REQUIEM FOR A WOOD DUCK FAMILY

Sad update on our wood ducks:  last time I had a picture of papa sitting near the nest box and guarding.  This morning when I looked out, the box was askew and it looked like the bottom was hanging down.  I feared the worst and unfortunately was correct; the nest had been predated.  Not sure of the predator as we have several around.  We're thinking coon or fisher rather than snake or rodent because the box had the bottom knocked out and was crooked on the tree, so it was probably something heavy. 

We counted 6 identifiable egg shells (there were likely more than that) in the leaves or in the down that the female had pulled from her breast to keep the eggs warm.

Wood Duck egg, just to right and above of center

We wonder if that was what Blake was barking about this morning...
May they find a new hole and have better luck in a second nesting.

OF BIRDS AND NESTS AND MORNING CHORUSES

Spring is clearly here.  The birds are going crazy in the morning and nesting is happening everywhere!  I gave Blake a haircut the other day so that I could put out some nice soft dog hair for nests and it is flying off of the tree branches and the suet cage where I put it. I watch it disappear by the beakfuls!  

I had been wanting to take our Christmas wreath and put it someplace less busy, but still in the protected area of the carport so that the Carolina Wrens could have it as a nesting place if so desired.  I figured I'd put some plastic behind it to protect the wall, but I couldn't quite decide where to put it, so I hadn't yet moved it.  I went out a couple days ago and the little wren almost hit me as it came bombing out of the wreath.  Too late; it will stay where it is!  

Isn't it just beautiful??  The Carolinas tend to make a side entrance nest.  The male will also often build several nests and then the female decides which one to use.  I don't think this one is the chosen nest.

This morning it was 42º which is definitely warm enough for us to go back to our early morning sit-on-the-porch time.  We were a bit late this AM, slept in until 5, so we didn't catch first bird, but we sure got the full chorus!  I felt bad for Carol & Joe as the Pileated Woodpecker was drumming on a big, dead, hollow branch, right outside their bedroom window!  Linda quipped, "There should be an ordinance against construction companies working this early in the morning!"  It was REALLY loud! 

We heard our Carolina, of course - hard to miss his ""Tea kettle, Tea kettle, Tea"!  There were robins "Cheerily, chirup!" and the "Peter Peter" of the tufted titmouse and we have seven local Blue Jays - they were in full voice.  Very quietly, underneath all of this cacophony, was the call of the White-throated sparrow, "Oh, sweet Canada, Canada, Canada".  One pair of the blue-birds are still around, which surprises me (OH!  Outside my window there is a blue jay pair on the dead crabapple tree and he is feeding her!  Sweet).

And on the pond, Wood Ducks.  This one was sitting on the tree near the duck box.

So much activity!  And it is especially wonderful in the morning!!  Bundle up and sit outside with your coffee or tea right around dawn.  You'll be glad you did. 

RECENT SIGHTINGS

Well...  There are signs of spring, if you don't look at the snow!  (We still have about 7 inches in our back yard, and that faces south!)  The pond has a lot of free water in it and our migrants have been around.  Recently (last two weeks or so), I have seen on the pond:

• Hooded Mergansers
• Common Mergansers
• American Black Ducks
• Mallards
• A Ring-necked Duck 
• Two Northern Pintails (they are so dashing this time of year!)
• Canada Geese 
• Great Blue Heron (Carol reported seeing two sitting together on their landing - I've never seen two together, except in nest cams!

Common Mergansers didn't like me so close...

Out of the water, new arrivals:

• Song Sparrow
• Common Grackle
• Many House Finch
• Red-winged Blackbird (heard on Moore)
• Plus all the usual winter birds we have had in the yard
• Bluebirds are still here, as are the Juncos, Tree Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows
• Goldfinch are definitely turning yellow! 
• Beautiful Red-tail flew over, and I saw one in the tree right near where the Red-tail was killed on Moore a month or so ago.

Mammels:

• Chipmunks are out and about
• Fox visited 
• No sign of the deer recently, nor the coyote or fisher or otter

I think a lot of the migrating water birds were put off by the pond refreezing.  Also, the snow depth is less, so they can get around more easily and don't need to venture up close to a house.

The picture below was taken on March 13 in that snow storm - it was a BEAUTIFUL day for a walk and noone else was around, so Blake had his first off-leash walk!   The next day, I tried it again 'cuz he was so good about hanging around, but he took off after a (large) puppy and was way too aggressive - back on the leash...

Foot Bridge over Hop Brook, heading into the Hop Brook Conservation Land

WINTER SUMMARY

It has been quite a winter!  I know I am in the minority, but I have enjoyed it.  A great result of such a cold and snowy winter is that even  I  will be ready for spring!  Usually it starts getting warm and Linda & I are bemoaning not enough cold and snow.  This year, we will be OK with what has passed <grin>.

 It was cold this year, colder than usual!  I looked back through the calendars on AccuWeather (follow link and click on "month") and it really WAS a lot colder!  We had the following temps of zero and below: 

Dec 17  -7
Jan 2     0
Jan 3    -7
Jan 4    -12 (!!)
Jan 23  -2
Feb 7   -1
Feb 11  -6
Feb 12  -8
Feb 17   0
Feb 18  -2
Mar 1   -2
Mar 4   -5
Mar 7   -1


On a warmer note, our bird list for September - February in the Hop-Brook area near our home has 43 species  (birds marked with * were our winter stay-arounds and were with us most of the winter):

Pileated Woodpecker on our tree

Canada Goose
Wood Duck
American Black Duck
Mallard
Hooded Merganser
Common Merganser
Great Blue Heron
Osprey
*Cooper's Hawk
*Red-tailed Hawk
*Mourning Dove
*Eastern Screech Owl
Great Horned Owl
Belted Kingfisher
*Red-bellied Woodpecker
*Downy Woodpecker
*Hairy Woodpecker
*Pileated Woodpecker
*Blue Jay
*American Crow
Common Raven

Hooded Merganser pair

*Black-capped Chickadee
*Tufted Titmouse
*White-breasted Nuthatch
*Brown Creeper
*Carolina Wren
*Eastern Bluebird
American Robin
European Starling
Cedar Waxwing
*American Tree Sparrow
*Song Sparrow
*White-throated Sparrow
*Dark-eyed Junco
Snow Bunting (actually at the playing fields on Fairbank, but close!)
*Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird 
Purple Finch
*House Finch
*American Goldfinch
 
 And for wild mammals, we saw fox, deer, coyote, fisher, muskrat, otter, chipmunk, rabbit and the ubiquitous squirrel.

Who says there's nothing going on in the winter???  
Try to get out right around dawn and listen to the birds sing!  They know spring is here!

OTTER ON ICE, YOUNG DEER & BROWN CREEPER

Busy around here!  Outside, I mean.  Just lots of things going on.  Carol spotted an otter on the ice last night and I managed to get some pictures before it got too dark.  She said it seemed to be eating something.  By the time I got on the porch with my camera, he was getting up and stretching and eventually slipped into the water.

All day I had visits from a young deer - definitely last summer's fawn.  It was enjoying the corn under the tree where I scatter some food for the ground feeders.  It was in the yard three times during the day (alone) and I saw it walking down the street once.  Not sure why it was so much out in the open during the day - they are usually scare except at dusk and dawn.  Carol said she saw five deer heading toward our Yew bushes this morning; I missed those, but saw the youngun, spooked it actually, as I went out to fill the bird feeders.

Also saw two brown creepers yesterday morning.  They are REALLY hard to find, let alone to photograph!  This one is through the window, but is the best I've been able to do!

MUSKRAT HOLE IN THE ICE? DEER AT THE BIRD BATH

Got slowed down this AM by watching four deer come up to the house to feed on our Yew bush.  Our yews are so ragged, we are appreciative for all the help trimming them!  

I knew we got the bird bath heater for a reason!

It was fun to see them, as the deer below were only about 5 feet from me! They stayed for about 15 minutes and then moved on.  -4º outside this AM, so they are welcome to whatever sustenance they can get from the yews.

 

 

On a different note, there has been a hole in the ice on the pond and I have wondered if it is a muskrat hole.  Haven't seen any brown furry critters there, but it seems logical.  Then Linda was reading H.D. Thoreau: A Writer's Journal, edited by Laurence Stapleton, and ran across the following:

"I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice.  He is a man wilder than Ray or Melvin.  While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. [I felt that way this morning as the deer was looking in the window at me!]  He is a different sort of a man, that is all.  He would dive when I went nearer, then reappear again, and had kept open a place five or six feet square so that it had not frozen, by swimming about in it.  Then he would sit on the edge of the ice and busy himself about something.  I could not see whether it was a clam or not.  What a cold-blooded fellow!  thoughts (sic) at a low temperature, sitting perfectly still so long on ice covered with water, mumbling a cold, wet clam in its shell.  What safe, low, moderate thoughts it must have!  It does not get on to stilts.  The generations of muskrats do not fail. They are not preserved by the legislature of Massachusetts."  ~Henry David Thoreau, Novemeber 25, 1846.

I wonder what Thoreau was thinking when he said, "What safe, low, moderate thoughts he must have".  What are low thoughts?  Moderate thoughts?  I wouldn't think he'd feel safe on the ice...  Perhaps HDT was even then comparing him to politicians? "It does not get on to stilts."  Interesting that so much of HDT's paragraph fits with today.  Somethings don't change, and unfortunately, it is not just nature!

A muskrat hole in the ice?

THE COYOTE AND THE DEER

"Look! The deer are back, but only five of them this morning", I said to Linda.  Yesterday we had a herd pass by the pond, about 8:30 in the morning.  Eight of them passed by (does & yearlings), two stopping at our landing to get a drink, and then a few minutes later four more came along the pond!  In this group there were two young fawn who were definitely too small for last year's batch but seemed too big to be this year's; I think they had spots, so some doe must have been early to drop this year!  (MassAudubon says that deer drop in May or June, another source, DeerFriendly.com, says end of March and April for Massachusetts. Either way, this is VERY early!)

Deer passing along pond - 12 all together

Back to THIS morning.  About 6:40 AM (20 minutes after sunrise), there was a group of 5 deer down by the pond.  My movements in the house caused them to all look up the hill at us.  We turned off the light and watched.  Shortly, the tails went up and they RAN west along the pond.  We were wondering what spooked them, when I saw a coyote come loping along from the east!  Ah-HA!  The deer were too fast for the coyote and shortly, it doubled back the check out the landing to see if perhaps a doe had stashed her fawn there to hide.  No breakfast yet... so he loped off up the hill past the house next door.

The deep snow is hard on the deer, both for foraging and also because they sink so deeply into it, while the coyotes can mostly run on top.  I went down to the pond to look at tracks and found that mostly the deer tracks were fairly shallow, but every once in a while there would be one that had sunk in five or six inches.  You know how difficult it is for us humans to be walking along on the crust and suddenly it gives way -- imagine if your life was on the line!  Not surprisingly, I didn't find any distinguishable canine footprints.

Deer prints: medium size, there were some larger and some smaller

OTHER SIGHTINGS IN OUR YARD...

We have been seeing the Pileated Woodpecker frequently.  We have many dead trees or branches in our little stand of woods, so the Pileated is happy to remove some of the carpenter ants from the neighborhood for us!  I have only seen a male.

Our Bluebirds are still here chomping down the mealworms we put out for them.

I saw a Red-tailed Hawk overhead yesterday.

We have had several FAT coons under the feeder.

Our local Eastern Screech Owl is frequently spotted sunning in its hole in the tree.
 
No sighting of the Fisher this week.