool, and some sprinkler games for the kids.
We also hope you won’t let the idea of heat keep you from enjoying an engaging nature experience. Yes, it’s summer and it’s hot, and we get sweaty and uncomfortable. Generations of people have lived through summer at Birdsong without air-conditioning—including the Komareks. Betty always said “Get out there—rain or shine!”

If you are able to come out in the morning and stroll out you can enjoy the scented air, fragrant with flowering plant life. You might experience a cool breeze and the sounds of summer: crickets and cicadas and frogs, all cheering, doing “the Wave” around the Farm Pond, as they did just now, with about seven different kinds of birds singing and going about their lives. Summer can be very rich and laden. Worth getting a little hot.
- KDB

BIRD SIGHTINGS
The Bird Window has been very popular with large numbers of birds coming in to drink and bathe at the pond and mister. Large groups of Common Grackles, Red-winged Blackbirds, and Fish Crows have been squabbling over the suet. Red-bellied and Pileated Woodpeckers are also raiding the suet to feed their babies. Carolina Chickadees, Cardinals, Eastern Towhees, and Tufted Titmice are bringing their young to the Window for the sunflower seeds and cracked corn. In addition to our usual residents, summer visitors have included male and female Summer Tanagers, Northern Parula Warblers, White-eyed Vireos, Yellow-throated Vireos, a female Blue Grosbeak, and male and female Indigo Buntings. Throughout the day male and female Ruby-throated Hummingbirds can be spotted sipping at the feeder and checking out the garden flowers.

The pool and mister have also attracted other visitors including broad-headed skinks, a box turtle, and a black racer. Last week a very large grey rat snake was identified in the Window area by the racket the birds made as they gathered to mob the snake! This disturbance also brought in two new birds: a Hairy Woodpecker and Yellow-billed Cuckoo.
-Chris Bittle, Naturalist

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