Trouble In The Bird Feeder Wren Nest!

Yesterday, I was out to check on the squirrel proof Feeder with the house wren nest.  On Monday, Mr. Neil sent over photos showing that three of the four eggs had hatched.  I wanted to see if the final egg hatched and found something completely unexpected:

One chick and no eggs.  Huh?  What the heck happened?  I have a couple of theories:

1.  It was very hot on Tuesday--well into the 90s.  This feeder is made of metal and gets late afternoon sun.  Did the other chicks die from the heat and the wrens remove them?

2.  A snake came up the pole and was able to eat the other chicks?  But why is only one chick left?  Usually snakes take everything...unless this was a really tiny snake?

I don't know.  I did notice that the male didn't sing like he usually does--has he given up on the territory?  I did see a wren leave the feeder a few times, so I know at least one of the pair is still feeding this chick.  I'll be interested to see if this bird actually leaves the nest.

It's a demonstration of how wrens and many other bird species play the odds when raising chicks.  They'll go for an extra brood, they'll try out a new next spot, they lay four to five eggs--if it works, great!  If it doesn't, they'll know better next time.

Feeder Wrens Hatched!

Last night on Twitter, Mr. Neil posted a photo alerting me that the house wrens in the squirrel proof feeder hatched.  Look at those little naked chicks, they look fresh from the shell! Look at the wee little toes! It looks like three of them have hatched and last I checked, there were four eggs.  I'll be out on Wednesday to indulge in my fried green tomato habit (my all time favorite food outside of roasted eggplant with parmesan cheese...and well, bacon--but really, bacon should always go without saying).  Anyway, I'll be out tomorrow to check on the hatchlings.

I looked at my original blog post on July 13 when I predicted that incubation would start on the 14th and twelve days of incubation.  And what do you know?  Yesterday, July 26 would have been 12 days of incubation!  That means in two weeks or around August 8, the wrens will probably fledge.  Then they have lots to learn on how to feed themselves and then the will commence to migratin'.  They have a lot of work to do in a very little amount of time.

The Hazards Of An Empty Feeder

When I can't fill the feeders at Mr. Neil's house, the groundskeeper named Hans usually does the honors.  He does an admirable job but he has a ton of things to do like maintaining trails and keeping the grass and weeds trimmed around the beehives.  And now that we have 8 beehives, let's bow our heads in honor of dear, sweet Hans who has sustained more stings than any of us and yet makes life easier for hive inspections. Moment.

But sometimes certain feeders go empty (especially the suet log, because I appear to be the only person in the US who actually enjoys the feeling of squashed animal fat mixed with peanut butter on my fingers).  And this summer, the safflower feeder went empty but Mr. Neil called me over to see what had been filled inside in place of the usual safflower:

I knew as soon as I saw the feeding ports what had moved in, but then wondered, "How did a house wren fit in there?  I know they are tiny, but wow!"  House wrens are the smallest cavity nesting birds in our neck of the woods.  They only need a hole that is one inch in diameter to fit their tiny bodies through.  The other thing is that you can usually id the type of cavity nesting bird in your nest box by the material--house wrens are all sticks.  Chickadees usually weave a neat fur lined cup nest, bluebirds nests are made of fine grasses and tree swallows line the nest cup with huge feathers from ducks.  House sparrows will make a nest out of everything: grass, sticks, vines, cellophane, cigarette butts, etc.

As I wondered how the house wren was getting in out of the feeder, I soon had my answer.  Apparently the lid had been left only slightly ajar and that was all the enterprising little male needed to collect twigs.

When we looked inside, we could see a whole pile of sticks, but no complete nest.  One of the really interesting things about the tiny house wren is that they will make five nests, use one to rear chicks and the rest as decoys to fool marauding predators (even defending a decoy nest as if there were eggs inside--clever birds).  I figured this was going to be a decoy nest.  Mr. Neil didn't mind the wrens so we left the roof ajar.

Non Birding Bill and I came over for a bee inspection and some grilling and we watched the wren declare his territory in boisterous song.

There was at least one female who took him up on his twittery offer and inspected the feeder inside and out.  I always figured that the males put sticks in several locations, the female chooses the one she will use for eggs and the rest become the decoys.  She flew off after a few moments and I thought, "She's going to make that one the decoy."

Cut to one week later! On Sunday, we arrived for another cookout at Mr. Neil's and as soon as we arrived he took me out to the feeder and showed me this:

Gah!  A feeder full of sticks, a small feather-lined cup and three tiny house wren eggs.  Well, this feeder is out of commission for a month.  I think the female was still in process of laying eggs and that incubation will start today or tomorrow.  From there we have about 12 days of incubation and then another 12 - 13 days before the chicks fledge.  I think the other birds can live without safflower that long.

I must say that this breaks one of my bird feeding rules of thumb: don't have nest boxes around your bird feeding station.  Birds generally don't want to nest near where nest raiders show up on a regular basis (ie squirrels, chipmunks, blue jays, crows, woodpeckers, raccoons, etc).  At least they nested in a squirrel proof feeder, so that solves that problem and maybe the wren's nest decoy strategy will fool the other egg eaters?

Birds with Hats and Bee Stings

Hello all, NBB here. Sharon’s a bit swamped with deadlines, so she’s asked me to fill in with a blog post about all the exciting things that are happening in the birding world. But since I avoid knowing anything about the birding world with great vigor, I instead present you with Birds Wearing Hats.

Hilarious, I think you’ll agree.

I want to talk for a moment about the bee sting I got last week, mostly because it was the thing that made me most afraid of keeping bees, and is, I think the thing that causes most people to be terrified of them.

I was the last of our beekeeping group to get stung (heck, even the dog got one before me), partly because I’m not around the bees as much as the others (some of us have jobs that require us to be at the same place and time every week), but also because I try to give the bees as wide a berth as possible. Don’t get me wrong, bees are cute as all get out and I love looking at them up close... from the safety of my bee suit. I don’t stand around the hives without one on, I don’t walk through the “bee highway,” and above all, I don’t run and flail, especially while yelling “don’t run and flail! Don’t run and flail!”

So, here’s what happened: there’s a little piece of wood or metal that you put in front of the entrance to the hive to control the flow of bees in and out. It’s called, helpfully enough, an “entrance reducer.” You use this at the beginning of the hive to encourage them to stay inside and make it their home. After a while, you take it off so that the traffic of returning foragers isn’t slowed down.

The entrance reducer was held on with a screw and to get the screw off , we had to move the whole hive off the base board so that I could turn the screwdriver. This, understandably, caused some consternation, and one of the girls decided to register a complaint. With her butt.

I will tell you now, all in all a bee sting isn’t that bad, at least in the ankle, which is where I got it. It’s like stepping on a nail, there’s a shock of pain and a sudden urge to move away. Afterwards it was like a twisted ankle, but like I say the first thought it “I think something really bad has happened,” followed quickly by “hey, when they sting you, don’t they release a pheromone that makes others want to sting you?”

Remembering neither to run nor flail, nor to do them while yelling “Don’t run! Don’t flail!” I hobbled over to the work table and said a few choice words. Well, one word, over and over. Take a guess. As Sharon and Neil made sure I didn’t get stung again (and wasn’t, you know, dying from a bee allergy), I took a deep breath and stock of what my body was doing. Did my feet itch? No? Was I short of breath? No. Was I going numb? No.

Really the only thing I was aware of was a lingering pain like a stab wound and wait, what was the other thing? That pulsing sensation kind of like oh my god I can feel the stinger pumping venom.

How Neil was able to pull the stinger out of my ankle using his still-gloved hand I do not know. I can only assume that writing a Newbery/Carnegie winning book has given him the tactile sense of a dozen men!

And that was it. It hurt. It was sore. I saw the bee that stung me, and stepped on her, not out of anger but to put her out of her misery. Wasn’t her fault, I was the one who took her house apart. Poor bee.

Then we put the hives back together, hobbled back and grilled up some dinner.

I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that you don’t need to be afraid of bee stings. You should definitely avoid them but it’s not something to go through your life being terrified of. On the grand scale of pain I’ve experienced, hitting my thumb with a hammer or getting a really bad sunburn are worse and last longer. Keep in mind, though, I was only stung once, and I had friends with me who’d been through this.

I’m curious to see how I act the next time I go out to the hives. I’ll probably wear boots--the ankles are the only part the bee suit don’t protect, after all--but I don’t feel any more afraid of them than I did last week. They’re still these fascinating, cute creatures, and I like to think that we’re helping them survive. But we have to be careful.

Cross Section Of Breeding Birds & Migration

Twice a year I have some bird banding friends come out to Mr. Neil's place to band the birds around the yard--once in spring and once in fall.  On Saturday my buddies Roger (aka MNBirdNerd) and Amber (aka AvianImages) set up mists nets to collect data and got a GREAT cross section of spring bird activity from migration to breeding.  I hoped we would get a ton of cool information since I've noticed birds like the above red-bellied woodpecker coming and flying away with large beakfuls of suet--do they have young in the nest?

They did get in quite a few woodpeckers.  Here's a hairy woodpecker male (note the little bit of red on the head).  Roger gave him a blow and revealed a brood patch.  Both males and females incubate so both would need a bare patch of skin swollen with blood vessels to keep the eggs nice and warm during incubation.  I went to see what Cornell Lab of Ornithology had to say specifically about hairy woodpecker and in the breeding section that mentions, "onset of broodiness" and that "incubation begins in earnest with laying of last egg, but male roosts in nest cavity and de facto incubation may begin with pen-ultimate egg, thus accounting for hatching often occurring over a 2 day period and for some of the size differences noted in nestlings."

I love that someone other than my husband uses the word "pen-ultimate"to say that because the male sleeps in the nest cavity at night, incubation could start when the second to last egg is laid by the female.

For the past few springs we've had a couple of pine warblers come in to the feeders when the weather is cold and insects are not out in full force.  Warblers generally are not feeder birds, this brightly colored group of birds primarily eats insects--except for the pine warbler.  During a cold, wet spell like we are having right now in the Twin Cities you can find orioles, catbirds, yellow-rumped warblers, scarlet tanagers coming to suet feeders as an alternate source of protein.  Above is a pine warbler eating some no-melt peanut suet.  What makes the pine warbler a little different from other warblers is that they are known to eat seeds and sometimes, I see pine warblers eating sunflower seeds out of the shell as well as suet.

I think the rather disgruntled look on the face of this male pine warbler about says it all.  While we banded this bird, a second pine warbler came to the feeder.  It looked more like the bird in the photo above this--either a female or second year male.  I suspect that pine warblers are nesting nearby  since they sing well into June but it's hard to say since they quit coming to feeders so I don't see them feeding young (and I've yet to find the nest).

There was a huge brush pile that was chock full of sparrows and they set the nets near that and got a few white-throated sparrows.  When Roger blew on their breasts, he was watching for fat rather than brood patches.  These sparrows are still heading north and birds that showed yellow globs of fat just under their skin were loading up to travel further north.

The number of rose-breasted grosbeaks at the feeders have been increasing exponentially this week.  About seven days earlier, I heard one, then three days later, three males were at the feeder and by our banding day, I would say that we had five males jockeying for position on the feeder--and then one lone female.  Males typically arrive first to set up territory, so it was fun to see that in action.  We determined this bird was hatched last year, he had a few brown patches of juvenile plumage that had not molted out yet--not unlike some of the young males I saw in Panama this past February.  I wondered if the grosbeaks who arrived early on territory in sleet and cold temps and think, "I left Central America for this?"

Keep your eyes open at the feeders and in the woods.  Migration is in full swing, we have quite a few birds just flying and a few more who have yet to arrive.  With this wet weather, some birds will look for fast food like  bird feeders and you might be surprised by what you find.

A Birding Injury!

Ah, Saturday started out so promising!  We had spring bird banding planned at Mr. Neil's, I found out that my nephew has an exhibit at the Louvre (yeah, baby, that Louvre and it's part of an app that's really cool called Augmented Reality Wallpaper), Non Birding Bill was frying up some maple bacon to get the banding started off right--it was all so innocent then. We had the usual Minnesota back hand weather-wise.  A snow free March and April meant that the first weekend in May was going to be cold, cloudy and involve snow and sleet.  Because of the wet and an mud on the trails, I put on a pair of spare Wellingtons at the house--the boots were a couple sizes too big but I compensated with really thick socks.  However, at one point during a net check, my foot went one way, my right knee the other which was followed by my collapse and intense pain.  It felt very similar to when I dislocated my knee as a teenager.  But I was able to stand up and limp--which I was not able to do when I dislocated my knee.

NBB drove me to Urgent Care where ironically I was banded, weighed and measured (and had a few unpleasant things done to my knee).  NBB said, "Ha!  Now you know what it's like for the birds when you band them."  They made a note of higher blood pressure and assured me that was normal for a painful knee injury.  The spike in pressure wasn't about the pain but more like, "Holy Crap, I fly to Utah on Thursday for the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival on top of how much I love gallavanting in the woods for warblers in spring on top of my national park service duties.  I can't be injured now!"

Fortunately, it appears to only be a sprain and not too severe of an injury and I'm supposed to stay off it and ice it for as long as possible.  NBB is doing a great job of forcing me to take it easy.  I was actually back to the banding in about an hour and didn't miss too much.  Lorraine got the above photo of me taking photos of Amber and Roger removing a rose-breasted grosbeak and downy woodpecker from the nets.

Here is a none too pleased rose-breasted grosbeak.

The great thing about the modern age is that I put in a call to my hotel in Utah securing a ground floor room, made arrangements to get some mobility assistance in the airport and gave the festival a heads up to my limited mobility.  But on the upside, I'm doing a digiscoping workshop, Birds and Beers and I'm Friday night's guest speaker--all of those aren't too strenuous.

I'm excited about speaking.  The festival keynote had to step down at the last minute for health reasons, so Bill Fennimore who was Friday's speaker is filling in for her on Saturday and I'm filling in for him on Friday night.  I'm going to do my Kazakhstan Program: An Adventure in Birds and Bathrooms.  Utah is one of my favorite birding states, I'm so grateful that my injury may slow me down but not stop me from enjoying this beautiful area.

In the meantime, this business of being forced to sit in one spot for several hours will be a good opportunity to type up some birding app reviews and a book review.  I'm reading an AMAZING feather book--best bird book to come out this year.

Bee Installation--Marked Queens

Oh my, how things have changed for me and my perspective of beekeeping!  Our first year was a panic, but now it's a fun chore that I look forward to in spring.  I can almost do it without the guide, but I like to consult it before we put in our bees to ensure that we have all of our equipment ready.

Our spring beekeeping plan has changed several times for this year, in part because of a company called Long Creek Apiaries who we ordered Russian Bees from last year and still have yet to see them.  I intended to write a blog outlining our difficulties with the company but instead will sum it up to this: Be wary of a company that takes money before before shipping your bees. I don't think Long Creek is a malicious company, but rather a man in Tennessee who over promises and under delivers...and when he is in way over his head and does not have the money to issue the requested refunds, he chooses to not pick up his phone and instead ignore voice mail and email .  When he happens to have a period of being flush, he will issue a refund to those threatening legal action via the postal service, better business bureau or lawyer.

BeeSource.com is an excellent resource for new beekeepers and after some digging, I found a forum about Long Creek Apiaries and people who got their bees were happy (although they usually the bees a year after ordering them), but the many people like us who did not get their bees were irritated that he didn't issue refunds promptly and cut off communication.  Each year he seems to use weather as an excuse.  This year's excuse was the unusually cold spring, which Weather Underground seemed to disagree with once we typed in his location and brought up this spring's weather history.  Lorraine ended up making Long Creek an offer they couldn't refuse and we got our refund this week--more than a year after we placed our initial order.  So, I will type it again: Be wary of a company that takes money before before shipping your bees.

A good bee supplier will communicate with you if there are issues with the order--like weather is causing it to run late--but you shouldn't have to chase a person down and threaten legal action to find out where the bees you were promised and paid for have gone.  I was worried we wouldn't get any bees this year, but Lorraine managed to track down someone who had some Italians and Carniolans to spare and we installed 2 of each this week.  Above is a package of Italain bees in the box, waiting to be installed.

One of the boxes did have a breech in security--a hole in the screen allowed some of our Carniolans to escape and poor Hans the Groundskeeper was stung before we did anything major to the box.  So much for bees being docile when they are in swarming mode without a home.

The surprise bonus this year is that our queens came marked with a blue dot.  This is a service some bee suppliers will offer.  They put a little dot of paint on her back to make her easier to find in the hive when you do inspections.  Above is our marked Carniolan queen (Carniolans tend to be darker bees--some are black).  We had hoped to get Russian bees this year because they are supposed to be the "latest thing" in beekeeping: mite resistant and they over-winter well.  We've had Italians and they're supposed to be "friendlier" bees.  Carniolans are kind of all over the board.  Some beekeepers say that they are friendlier, some say they are meaner, some say they make great propolis.  I don't know but I think black bees look cool and since Mr. Neil likes to wear all black, these bees seem to be perfect for him.  We apparently had Carniolans our first year.  We had ordered Minnesota Hygeneinic Italian bees but the queens were black as night and many a beekeeper said they were Carnies when they saw my photos.

Here's the Carniolan queen after I released her into the hive and was surrounded by workers--see how dark she is?  Even her workers are a little darker.  Looks like she'll be a cinch to find this summer, although I'm not so sure how long that will last.  The blue paint can get chipped off after awhile and right now, we don't have that many bees.  What will happen when there are thousands more?

Here's one of our Italian queens (note how pretty Italian bees are with that golden color) with a blue dot after I released her and she joined her workers.  Now check this out:

She's crawling in, I can barely make her out...

...and there, she's gone.  She's in this this photo but completely absorbed by the workers--like a Borg.  So, even with a blue dot, a queen can be hard to find.  I asked how beekeepers learn to mark queens and I was told that first you practice with drones because they are bigger and won't sting you.  Then you practice with a smaller worker and if you can mark her without being stung or killing her, you might be ready to mark your own queen.

I'm looking forward to this bee season.  I'm curious to see how it goes now having eight hives--all four from last year survived the winter and we just added four more!  We'd still like to try Russians some day, but Hans mentioned that if all of the hives this year continue to survive and we want to add a ninth or tenth next year, we may have to widen our bear resistant electric fence.  We did install one beehive in Mr. Neil's yard.  I'm not sure how I feel about this one.  I like the idea of bees close by the house but I see the potential for unexpected shenanigans with someone happening on the hive unexpectedly.  A good test will be this weekend when we do our biannual bird banding.

May Morel Madness 2010!

We have had the pleasure of finding some of the tastiest (and easiest as well as "safest") edible fungus on Mr. Neil's property in warm weather including Hen of the Woods, Chicken of the Woods and Giant Puffball.  We've seen morels here and there but because they tend to come out during spring bird migration, my mind is otherwise occupied and I've never made the effort for an all out morel hunt.  I had done it a few times in Indiana but not much more.  Also, nearby neighbors usually hunt morels and in good years they are very generous with their harvest (and I'm not opposed to a honey/morel exchange)  so I haven't had huge incentive to look.

This year, Lorraine and I decided that we would give it a go.  We researched morel sites on the interwebs--our favorite site is The Great Morel (great information for beginners and a map that shows when people are finding them).  It seemed to us that the time was right and all we needed was a night of rain, some 60 degree-ish temps and some dead elms.  We noted that it was going to rain Friday and felt Saturday morning would be great for a meet up.  We boned up on morel hunting and used Google Image search to see what elm tree bark looked like so we would know what to look for.  Isn't it great what we can to with the internet these days?

As Non Birding Bill and I were driving out to meet Lorraine at Mr. Neil's we got a call.  It was a frantic Lorraine.  She was already there and had decided to test her dead elm id skills.  She looked under a tree that looked like a dead elm according to the Internet and was surrounded by morels.  As I heard NBB's end of the conversation, I was screaming, "I can't believe she started without me!!!"  NBB was laughing, she didn't mean to, she just checked a tree in the yard to see if it was an elm and there they were.

Lorraine kindly left a cluster for me to find and pick when I arrived--what a gal!  It was a great way to start and we searched the surrounding dead trees.  Morel mushrooms are not only tasty but part of the Foolproof Four category of wild mushrooms--you can't mistake them for any other mushroom.  Now, before anyone takes me to task in the comments about false morels--true morels are hollow in the middle, false morels are solid in the middle.  All of our findings were very hollow in the middle.

We did find a few more morels in the general vicinity of Lorraine's first harvest but not like the grouping she had initially found.  Of course, we were sticking pretty darn close to the house, we still had acres of woods to check--who knows how many more we would find?

There were white-throated sparrows serenading us as we searched.  I made the choice to leave my digiscoping equipment back at the house while we went into the woods.  As I said earlier, my birding distracts me from morel hunting.  I needed to make sure to focus on the ground, not getting photos of warbles flitting in the leaves overhead.  I took my binoculars--I wasn't crazy, if a cool bird was around I was going to look, just not focus on getting photos of them.  As we went through the woods, we were not finding any more mushrooms--at least not edible ones.  We thought about what was different from the yard vs the woods--shade.  We found another spot that should have had morning sun and began to search.  Lorraine and I wandered from each other and after about fifteen minutes I heard a scream, "MUUUUUUUUUUUSHROOOOOOOOOM!"

Lorraine found more!  She collected her bounty and we were re-energized in our search efforts.  It wasn't long before we found another patch--this one however was surrounded by some young stinging nettle.  We didn't let it deter us but our hands felt the sting for several minutes afterwards.

This patch was so large (and fortunately not all in the nettle)  and so spread out that when we realized it, we were surrounded.  We were afraid to take a step for fear of crushing the tasty, tasty shrooms.  I got on all fours to get ground level and a better view of the morels that were all over.  We filled our bags and they were heavy!  I attached my laundry bag to a stick to make it easier to tote.  The woody/nutty/salty smell of the fungus made my stomach growl.  I've run across a few morel hunters in the woods before and always felt a slight pang of envy seeing those bulging bags of shrooms.  Never thought I would be one, but there were with heavy laundry bags full of morels--like we were pro shroomers!  As we wrapped up our day of hunting, I got a text from NBB back at the house--even he found a morel.  His location was by far the best:

He found a tiny one at the zombie graveyard.  Makes sense...morels kind of look like brains and what self respecting zombie is going to ignore a brain shaped shroom?

So above is our harvest for our first ever morel hunt.  Not bad!  Especially since we are beginners when it comes to morels and...Lorraine doesn't like to eat mushrooms.  She's getting a bit more adventurous and has eaten Hen of the Woods and she did make us an awesome morel asparagus cream soup for dinner but I think she dug the hunt more than the taste.  I enjoyed both.  NBB and I took some home and ate them in omletts and sauces and then Lorraine dried the rest.  Reconstituted morels make a most excellent broth--I'm salivating just thinking about what Mr. Neil might whip up for us when he returns.

Can't wait to see if we find any more this month.  Check out the Great Morel sight for more info if you would like to search for your own.

Wildflowers Around The Beehives

I mentioned earlier that the wildflowers seemed to be going gangbusters this year around our bee yard--perhaps it's a matter of me exploring an area around our bee yard that I usually do not get around to visiting?  They are in an area outside of Mr. Neil's property--across the creek as it were.  Hans (the groundskeeper) has put up a bridge over the creek making it easier to access.  The ravines across the bridge are well used by the locals for horse trails and hunting (at least four deer stands).

I've gone over a few times in winter to look for owls but this is the first spring that I've done some serious exploring. There's been a pair of Cooper's hawks calling back and forth so I've crossed the bridge looking for them but have been distracted by wildflowers like the above wild ginger (there also a few white Dutchman's breeches in the lower left corner).  When I noticed the wildflowers on Saturday, I saw a TON of large-flowered trillium about to bloom and made a plan to come back the following Tuesday to see them in full bloom.

When I found the wild ginger on Saturday, I was excited that I was able to id on my own.  It's one of those flowers I've seen in the couple of wildflower books and thought, "Wow, that's an interesting flower."  It looks kind of like an orchid, it's purplish, and the flower hides beneath the leaves, low to the ground. When I came back, I wanted to bring someone with me to enjoy the show.  I was planning to come back on a Tuesday so that ruled out most of my friends--not everyone has the odd schedule I do.  I thought about Non Birding Bill (take a personal day from work) but then realized that bringing my man in the woods to look at tiny flowers was probably not the best thing.  But I did think that Lorraine has an odd schedule so I invited her along.  She hadn't been across the bridge very much either so I was excited to show her what was there (plus with her love of horse back riding, I figured she would be interested in the horse trails).

The trillium show was spectacular--it was as if we were in crazy trillium land.  Pretty much every thing that's white in the above photo is trillium (note the little blurry dots of white in the background).  It was just underway too, several more trillium buds still had not burst open yet.  The more I learn about trillium the more I like it and I marvel that it's managed to survive at all.  Picking it can kill the plant, deer love to browse on it so if you have too large a deer population, that can be detrimental to a trillium patch, it can sometimes take up to seven years for a plant to bloom and it needs ants to spread the plant--it's crazy.  I'm sure  a survival strategy that worked great before European settlement of our continent.  It's amazing to find such a huge patch of high maintenance flowers in the woods.

The spring beauties were winding down but a few pink ones could still be found.  Below are some others that I'm posting, more so I can have a record of the native wildflowers I have found (it helps me learn):

Another flower I was hoping to find in large droves was the yellow trout lily.  Their mottled leaves were carpeting patches of the forest floor.  We saw quite a few blooming but the leaves suggest thousands more are still to come.

I love this shot, doesn't it look like the flower is holding its arms out and yelling, "Ta Daaaaaaaaaaa!"  I was scanning some of the hills with my binoculars to make sure we weren't missing any flowers when I noticed a trout lily that was white--another species of trout lily--who knew.  I kind of hoped it was a dwarf trout lily, but that only grows in one spot in Minnesota and nowhere else so this is a regular white trout lily...still it added to our wildflower list.

Wood anenome was all over in huge bunches, highlighting  the forest floor.

This is wild phlox (with a tiny spring beauty in the center and an unopened trillium in the lower right corner).

This is one I had to look up and the noticeable leaves are very cool--it's called a sharp-lobed hepatica.

The bloodroot was almost finished blooming but a few were still going.

The Dutchman's breeches were also about finished blooming but a few patches could be found in the shadier areas.  We did note that we didn't see any of our honey bees on these flowers.  The one honey bee we saw was on a dandelion (non-native).  This is probably because honey bees are non-native and are not attracted to our native flowers.  They didn't evolve together and the native flowers grew to attract some of our native pollinators like bumblebees.

And I found one lone Jack in the Pulpit.  These were all over the place last year so I can't wait to see how predominate they will be here in the next few weeks.  So, after Lorraine and finished the walk on the other side of the bridge, I suggested we check around a different part of Mr. Neil's land and perhaps check out some of the nearby state land.  We found a few wildflowers but most of it looked like this:

Good old garlic mustard.  We've made attempts to rid this before after a blog reader pointed it out in one of my photos years ago.  As we walked we noticed creeping charlie, buckthorn and dandelions--all non-natives.  Lorraine wondered, why are there so many cool and different flowers across the creek and all we have over hear is garlic mustard.  After seeing the wonderland across the creek, we may have to take some active measures.  I've read that trout lily can be a good thing to plant to combat garlic mustard.  You can also purchase it from reputable nurseries.  Perhaps we will have to redouble our efforts towards the buckthorn and garlic mustard.  Anyone have any tips for dealing with garlic mustard (outside of a controlled burn)?

Red-breasted Nuthatch Nest Construction

I headed out yesterday with Lorraine to do some serious wildflower walking (what the heck has happened to me, I'm interested in wildflowers now) near our beeyard.  Before Lorraine arrived, I headed down in the woods to see if I could figure out what birds were setting up territory where--I like to get know the neighborhood on the trail to our beehives.  There's a pair of Cooper's hawks that have been "kekking" around the hives, but I cannot find the nest at all.  There's a creek on the property line, so it's possible that it's across the creek, but from the calling interactions, it sounds like the nest is on Mr. Neil's property.  Where ever the nest is, I'm glad they feel welcome (and may they eat lots of deer mice).

But, while enjoying birds and vainly pursuing Cooper's hawks, I heard some serious pecking going on--it was loud.  I wondered if it was a downy woodpecker excavating a cavity and was shocked to discover that it was a female red-breasted nuthatch.  That tiny little thing was making some seriously loud pecking sounds! She was actually across the creek and I was still able to hear her.  You'll note a little haziness in these images, with the leaves coming out this nest is going to be well hidden very soon.  I marked where I stood, but who knows if in a week if it will be visible.  I was excited to find my first ever red-breasted nuthatch nest though.

Pitooey!  Look at that spray of debris!  She was really going to town.  It was interesting to note that she was not wearing a band, Mark and Roger have not banded her yet and they have banded a few red-breasteds when they come out to Mr. Neil's.  I found it interesting that the female was excavating the cavity, that seems like something a male would do.  I checked the handy dandy Birds of North America Online and it reads that female red-breasted nuthatches select the nesting site.  It did mention that males who had not paired up early on may excavate four different sites to show a prospective female.  The above female worked and then disappeared.  I heard some chattering and soon, a male flew in and took over excavation duties:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-NJGGvH-Ks&feature=channel[/youtube]

He was much more vocal as he excavated where the female had been silent.  It reminded me of one of those arguments you can have in a marriage where the male may be doing one thing (like excavating four different holes for you to lay eggs in) and quietly, the female begins work on the place she really wants.  The male then comes over to excavate and mutters, "Dammit, I excavated 4 different holes and then she picks one way at the far edge of the territory and now I have to start over on a new one!  What does she think my bill is made of? A woodpecker bill?  Ratcha Fracka Friker Frack!"

They are excavating near where I hear all of the Cooper's hawk kekking.  I hope I'm able to keep watching this nest through the leaves and that the two unlikely neighbors get along.