My New Pet Box Turtle

A friend emailed to tell me her son had found a box turtle crossing Pike Street, midmorning, in the middle of Marietta's busiest street.

This is what happens when we kidnap box turtles off the roads and out of the woods they know and bring them to our homes, then put them in our backyards to "let them go."
They strike out looking for something they know, sometimes in ever-increasing concentric circles, sometimes in a jaggedy line. Mowers, dogs, coons, cats, roads be damned. I'm looking for home.

Pike Street is five lanes of unrelenting fast traffic, a plastic strip full of gas stations and mostly plastic food. (Although I excuse Bar-B-Cutie from this broad-brush assessment. Bar-B-Cutie has real food.)

My friend wanted to know if I knew anyone who wanted a pet box turtle.  As in, "Do you want a pet box turtle?" She knew who to ask.

Any more, the notion of keeping a box turtle, or any turtle, as a household pet is repellent to me. Who are we to put a wild creature (and a threatened one at that) capable of living 130 years in a glass tank, to limit its world to a few square feet, to take it out of the breeding population and drop it into solitary confinement for the pleasure of feeding and observing it? And where is the pleasure in that, anyway? I love box turtles with a passion, but as pets, I'll take a dog any day. And you know which dog.

I told her to bring him on out so I could keep him for life as a pet in my rather expansive backyard enclosure. He paddled his legs furiously when he saw the area where I plan to confine him. An imperfect solution, to be sure, but better, I think, than being crushed by tires or given a life sentence he never earned. This way, the places he wanders through will have food, shelter, water, and very few roads and cars. And, given the season, perhaps a mate or two.

Piker showed some signs of having been kept in captivity for some time, including an absolute lack of fear and a flanged rear shell, but he was in excellent health, nice and heavy. Not interested in food. All he wanted was to go. Interestingly, when he got out into the big turtle confinement space, he began showing more appropriate fear responses. The reptilian brain is a marvelous thing. 

The Bacon eyed this new addition to the family.

Pet. Hmmph.  That is not a pet. That is a client, a charge, a ward of your duchy.

Piker, because you are clearly a faulty pet, and you need to be taught what to do, here is what a pet does. A pet hauls large branchtes out of the woods and brings them to his person for a surprise game of tug-o-war. See? She is laughing now. This, and other antics which are well beyond your capabilities, makes her laugh. A proper pet makes his person laugh. Unnf. Unnf.

 Go, now, live long and prosper, Piker. Your pet services are no longer needed. She will be back to check on you in the morning. You stick around now.

Oh my. I like my new enclosure a lot better than the old one. It has several pools!

Think I'll do some exploring. 

It's heading for June, and by the looks of this place, there should be some brown-eyed girls out there I can dance for. I will stomp my feet, nod my head and ask them for their claw in marriage. 

Baby Bluebirds, Chickadee Eggs, Trashy Tree Swallows

Still checking bluebird boxes on May 6. It was a big day, enough to make three posts out of it! And I love bringing you along. This stuff is just so cool, I have to share.

The Three Graces leaf out. I have been photographing them every time I pass. It's awesome to see the changes. 

Hendershot has four nice four-day-old bluebirds. I fool them into gaping by giving a little whistle. Easier to count them when they pop their heads up, as you shall see...

Driveway Mid has four two-day-old bluebirds. The hen seems to have removed a fifth, infertile egg. 

I have her down as having laid five, but poking down into the pile o' meat reveals nothing. Yes, they're hard to count. You kind of have to figure out what you're seeing each time you look into a box. You can't count heads, because you can't always see them. In this case, the chick at 6 o'clock in the lineup has its head under the chick at 9 o'clock, and the 12 o'clock chick has its wing over on the 1 o'clock chick and its head way over to 4 o'clock, and the 1 o'clock chick has its head tucked down. This makes me chuckle. But trust me, there are four chicks here in this sweet Celtic knot.

Here are some six-day-old bluebirds from my Old Studio box in our yard. They're smaller than the Warren #4 babies, though they're the same age. It's all about food. They're fine--the Warren babes are just abnormally fat and well-fed, being only three in number. You should see babies in a box where only one or two of the clutch hatches. Monsters!

There are some fun surprises in today's box check. Meadow Slot on our farm has E-Nor-Mous ten-day old bluebirds, five of them! Man, she got started early! Counting back, these hatched April 26, so she started incubating her clutch on April 12, meaning she started laying April 9. Whoo-ee. And I'm not feeding bluebirds this spring, either, so that tells me that Bill's mowing the meadow three times last season has improved the feeding grounds for our bluebirds. Or maybe she's just hot to trot. She'll have these fledged and be thinking about starting another nest while most are still feeding young in the box. The minimum turn around time for bluebirds from fledging a batch to starting the next clutch of eggs is about two weeks.

That's not very long. This amazing ebb and flow, and all the change and surprise in my bird boxes is is why I get so frustrated when I'm traveling and don't get around to check them at least once a week. All this wonderful stuff happens and I'm missing it. After running boxes since 1982, I still hate to miss a single little thing.

Surprises abound today. I had something start a moss and bark fiber nest in the meadow PVC box, and I thought it juuust might be a white-breasted nuthatch, since we keep seeing nuthatches perched out in the open on the snags we put up in the meadow. I was literally holding my breath. And then one day I came and found the nest all torn up, and tree swallows holding the territory. I was really disappointed, because nuthatch is my Holy Grail of baby birds I want to paint. I haven't had a nuthatch in a bluebird box since about 1984, in Connecticut, and it was on an old box that my landlord had nailed to a tree (bad, bad thing). And the babies were taken by a coon just before they fledged. Part of me has never gotten over that. And this is why you never, ever nail a nest box to a tree. 

So I was waiting with bated breath to see what would happen to this torn-up mossy nest--to see who built it. And it looked like the swallows had queered everything. 

Not so. 

For today, May 6, a Carolina chickadee bursts out of the box as I come up to it, and I find six precious little Carolina chickadee eggs in there! I can only guess that she had them hidden under the moss and they escaped the tree swallow's depredation. And she has prevailed! The tree swallows have moved to a wooden box nearby. Hooray!

It's a great year for chickadees on our place. Here's another nest in the garden box--an uncharacteristically late laying. This moss nest appeared overnight, and I think she's still laying as of May 6. We now have four active CACH nests with eggs, and another in the Oilwell box built, with no eggs. Not sure what's going on there. This is what makes checking such fun! This is the latest CACH egg laying I've ever had. Something must have happened to their first attempt. I find that chickadees are one-brood wonders, and they seem not to attempt nesting if it gets too late. It's one brood or nothing for them, at least in southern Ohio.

I am absolutely knocked over by the perfume coming in the windows from my heirloom lilacs. This is Aunt Lolly the Younger, who is heir apparent to the throne, as Aunt Lolly the Elder is slowly croaking in her shaded north exposure. I have to lop off one enormous trunk after another.  Hooray for The Younger! But I'm not counting The Elder out, no way. These are tough, tough plants. They really should be called tree lilacs--the biggest darn lilac I've ever seen.

 Up close. Swoon!

Bill for scale. Look at the size of those clusters! I planted this one about six years ago. It's headed for the top of the deck. I deliberately planted it where I could stand on the raised deck and someday swoosh my face in the blossoms. It will get that tall. I think I've found The Perfect Spot for it, don't you?

 Speaking of tall, I had to move Hibiscus "The Path" to the front porch. She was bumping her head on the ceiling of the greenhouse, and it's too hot in there now for anything but peppers and tomatoes. They love heat. My fuchsias, hibiscus and jasmines, not so much. Out they go!

One last surprise in the Meadow Wood box. Here's what tree swallows do when they can't find any nice white feathers for their nests. When they can't find any feathers at all. They use beech leaves, tinfoil, and cellophane. Awww. Poor little things. On a whim, I tore some feather-like strips from my bluebird notebook and let them fly on the breeze. The tree swallow who built this nest watched intently, its flat little head pivoting, as they fluttered by him. I'm betting they end up in his nest. Don't worry. I'm going out to buy them some goose feathers this afternoon.

Thus ends the box check. But it's never over, not until August. So there will be more babies to come!

Zick In Africa! Wanna Come Along?

  Zick's going to South Africa in September!

The trip runs from September 25-Oct. 7, 2015, with an optional pre-extension September 17-25 to South Africa's fabulous Cape region for penguins and killer botanizing. 

Everybody's gabbling about it!

Wild helmeted guinefowl 

There will be very large, dangerous mammals, safely viewed via open Land Rover

Cape buffalo. Peter Lawson says they look at you like you owe them money.

and there will be birds, birds, birds! Some of them on large mammals, some not.

Red-billed oxpecker on giraffe

There will be small, colorful birds

Red bishop, taking nest weaving material

many small drab uncolorful birds for the more avid amongst us

 Sabota lark

and lots of large breathtaking birds

Martial eagle

including the heaviest flying bird on the planet

Kori bustard, which, at almost 40 pounds, takes quite a runway to become airborne.

Jackal buzzard, the Dark Continent's redtail.

There will be many squeeworthy moments.

Vervet monkey baby, gettin' all Science Chimpy back at me

And who better to experience them with than the Science Chimp herself?

Red-billed oxpecker fledgling, being fed by a parent on its movable feast. What you can't hear in this tranquil photo is me, firing questions at our incomparable South African guide Leon Marais, about where oxpeckers nest (tree cavities) and how in the world they manage to settle down long enough to lay eggs and raise a brood while their food source walks hundreds of miles away. Ahh, South Africa. You are a treasure box of beauty and inquiry.

Here's our man on the ground, Leon Marais of Lawson's Nature Tours, with killer guide Mana N'tuli. You will be in the best and most knowledgeable hands. I'm there for color and comic relief. 

You've read this blog long enough to know that we're going to get just as excited about dung beetles and tortoises as we are elephants and marabous. Bring your long lens, your curiosity, your cool khaki field clothes, and your eyes and curious minds. I'd love to spend some time with you discovering the amazing wildlife, varied landscapes and splendor of South Africa!

September 25-October 7, with optional pre-extension to the Cape region Sept. 17-25

Hate to be pushy, but I've been so busy with book finishing (almost there!) and spring stuff (see prior posts) that I've let publicizing this trip go too long. If you're interested, by all means save your space by signing up soon, or at least checking in with Holbrook at the link below.

Click here for a full description of the trip, including itinerary, pricing and more photos!