The WarblerFall

 What was your Pandemic Project? Did you clean closets? Learn how to make sourdough? Pick up an instrument? 

Mine was inventing the perfect bird bath, something so irresistible that it would draw birds from the woods into the yard: birds I don't usually get to see.  I've been thinking about this problem ever since I learned the Magnificent Bird Spa was no longer in production, which was sometime around 2011. Oh, have I had fun with this wonderful creation. There was nothing like it on a hot summer day! But now it's old and the resin-based material it's made of is getting more brittle every year.  I felt a need to find an alternative, for the inevitable time when it breaks. 

Every time I went to a garden center or a wild bird supply store, I looked for something like the Spa. I looked online, again and again, for years. I never found it. Somehow the manufacturers of bird baths have never gotten the memo from wild birds about what they like. I knew it was up to me to come up with it.

I wanted to invent a bubbling bird fountain that would be affordable and easy to clean. Much as I loved the Magnificent Bird Spa, it was expensive ($350 in 2007), and it was a pretty big production to take apart and clean the basin and its 8 gallon reservoir. There had to be an easier way to get water to my birds.

 I also wanted to build something that would appeal to small forest birds like warblers, vireos and tanagers: something smaller, shallower, and noisier. The sound of trickling water is how birds find a bathing spot. A light went off in my head when I found a large, shallow basin at White's Mill, my favorite garden store in Athens, Ohio. I bought two, brought them home, and commenced thinking about how to create a fountain around them. By midsummer 2021 I had it figured out, but I kept tinkering with the components until I got it just right. I set it in the shady bed below my studio window and was thunderstruck by the action it got that late summer and fall. Warblers, vireos, tanagers, gnatcatchers, kinglets--they were coming right up to the studio window, enticed by the trickling water music below.

Black and white warbler (imm. female)

A fall-plumaged scarlet tanager bathes.

An immature white-crowned sparrow takes a sip.

Those of you who read this blog or follow my social media feeds know that I share things that make me happy. Uncharacteristically, I kept this close to my chest, posted not a single photo of my perfect bird fountain anywhere. I knew I had something very special here, but I wasn't sure how to make it available. I had an idea that it would be worth paying a little something to access my plans. It took my awesome friend Kristi Dranginis (originator of For the Love of Birds Festival) to show me what I needed to do to make it accessible to everyone. I'd never even heard of a one-page website, but I have now!

And so I developed a pitch for my idea and condensed into an elevator speech. Then I wrote a script for the video and put together the plans for constructing the fountain, with detailed instructions and photos. And in September 2021, my friend Shila and I spent a wild afternoon making an instructional video featuring me demonstrating exactly how to make this bird bath. It was really fun, and I learned so much about how to develop, package and pitch an idea.  The whole experience was a crash course in online marketing, and it's really rewarding to see how it's being received.

I call it The WarblerFall. Because of the work and money I've put into developing the idea and its website, there is a modest fee to access the instructional video and detailed guide. I think you'll enjoy the step-by-step instructional video, which brings you right into my garden, and I guarantee you'll have fun making your own bubbling bird bath, at a very reasonable cost. The whole thing can be constructed without tools for under $60, but oh, the bathing bird beauty bang for the buck! Check it out at warblerfall.com

 I took a bunch of photos in the last couple of days to show birds enjoying it.

We're moving into late summer migration time, and I am going to get absolutely nothing done because this water feature is right outside my studio window and there is literally always something going on out there.

It's prime WarblerFall time! 

The 2021 iteration of my WarblerFall was on the ground. And that is really best, if there are no marauding mammals around. But the chipmunks in my yard developed the intensely annoying behavior of trying to jump the birds while they bathed, so the new setup looks like this. 

I put a LOT of flat rocks in the basin to give pools of varying depths. I absolutely LOVE playing with the rocks to create the prettiest water music I can!

Take yesterday, July 28, for example. Phoebe and I were watching two cardinals bathing together, and not one but THREE Kentucky warblers showed up! 

They peered down at the fountain, chased each other through the birches, and suddenly a worm-eating warbler appeared, also attracted by the trickling water!

To see these glorious denizens of the deep woods drawn into my yard, only inches away from my studio window, was such an affirmation, such a thrill! This is why I had to share my invention. 

But it took a newly fledged brown-headed cowbird to demonstrate all the delights of the WarblerFall. 

First, it stood in a shallow pool, squatted, and bathed there. 

Then it tried another shallower pool

Escalating, it stuck its chest right into the flow. 

I have never seen a bird stick its head right into the outflow

but this little cowbird was living large. 

I can't wait to see what late summer and fall migration brings to my WarblerFall. On October 13, 2021, I had my first-ever ruby-crowned kinglet come to bathe! Her bath was too quick for me to capture, but I got the tiny customer right before she took a dip.

If you'd like to see what all the fuss is about, and watch me going all Bobby Flay on you with a rapid-fire two-minute pitch, check it out at  

warblerfall.com

I've also made a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/WarblerFall

where some fun stuff happens.

Brass tacks. If you decide to take the plunge and purchase the WarblerFall plans, and you don't get a welcome email right back, CHECK YOUR SPAM FILE. Many email programs see the links in my welcome email and toss it into spam/junk. 

If you still can't find it, email me at juliezickefooseATgmailDOTcom

and I'll be happy to set you up.

I Get Nothing Done Around Here!

I'm going to try something here that I've never done before. I'm going to try to give you a minute-by-minute account of the kind of thing that goes on in and just outside my studio here in the Appalachian foothills of southeast Ohio. Because so much happens in these posts, I'll have to break them up into several installments. But pay attention to the time signatures of the photos as you read, please.

 Today I had the whole day to myself at home, a huge luxury and rarity. I got to do just what I wanted to. So I cranked up the music, cleaned my drawing table, and started work on a few pieces on South Africa. Part of my writing process involves staring out the window. Staring out the window a lot. And staring out the window in late summer in my sideyard is dangerous. Very dangerous. It all started with 

a white-eyed vireo chattering and singing to himself in the birch just outside the studio window. 

It's 9:54 AM, Monday, July 30.

 I can't quite decide if this is an adult or a juvenile coming into adult plumage. I think a juvenile would probably still have dark eyes, so I decide it's an adult. 

I turn my attention next to an indigo bunting in the Magnificent Bird Spa at 9:59 AM. Pretty, very pretty. 

This is not just any indigo bunting. This is my Piper. He sings every morning right outside my bedroom window. More on him later.

At 10:47 a male eastern bluebird drops in for a bath.

At 11:55 the action starts heating up, with a brown thrasher keeling over in the hot sun to cook his feather mites.

He shuffles over to the edge of the trees, spreads his wings and tail, and lays down flat as a doormat.
What you see here is his elevated rump feathers, one tail feather, and both wings out to the side. His head is toward you.

This is the most extreme sunbathing pose I've ever seen, and it attracts the attention of this bird's sibling (they were both hatched in our black raspberry hedge on Dump Hill).

The thrasher's head briefly comes up. Do not adjust your dials. There is nothing wrong with this brown thrasher.

Dead birds don't preen.

it's Aliiiiive!!

Still panting, the young thrasher (note the light grey, not yellow-orange eyes) moves into the shade. It's going for noon and I've gotten very little done on my article.

Just a minute later, at high noon, an adult male hooded warbler (Nope, Zick--juvenile male--see correction below!) pops up in the arbor vitae about four feet from my face. Ahh. Look at you, peeking at me.

That's better. But you're almost too close for my telephoto!

 and now you're definitely too close. Whew! Knocking me out! My friend Bob Mulvihill, PA bird ager/sexer/bander/researcher extraordinaire, wrote August 2 to advise that juvenile male hooded warblers get a full black hood in the same summer they're born. See the dipped-in-ink look of his tail? That, according to Bob, is a "fault bar," an indication that the entire tail grew out all at once. He further advises that the unhooded bird you see just below this one is a juvenile female. Female hooded warblers may attain a full cowl over the back of the head as they age (after hatch year), but they almost never get a full bib of black. Saw one like that just yesterday.

Four minutes later, a juvenile female hooded warbler sweeps in after the adult. There are just a couple of dark feathers in her nascent hood. (Bob says that a full adult hooded warbler would never be in such perfect smooth feather as these two--it would have very worn brown feathers visible in wing and tail this time of year).  Thank you Bob!! So we've got two juveniles. No wonder they're so rowdy.

 What a lovely little bird. She's chasing all around with the juvenile male. Fall birds are always messing around and mock-fighting. They seem to enjoy migration.

Round and round they go and where they'll stop...My article is never getting done. There's that crazy band on his tail again--check it out. Almost looks like a magnolia warbler's tail.

The aesthetics of the background aren't the best, but the birds absolutely adore looping in and out of the rusty old tomato cages I use to support the cardinalflower spikes. I'm not going for fabulous photography here. What I'm trying to do is show you the action, fast and furious as it is. I've shot all the brown thrashers and hooded warblers in less than ten minutes!

At 12:04, a juvenile scarlet tanager drops down to the Spa.

and is quickly joined by the male indigo bunting. Bathing birds beget bathing birds.

At 12:06, a worm-eating warbler suddenly pops out of the wiggling birch leaves. Holy Cow! Somehow I refocus from the spa and manage a decent shot. I'm pretty excited at this point.

He gives me a lovely view of his marbled undertail coverts 

before a white-eyed vireo slams into him at 12:07:47 and displaces him from the perch.

The vireo mutters and sings, mutters and cusses as he works his way through my hummingbird garden.

I really like white-eyed vireos. They're sassy and mouthy, and if you listen closely, you'll hear all kinds of birdsong imitations in their litany.

The vireo briefly vanishes and its place is taken at 12:08 by a female indigo bunting only just now building her nest! By now I'm just laughing. The birds are arriving and switching places so fast I barely have time to get the lens on them before another one blows in. The bunting flies on a straight line east. I make a mental note to watch for her and try to figure out where her nest is.

Meanwhile her mate Piper is taking his umpteenth bath in the Spa at 12:08.

It's been just a bit over two hours and the birds just keep flooding in. I'm not done by a long shot. If you're not birding in late July and early August, you're missing an incredible show. More anon!