Wisdom of teenagers

Fledgling robins fly about the garden, hoping to still be fed. Or something. Two stood on the far side of one of the garden fence panels, giving the mulched garden the side-eye. Then one tried to hop in as though the chickenwire wasn't there.

Then it tried again. And again. And its nestmate tried too. Three times. Finally both wandered off. As far as I can tell, they didn't try to fly in that day. Not that there was much to dig for in the wood-chips.

I get it now

A recent post of Dr. Boli's included "City police remind residents that tap-dancing lessons are now mandatory for all citizens between the ages of 10 and 65". The spotted lanternflies show up everywhere, sometimes in dramatic numbers. And they're sensitive little beasts. If you're tentative about your smash, they'll be elsewhere with a click.

We took the car for a wash after leaving Pittsburgh. No doubt the lanternfly will reach Wisconsin eventually, but not because of us. Though since they are especially fond of tree of heaven, maybe they would kill the neighbor's stand of them. Tree of heaven turns out to be toxic.

We're putting my national parks pass to use this year: Indiana Dunes National Park and Cuyahoga National Park for a few hours each. Maybe next year we'll get farther afield.

Boaring in Berlin

Authorities there claim that the lioness they'd been looking for in the southwest of Berlin was probably just a wild boar, and they're calling off the search.

Apparently "the animal looked more like a boar, which are common in the region".

I'm not sure that's the most comforting thought for the residents. Wild boars apparently don't kill a lot of people, though they do attack, but the notion that they're common enough in the city area that the authorities don't care...

Granted, packs of feral dogs could be worse.

Looking away from the keyboard

My daughter next door spotted a pheasant out back last week--we're not sure what it was doing in the city.

Hope springs eternal in the hearts of woodpeckers eyeing our home's siding. I went around the garage to chase one away last month and found a chickadee doing the pecking. You learn something new every day.

Every year February gets so shortchanged in days that I think the powers that be have decided to give it a whole year to play with in compensation. It is snowing again. True, the morning snow melted, but still--evening snow too? The elementary school's garden club planting schedule is something like 3 weeks late, maybe 4.

He must have wanted privacy

We heard the cry of a red-tailed hawk on the back porch yesterday. I wondered if the bird feeder had attracted a different kind of bird feeder. When we looked, a blue jay was splashing in the bird bath. He jumped out and gave a red-tail's cry, and jumped back in. Lather, repeat, until the water level in the bird bath got too low.

Home office sights

A chickadee on one of the clematis trellises was hopping gently about, flapping its wings slowly from time to time as though it were trying to attract attention. Binoculars established that it had a large green caterpillar dangling from its beak--a bit too large of a mouthful to handle on the fly, as it were. Was it signaling for its mate? (or "displaying happiness"?)

After a while it did attract attention--a female cardinal (quite a bit bigger). After the cardinal hopped still closer the chickadee decided it had urgent business elsewhere--not in the direction of its nest box.

Goose Pond

At an Audobon sanctuary near us, we stopped to look at the birds on the pond. My first reaction was "Wow, there must be a hundred swans there!" I'd never seen so many in one place. 227. Including a family with 5 cygnets. Life must be good for them in the area, for so many of the chicks to make it.

UPDATE: Today (14-Nov, the day after), I'm told no swans remain. They must have gathered for the migration flight.

Hunting the wild

Scott Van Zyl was hunting crocodiles by the Limpopo, and apparently they found him first. Three were killed, and DNA testing verified that one at least contained Van Zyl.

I'm sorry for him and his family. Closure is a good thing, but I wish they hadn't killed the crocs.

Not that I have any fondness for the creatures. If the last tiger on Earth were killing people in my neighborhood, I'd join the posse to go kill it. But Scott's case is a little different.

I want no wild threats to my home, and will be as thorough as I need to be to make sure of that.

A farmer who wants to harvest a steer or three wants as little fuss as possible.

A subsistence hunter needs food. If there's something dangerous out there, he would prefer that it either be elsewhere or be made incapable of harming him and his tribe. Man-eating bears interfere with the hunting he needs to do to keep his family alive.

A deer hunter wants the challenge of outwitting a deer on its native ground. He's not looking for danger, just the venison and the challenge. Similarly with geese, turkey, etc. If a pack of wolves started stalking hunters instead of just spooking deer, I think most of us would go along with relocating them--either far away or to the tanner's. Man-eating wolves would interfere with the sport.

But a crocodile hunter is hunting it precisely because it is dangerous. Likewise a lion hunter, or a grizzly hunter--only a jerk would go to a lion farm to shoot a quasi-tame lion. If the hunter has a very bad encounter with something wild, that just emphasizes the wildness and danger for the next hunter. Killing the dangerous animals to make it safe again interferes with the sport.

I wonder what Scott would have thought about it. I'm pretty sure his wife and kids wanted closure.

Paris streets

I saw a report today from the Mirror saying that French told not to fear wolves roaming Paris streets as 'they only eat four-legged animals'.

That sort of encouragement doesn't comfort. Even if Parisians were OK with wolves that only ate pets, wolves still threaten everybody.

But who else is on the streets? I don't think wolves stand a chance. People can be very thorough when dealing with threats.

mosquito repellent

Everybody has probably already read that chicken odor seems to reduce the presence of malaria-capable mosquitoes. I was told years ago that mosquitoes home in on CO2 and a few other chemicals--maybe something confuses them too.

But notice: it just reduces the number. And...

I was almost never bitten by mosquitoes in a room with a mosquito coil burning. Whether they drove mosquitoes out I never knew, but the incense drove me out. Chickens running around the house...

Oddity

We have gophers in the front lawn/garden. We've seen them and found two of their holes. Well, maybe 4, but the other two holes never seemed to be used again. I decided to try to make things uncomfortable for them and ran a hose to the one by the front door. After 10 minutes a wet gopher emerged and headed next door.

I borrowed a few gopher traps, and over the next couple of weeks the population of hole-dwellers was reduced by 5: 3 gophers and two chipmunks.

Yes, the chipmunks came out of the same hole the gophers did.

So either they shared lodging, which I've never heard of before, or the chipmunks went in opportunistically and got whacked on the way out (the traps are one-directional). Either way it seems very odd.

Peaceful coexistence

A message from the UW Urban Canid Project.

I gather that we are supposed to enjoy the view of coyotes in the neighborhood, but haze them anyway. Hazing doesn't work unless the whole neighborhood undertakes to haze them: yell, throw sticks (but not directly at them?), spray them with a hose (this here is winter, son), keep your large dogs close to you and pick up the punt-ables.

My inclination is to grab the pitchfork and advance. If something way bigger than a coyote comes towards it, that should make it feel uncomfortable, and the pitchfork is handy if it decides to return the favor. And if I'm going to hurl something in the direction of a predator I think the fire pit poker is a better bet than an old branch. (Blazing away is inadvisable when there's a daycare in the background.)

I gather they tend only to be problems when they get used to being around people. Around people you find stray food, rabbits and squirrels taking advantage of bird feeders, small pets, and idiots who feed them. I assume familiarity breeds contempt after a while...

Hunting cranes?

We're debating "Should we or shouldn't we?" here in Wisconsin the past couple of weeks. Cranes are still not that common--certainly not common enough to think of as game birds.

I'm not a big hunter--not since I shot rice birds (a pest) before I went to college. There's just not been a lot of time for that, and I live in cities, where you typically don't pot wildlife out the back window. I see nothing wrong with it in theory--a hunter is participating in the environment just as much as someone just watching it all.

But why cranes? They're noisy and would be pretty trivial to nail--so there's no challenge. I've not heard that they're especially delicious, and the taxidermy I've seen is pretty shabby. All I can think of is that some people want to "shoot one of everything."

Eh. No, this is a silly idea.

On the other hand I can think of a target :-)

Surveillance drones. Simple rules:

• Shotguns-only within city limits
  
• no hunting:
  
  • within 100 miles of a national border or ocean
    
  • within 20 miles of a nuclear power plant
    
  • in airport approaches
    
  • within 5 miles of hobbyist air zones
    
• Bag limit 5 per day.
  

Tick talk

We already know that ticks are hard to crush, that they like to hang on plants and wait (sometimes for months) until something warm blooded walks below them, that they suck blood and spread diseases, and that they look like some kind of space alien.

It turns out that they can survive vacuum and a scanning electron beam as well. True, the beam injured them and they died two days later, but that's still extraordinary resilience on the tick's part. (I don't know if all ticks are this sturdy, or just this variety.)

"The phasers don't work, sir."

Rediscovery

The turtles I've had experience with were all armored pretty thoroughly, so it was something of a surprise to discover that a foot-long snapper didn't slide when I tried to shove it out of the middle of the road with an ice scraper. (A 3 foot long scraper, of course!) Pried it over (briefly, they're quick)--and the bottom of the thing was mostly leather.

Yes, I tried getting it to bite onto the scraper--it kept letting go after about a second, so I couldn't lift it. Maybe it didn't like plastic.

It would have been nice to have a smart phone and a data package--I'd have searched the web and found out how to pick them up. Though I'm not sure I'd have cared to try the experiment for the first time on one so large.

Bird sightings

On top of the van, claiming that vasty territory for his own: a red-wing blackbird strutting back and forth, calling out over and over with a flutter of his tail feathers on the last chirp.

A ratty-looking teenage robin walking around with his mother nearby on his maiden voyage from his nest (in a crook of the downspout) to the garden. A dove, that famous symbol of peace, left off wandering under the bird feeder and jumped to attention with the right wing open at the ready, lunging with stabbing pecks at the teenager, though never quite closing--the meaning obvious: get away from the spilled birdseed or die. Mama robin didn't move and the teenage robin seemed bemused, and eventually hopped away.

Ducks landed in our backyard to mate. Don't ask me why--there's no pond here, though the garden had just been thoroughly watered.

The wren lands on every high place in the back yard and loudly asserts his claim--most often on the lattice by the porch. Probably figures we're the big trouble-makers and and that we need a stern reminder.

As full-out as it can get

You've see what a rabbit looks like running full-out. Those hind legs are amazing.

Have you seen how a spooked rabbit runs in deep soft snow? Instead of getting solid propulsion out of those legs, it looks more like it is swimming along the snow. There's a wild thrash at the rear, and then surfing for a fraction of a second, and then thrashing again. If I'd been so inclined, I probably could have caught it.

Knock Knock!

Sight of the day: a downy woodpecker hammering away at the entrance to a birdhouse in the backyard. There are no chickadees this time of year, so nobody's being disturbed, but I've no idea what he thought he was going to find there.

Yesterday we had a young woodchuck in the front garden; probably told to leave the nest a few blocks away. When he showed signs of wanting to take up residence we shooed him out of the foliage, tossed a basket over him, and guided him into a live trap. I don't want any unscheduled excavations.

Teenagers

Our church's parking lot is terraced, with green slopes in between parking areas. One of the resident killdeer made a nest in a green space, and this morning was going slightly nuts. Her two 2 1/2 inch high chicks were racing around at not-quite-adult speeds; big enough to clamber over the curb into the pavement but not big enough to climb back over into the grass again. Momma was chirping to beat the band but not moving around much: the old broken wing trick wouldn't be much use here. And there were cars and huge two-legged strangers all around. One of the latter captured an escapees and brought it back to momma, to the tune of raucous abuse from momma. The escapee promptly headed back to the curb and toppled its way over into the parking lot again.

Harlequin Trees

Along the back roads the evergreens are green in the lee of the wind, but on the upwind half of the tree feathery frost surrounds and hangs down from every twig.