Fleecy Pink Wren Bed

When I get back from six days away there's a certain amount of angst and guilt because I wasn't here tending to everyone's needs every minute. By everyone, I mean the birds I'm feeding through this awful winter. And of course, it would turn beastly cold soon after I left, temperatures in the single digits, and that can mean doom for Carolina wrens, southern insectivores who have pushed farther north only in the last perhaps 50 years, and whose populations are famously vulnerable to bitter cold and snow. 

I asked my beloved neighbor who waters for me to fill the feeders, and she did, but only the couple of times she came to water. I don't expect anyone to run out twice a day and fill them like I do; to fill them a third time at dusk so the birds have something nice to wake up to. Ridiculous! That's my bag.

Of course, being a human and thinking the entire world revolves around me, I figured my wrens were toast without me there to help them three times a day. And when I got back, I only saw one at the roost box I'd lined with pink Polarfleece. I tried not to think of how lonely it would be without its partner/sibling/friend, but I felt terrible. 

So I set up a vigil to watch, and the first night only one came up.

                               

The second night, only one came up to the box, but there was another wren messing about under the roost box way past bedtime. Huh? 

I opened the garage today and there was a wren inside--not trapped, but sheltering, likely successfully hunting spiders. At the same time, a wren was coming to the Zick dough feeder. This was nice. This was good.

This evening, not wanting to miss a thing, I sat down at 4:23 pm to make sure I'd see the first wren to enter the box. It didn't come up until 4:50 pm, but that tracks, because it was so bright and sunny out for once. The brighter it is, the later they go to roost.

The bird went in and didn't come back out. I waited a bit and nobody else came to join it. So I set to preparing dinner and danged if a second bird didn't fly up from stage right and pop into the fleece! 

Here's its tail. 

So as far as I know, I have a pair of Carolinas sleeping in total warmth inside about five layers of Polarfleece in the roost box by my front door.

This makes me very, very happy. The babies I raised last summer slept every night in pink Polarfleece in their nylon tent in the garage. 

I'd love to think maybe one or even both of these are the same birds. A predilection for pink Polarfleece can't be too common in the wild.

One can never know. But they seem completely unperturbed by me watching and photographing them from just inside the foyer window. And I'm going to make sure they make it through the rest of the winter, come hell or high water. The nights have been in the lower teens and single digits for about the last 8 days, and there's 7" of snow on the ground. And they seem to be doing just fine, with a little help from their biggest fan.

Fun With Pine Warblers

One of my gray birches has decided to leaf out on April 2. You go, little tree. The rest are still in tight winter bud. 

This female cardinal looks fine in new leaves.

 I cannot tell you what a thrill it is for me to hear a pine warbler singing incessantly just outside my studio window. I've lived here outside Whipple in the southeast corner of Ohio since November 1992 and I have had pine warblers breed occasionally in the tall Virginia pines that line my oilwell access road.  In the early 2000's I saw a female take the fuzz off a spent dandelion and take it off to line her nest.  And they bred there in 2022.

But this year, I have a male who has claimed the feeders as his, and he commutes several hundred yards out to sing on his territory in the row of pines in between picking at the peanuts at my feeder. I know this is a reasonably common feeder bird in the Deep South and Southeast, but it is a Big Freakin' Deal for me to have a PIWA making hisself at home and helping himself to the food. 

Along with the white-breasted nuthatches, he's a peanut fan. He's like Texas toilet paper too...he don't take s---t off nobody. Not afraid of the hairy woodpecker. He just stays put and picks away.

It's too durn cold to set up my WarblerFall yet. It's still freezing many nights. So he comes down to the ugly blue heated dog dish and drinks there. Charmed, I'm sure! I can't wait to see him bathe in the WarblerFall! 

I've been thoroughly enjoying him for about three weeks, as he arrived March 8. I had begun to wonder when a female might appear. And on April 1, there she was, hopping about on the ground near the feeders, picking up who knows what.

You'd hardly know she was a warbler; you'd hardly know she was there. Not a speck of color on her anywhere; she was like the male in grayscale.

She had found a piece of peanut and was gagging it down when the male dropped down, apparently too close for comfort. I was thrilled to get them both in the frame. 

She, on the other hand, took violent exception to the male's intrusion, and leapt on him, pecking at his eyes! 

I had never seen anything quite like it. I guess she's not ready to play nice and be his mate. If this is pair bonding, um, no thanks. 

Over and over they rolled, she pressing the attack; he just trying to defend himself. At least that's how it looked to me. I did not see him peck back; he mostly dodged her blows.

I got concerned for him. 

When they finally broke free of each other, she arrowed after him and chased him to a nearby birch.

Only a minute or so later, he was singing from a feeder hook, unperturbed and apparently not dissuaded.

Phew!! Mr. PIWA, you have a tiger by the tail. Good luck with her.

I've started feeding small amounts of Zick Dough on these cold raw March and April days, to help early migrants as well as residents. The birds sure do appreciate it. 

For the recipe and an advisory on warm-weather feeding of Zick Dough, click here. 

Today, April 2, I was thrilled to bits to see the female pine warbler partaking of the high-energy food! 

She may have seen the pair of Carolina wrens eating it...she's a quick study. I have yet to see the male warbler take any, surprisingly, though he hovers around the suet feeder and picks up millet from the ground.

Carolina wrens love Zick Dough.

So do white-breasted nuthatches.

I'm delighted to have something nutritious to offer these beautiful pine warblers on raw spring days. 

Let's face it, I'm a freak for warblers.  Always have loved these delicate, long-distance travelers and their beautiful colors and songs.

Peanuts. If they're good enough for nuthatches, they're good enough for me!

Eat up, Mean Mrs. Mustard. And be nicer to your mate. You've got eggs to make. Soon I'll put out crushed eggshells for you. I want to hear and host pine warblers every spring!

And I can't wait to see them use the WarblerFall!

15 September 2022...Mean Mrs. Mustard, that kinda looks like you!

In a Vacant House: Wilding with Jen

Ever see two dogs running loose, getting into trouble? It really takes two. Tongues lolling, tails high, they go looking for adventure. A dog on its own just isn't as inquisitive or fearless. When it comes to going through old houses, I'm definitely a dog. I'm not a fearful person; not given to the heebie-jeebies. I just want to have someone with me. Maybe it's to share the fun and amazement. Maybe it's for that little boost through the open window. Maybe it is a little spooky to go through a vacant house alone. It's a little spooky to go through this one with someone else!

I had a feeling my dear friend Jen would be up for some adventure. I wanted to show her one of my favorite houses. I hadn't been inside it since James came to see me, several years ago. I remember what fun it had been to finally see the inside of a house I'd wondered about for years! I knew there'd be neat stuff in there. She was admiring the house and had noted the open window. "I don't suppose you'd want to climb in there with me, would you?" I asked. "Hell yeah!" Jen answered, and we were off and wilding. 

Carpet was Jen's innovation, after I ripped my good lined trousers on a nail. That is a very small window to fit through. That's another reason to have a friend along--to help you pull your leg up and through!  

 

 First thing we saw was a mouse nest, which had once been sandwiched in between wallpaper and wall. Oops.  There was some funky wallpaper going down in this house.

 

Like I said, it was a little spooky from the inside. I've photographed this ancient Hydrangea arborescens from the outside so many times. Now here it is, in winter plumage, from the dark musty inside.

As it was in summer 2016, when Chet was with me. Sweet memories of giving him a cold drink from the well each time we came there. I loved running there with him. I've really only just gotten used to going there without him.

2014. Hydrangea and window behind. He's already so gray. 

Onward. We're in an old house, not hunkered down in the sweet July grass outside it.

I'm diggin' the little framed placard, and the fact that someone long ago rubbed the dirty glass to see what it said. I finished the job with a licked finger.

For YOU, MOTHER.

May the sun smile through your window

From out the skies of blue

Upon the world's sweetest creation

"Mothers just like you."

I think card verse has gotten better with time. I liked thinking, though, that in this house had lived a mother someone thought so well of.

 

Shaving stuff--a straight razor, Palmolive Lather Soap. Tums, $.30. And Spirits of Turpentine. People put stuff like that on their skin. Not me, not ever!

 

I looked at the massive old fridge with its supercool funky logo and said, "I bet if you could plug this thing in it would still run. Probably drive you out of the room with noise, but it'd work." Which is more than I can say of the three refrigerators that have died on me in the last 24 years. When I was a kid, you had the same fridge/freezer your entire life. No more. Planned obsolescence and crappy materials are the name of the game now. This thing is built like a dang battleship. You could go over Niagara in this refrigerator. I mean, if you wanted to. 

In the corner of the kitchen is a secret.

It's a cabinet that stays almost closed. The bottom shelf is a tumble of cutlery (I can't really call it silverware). There's a jar of washers. Oh, so many washers. My dad saved washers. Sadly, I am of the cohort that barely knows what washers are for, and rarely ever deploys them.

 

 On the second shelf are some little dishes and cups.

 

On the third shelf are some more washers and cotter pins. So many cotter pins. Again...not something most people these days collect for later use. 

  

The green milk glass coffee mug? Straight out of my grandmother Ruigh's cabinets. That was her dishware. I'm sad that by the time I came along, the last of five, my grandmother Elnora Zickefoose had only a few more years left in her little brick bungalow in Sheffield, Iowa. I never got to go through her cabinets; ate only a few meals at her table. But oh, what a cook she was. As was my maternal grandmother Frieda Ruigh. I never expect to eat so well again. Looking back, I realize what a gift those meals were, and I'm grateful that my parents took us every summer to see our family in Iowa.

I looked hard at the cotter pin can.  Recent enough to have a barcode and be called LeCafe! Somebody tell me what year barcodes happened...On June 26, 1974, at 8:01 a.m., Sharon Buchanan used a barcode to ring up a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. Thank you, Google! So this house was occupied at least through the late 1970's, I'd say, and nosing through the Christmas letters, into the 80's. Situational awareness, my friends. More than 30 years gone from here, the inhabitants, and all this beautiful wreckage, telling of their time here.

 

On the top shelf is the best thing of all. An electric juicer (Jen thought it might be a coffee press at first and I laughed; this is definitely 8 O'Clock Coffee, ground in a can, country).  But that's not the best thing.

 

 A Carolina wren nest! It's been occupied for several years that I know of, hidden in that magic cabinet, which I mostly closed back up when I was done snooping. The parents enter the house, I'd think, through a variety of holes, and as far as I can tell they lead the babies out via the window we climbed in. That's on the other side of the house, but a trip like that is no big deal for Carolina wrens. They're brainy--spatial perception kings.  They teach their children well.

Cabinet, ready for occupancy, spring 2018.

Now for the tableaux I love so well.

That massive refrigerator, and some boots and a barrel and bucket and stool...oh my gosh. Andrew Wyeth, bar the door.

I'm always trying to get people to click on the photos in my blog to see them large and in focus. Not going to tell you what this letter says. Trust me, it's worth reading. The things you pick out of a pile of Christmas cards from the mid 1980's! And while you're at it, run through and appreciate the other photos at full size, please and thank you.

Tools on the far kitchen wall. I have always wondered if the tools hung here when the original inhabitants lived here, or whether those went up after the house became a sort of storage unit. So I gave it some thought. I'm leaning toward the latter explanation. I mean, I love the way they look but I doubt Grandma would have allowed this in her kitchen. This looks like an after-they-left arrangement to me.

We'll just hang these here where we can git 'em. Nobody hangs a saw on the very edge of a corner they're going to walk around (the basement door). Ergo: Put up after everyone moved out.

Eek. This is what I mean by spooky.

Another look through that kitchen door before we go up the creaky freaky stairs.

The light-gathering capability of my iPhone6, my partner in all crime and adventure, is such that the darkness of this stairwell is not adequately conveyed. I went first, you know, in case BATS. Note the wall to the right.

Those are ancient logs, barely covered with plaster and wallpaper. James muses,

"That log frame is something I think about often.

What were the forests where those seedlings began?

Did they know native Americans?"

 

 LOOK at those logs!! In this humble house, forest giants, felled. When??

 

 

Pretty posies, peeling, uncovering the venerable bones of a house that's not going to fall down anytime soon.

An ironing board. Wonder and trepidation in discovery. Gratitude to be able just to look at it all.

An electric clock, strongly reminiscent of the one in my Gram Ruigh's kitchen. Again, I had the strong feeling this one would work if plugged in. "I bet it buzzes like a ...." I said to Jen. I was haunted by the thought that it was 11:10 AM when it was taken off the wall and thrown into a box, to be found over 30 years later by a harmless trespasser. Telechron brand. Sounds so Buck Rogers, doesn't it?

Creepy toys and school papers. Who will ever know?

 

Hangers, breeding in dark corners. 

Big tropical leaves were in vogue in the 1940's. I wondered why there was no color to these. Understated.

 

In a corner window sash, a hand-tatted tie for curtains, long gone. Everywhere, hand-made things that are no longer hand-done. I thought at first it was a snakeskin. Jen figured out it was a curtain tie.

 

Hunters come here. This one, I think, died on its own; the skull mostly gone as it would be had something chewed it in nature.

It was time to get back out into the sunshine. There's been so little of it this spring!

 

 

May the sun smile through your window

From out the skies of blue.

We climbed back out the pronky small window, our wilding done for the day.

The golden forsythia, the blue sky, and my favorite tableau of all were calling.

 

I saw the ghost of Chet Baker stomping across this couch, sniffing for decades-old crackers in the cushions.

The couch is losing color. Chet no longer stomps. A squirrel has taken a large divot of stuffing for its nest. The couch melts away. 

Time can only keep spooling out.

 

The log cabin stands yet.