Territorial robin

By Crystal | April 25, 2017

The robins are back! One decided to set up shop in our front yard.

Last year, a pair of robins built a nest on the downspout and raised several babies, so I was excited that we might be able to observe that process again this year. But I haven’t seen that yet; instead, he has spent his time fighting an intruder in his territory. (I am assuming this robin is a male.)

Except the other robin is just his own reflection in our front windows.

hovering in front of the window, wings behind, legs in front

hovering in front of the window, wings outstretched, legs in front

hovering in front of the window, wings bent, legs up

For several days in a row, rain or shine, for hours on end beginning at 6 am, he would watch the reflection from his spot in the tree, then move in closer and perch on a stick close to the window, then go in for the attack.

Each incident lasted from 2 to 5 seconds, and then he’d fly back to the pine tree and pause for a minute or two, then look both ways, then look straight at the window and start again.

perched on a shepherd's hook, looking right

perched on a shepherd's hook, looking left and behind

perched on a shepherd's hook, looking straight ahead

The tree shows evidence of his presence.

This wasn’t just playful; this was feet-up, claws-out wrestling — at least, as much as he can wrestle with a window.

Nothing we did to dissuade him worked for the long term. Not putting up more anti-bird-strike stickers, not putting up shiny metal tape, not hanging a screen, not shooing him away from the inside or outside.

He just kept coming back and fighting and fighting

and buzzing by repeatedly.

Finally, one day the constant attacks stopped. I imagined he must have admitted to his rival, “You are a worthy opponent.” He’s still around, and every now and then he’ll attack the window-robin once, but that’s it. And on Sunday we saw (and heard) a real skirmish: a robin flew super-fast into the tree and apparently dislodged another bird; they wrestled and screeched in midair, and one flew away.

But mostly now he just watches his territory without incident. So far, I haven’t seen a nest; maybe he hasn’t had time to find a mate, what with him being so busy patrolling and all.

Learn more about this behavior

Help! A robin is hitting my window! (Journey North)

Blue snow

By Crystal | February 20, 2017

It seems strange to talk about snow after days and days of 50- and 60-degree temperatures and rain have left us with virtually none. This observation happened just over a week ago.

Near the compost pile I noticed a bright blue spot

and then another that I had walked right by without noticing.

I had heard of this phenomenon before: animals eat some kind of plant, which turns their urine blue. I thought I had heard it was caused by deer or rabbits, and either could be the culprit in our yard. So I started looking around, and then I started noticing lots of round scat, which means rabbits. (Deer scat is more oval.)

The plant: was it buckthorn? Hmm, didn’t we just realize we have a patch of buckthorn in the yard?

Yep, the stems of these small trees (which I suspect are buckthorn, given their appearance and location close to confirmed buckthorn) seem to have been snacked. An Instagram friend told me last year that rabbits chew the stems of plants cleanly at a 45-degree angle, like the photo above, while deer cuts are more crushed or ragged. Rabbits are also known to remove the bark all the way around a tree, potentially like the messy work below – though so are deer. This damage’s cause is less clear to me.

Several unofficial sources agree that both rabbits and deer are the animals in the equation, and the chemical is almost always from buckthorn (though apparently salts could be another culprit). Interestingly enough, it’s the bark of buckthorn, and not the berries, that causes this phenomenon.

And a closer look at the first spot showed some rabbit scat right next to the blue.

If only the rabbits could eat enough of the buckthorn to kill it.

References

Animals

By Crystal | April 7, 2016

Insects aren’t the only living creatures in our yard. We also saw animals – or evidence of animals – all last summer, though without a zoom lens, it’s hard to get good pictures.

I never get too upset when I see cute baby rabbits, as long as I don’t remember that they will grow up to eat so much of our garden. I startled this tiny one (no bigger than my hand) by moving a flowerpot he was hiding behind. He hunkered down in the grass for a minute and then in his haste to find safety, he crashed straight into my foot.

Rabbit sampling a pot of flowers:

If only they would stick to eating the dandelions!

I was endlessly entertained by watching them first pick the dandelions at the ground, then chew from the bottom up.

A hawk – which is in our neighbor’s tree, but it hangs over our yard:

It made such an interesting sound:

Evidence of some kind of altercation:

Even pesky squirrels have to eat:

Mole damage in the backyard:

A mole making its way underground:

Vole? Shrew?

Birds in the vegetables:

Whew! Finished this bugs-and-beyond series before spring truly got underway, though plants are already sprouting. Now I am ready to start looking at the 2016 garden.

More bugs and critters:

Bugs and beyond

By Crystal | February 14, 2016

When we got married five years ago and I moved into his house, we started converting the lawn to flowers. It started very small – just a short hillside, which was hard to mow anyway. That was so successful that we’ve been chipping away at more and more of the grass every year.

We started buying flowers with gift certificates we received for our wedding: mostly perennials, some of them native plants. Now the only thing I will consider adding to the permanent garden is natives (though we do have annuals in pots each summer, too).

As the flowers have taken hold and expanded, more and more insects and other critters have been taking up residence. Who knew that swapping bluegrass for native plants would result in such a large insect community? (She wrote with dripping sarcasm.)

I recently added a list of my favorite flower posts to the sidebar. All five involve bugs.

This is the start of a multi-post series on critters, published in 2016 using photos from my 2015 garden. First, some bugs I haven’t yet identified (on plants I have identified).

Invasive creeping bellflower:

Native black-eyed susan:

Common milkweed:

Joe-pye weed:

Butterfly weed:

Common milkweed:

Bee balm:

Common milkweed:

More critters

The squirrels are taunting us

By Crystal | October 4, 2014

As I feared, the squirrels found a way to the fenced-in pumpkin and made short work of eating it. Now they’ve managed to climb into our more secure covered box garden. This half-eaten tomato was left on top of the enclosure – to make sure we noticed, I bet.