Tree Swallows, Nesting Naturally

 Woodpeckers do a huge favor to a lot of other birds when they chisel out their cavities. Red-headed, downy, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers are the engineers, architects and contractors for most of the house-building. Flickers also excavate, but their slightly decurved bills are not quite as well-adapted to the task, so they'll often enlarge an existing cavity or choose a punkier dead tree to make their own. The huge cavities of pileated woodpeckers are a boon to wood ducks and great crested flycatchers.

These woodpeckers are called primary cavity nesters, meaning that they make their own holes. Great crested flycatchers and tree swallows are among the secondary cavity nesters who move in when the woodpeckers move out.

There were lots of these little blue beauties swirling around North Bend State Park, choosing the lower holes nearer the water for their nests.

Definitely the most confiding of cavity-nesting birds, tree swallows wait until the very last moment to leave, and grudgingly at that. When I'm checking nests, I'm sometimes able to lift an incubating tree swallow with my finger and count her eggs, then close the box again. You have to love a bird who stares you down and lets you do that. When I find a female bird incubating in a box, I usually let them alone until the next count, but sometimes I need a base count before the eggs hatch and have no choice but to intrude.

 It was lovely to see these birds nesting where they would naturally nest, in this Brigadoon for hole-nesters, safe from predators. Tree swallows are relatively recent colonists of southern Ohio and West Virginia, having expanded their range south quite a bit over the 30 years I've been monitoring nest boxes.

When we first moved to southeast Ohio in 1992, there was one spot in the county where we could see nesting swallows--a flooded embayment of the Ohio River. Now, they're everywhere, making new cocoa-brown and white babies like this one. In my boxes--sometimes two broods a season! And here, in these dead snags. Lovely to see.

Long may they nest at North Bend!

Happy Birthday, Red Angel

Happy birthday, Red Angel. I'm going to take you back to North Dakota, because we had such fun there, and because you still had all six wisdom teeth when we were there in June. I figured you would want to see photos of yourself just as the Lord made you.

You are an excellent driver (of golf carts). Even though Al Batt doesn't look so sure, Ann and Ernie Hoffert trusted you, and so did I. I would ride in a golf cart with you anywhere. I think that's about the happiest I've seen you in a long time, tooling around in a golf cart as the sun sank in the prairie sky, throwing your head back and laughing.

I love to watch you discover nature. You field a giant puffball tossed your way without squealing and dropping it. I like that. Maybe you wouldn't eat it if I cooked it up, but you get points for catching it.

You are a creative girl, a girl happy to leave mysteries for others to decipher. If there even are any others out here.

You are kind to animals (even ones that don't match your color scheme)

and to your little brother, and he loves you endlessly for that.

You are becoming a true connoisseur of food and eating establishments both humble and grand. And you show the makings of a pretty good cook, too. You're fun to be with

and highly attractive to strangers. Strangers have the best candy.

Almost most important of all, you're hilarious, and being hilarious is a prerequisite in this family. 

Did I say you're beautiful, too? Oh, sorry. 

Happy birthday, Beautiful. The white lilacs pale beside you.

Thanks to Ann and Ernie Hoffert for the magical gift of prairie places, their glorious gardens, and their friendship. 

The Golden Turtle

Run in the rain and

You'll find the golden turtle

Treasure of treasures.

Those of you who follow me on Facebook know that for the past year I've been writing a lot of haiku. They're direct outgrowths of the process of running. I'll have been running a year on July 30. I run 7 days a week, weather and travel permitting. I'm on my third pair of running shoes. I liken the Runner's Haikus to work songs. They take my mind off the heat and humidity, off the deerflies and the weight of my body as I force it up the hills and down the hollers.

 

 There are rewards for the running. This morning as the rain dripped off my hat brim and soaked my shoes I found The Golden Turtle, an old female who's weathered some hardship. All the toes but one are gone from her hind feet, probably courtesy of a short-tailed shrew while she was hibernating. Shrews do worse than that; she was lucky her head and front feet were tucked in.

This calls into question her viability as a breeder. Could she dig a proper nest with soft stubs for feet, without claws? I don't know. I suppose if she found soft sand or very wet soil, she might be able to dig a nest of sorts.

Damn shrews.

 

I don't like to pick up or move turtles unless I have to, to get them out of harm's way.  It seems disrespectful. So these photos aren't the best, but they're the best I could get without disturbing her unduly.  In this photo you can see her eye, a dull red, hallmark of an older female. 

I left her there by our driveway, and when I came back she was gone. Soft soil and shrewless winters to you, dear Golden Turtle.