Patchwork

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Sometimes it's hard to know when spring migration is over, when the birds in the yard are staying for the summer and the visitors have flown north.  Take, for example, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo in the photo above.  Is it a late migrant lingering for a few days into June or a summer resident setting up housekeeping?  I'm pretty sure it's here to stay, but only time (a few more days) will tell. 

And the buntings that took shower baths in the sprinklers yesterday -- are they already nesting close-by?  Or are they the tail-end of the bunting parade that comes through the yard every spring?  


Painted Buntings are the patchwork quilt of the bird world.  Red, green, blue for the male and a lovely green female--I am as excited each time I spot one as I was the first time.  

When I first spotted yesterday's Indigo Bunting sitting in shadows in the persimmon tree, I thought it was a female Painted, and I thought just maybe they were a nesting pair.    But when I look at the photo I took, the coloring looks more like a female Indigo Bunting.  If so, I would guess these to be migrants though it's late in the season.  


Again, only time will tell.  Sometimes I see both of these species late in the summer.  According to my favorite local reference book, Tim Brush's Nesting Birds of the Tropical Frontier,  Painted Buntings are uncommon breeders in the Rio Grande Valley. 
I've observed young Painted Buntings coming to bird baths in late afternoons during July and August-- though I've never found a nest. Hopefully, these are here to stay for the summer,  but probably they just late migrants. Anytime I see a bunting in the yard I count it a special day.




I didn't turn on the sprinkler yesterday specifically to draw the birds in--but it certainly worked to do just that.  

I seldom see Brown-crested Flycatchers in the bird baths but they certainly enjoy a shower bath.  This one prefers to sit in the persimmon tree letting the sprinkles refresh him.  

Across the yard, a male Lesser Goldfinch catches a shower bath from his perch in the bottlebrush tree.

Drops of water from the sprinklers shine in the sun and wash the dust of drought from the butterfly garden.   Lesser Goldfinches can often be seen at the baths and sprinklers on hot days when the temps climb near 100.

A Carolina Wren sings from the top of a feeder just out of reach of the water.  Now that their young have fledged, they are singing more than ever, and will probably be nesting again soon.

This week, in two different contexts, I encountered a phrase I hadn't heard before: patch birding.   Though I hadn't  heard of patch birding,  I certainly understand the concept:  knowing one patch of land well, which birds are there and when to expect them, knowing their songs and their nests.  That's what I do-- I'm a patch birder.   Who knew there was a term out there that describes me to a "T "?  

My patch, of course,  is my yard.  I know it well and  am obsessed with knowing it better.  It's not large, probably less than a third of an acre, only fifty feet across and several  times as long, bordering the Arroyo Colorado on the back (and beyond that thorny scrub and then farmland) and a cotton/sorghum field across the "farm-to-market" road in the front.  I bird my patch every day, walking the drive, sitting in the yard or on a deck or on the dock, peering in the trees and shrubs to see what nests have been constructed when I wasn't looking.  (Those birds can be very sneaky about building a nest, even when a patch birder has been patrolling the patch.)

So what else (besides shower baths from the sprinkler in our rainless yard) is going on in my patch this week?

Northern Kiskadees are still in their nest in the Ebony tree, busily going back and forth feeding  young that are getting bigger and bigger.  A week or two ago I found two dead hatchlings under the nest.  They looked like cowbirds to me, not kiskadees. 
If so, I'm proud of the parent kiskadees for ejecting the parasites that can end up starving the rightful nesters. I see kiskadees chasing cowbirds all the time, but I've never seen an adult kiskadee feeding a just-fledged cowbird, so maybe the bothersome Bronzed and Brown-headed Cowbirds are seldom if ever successful at parasitism of kiskadee nests.  (I wish I could say the same for their parisitism of  Hooded Orioles and Cardinals.)

Look closely at the photo on the right and you will see the tasty morsel--a large caterpillar or fuzzy moth--that the parent Northern Kiskadee has for the hungry babies.  














The baby Kiskadees are already quite large.  I'm looking for first flight this weekend.

Bronzed Cowbirds can look downright demonic sometimes.  

Northern Mockingbirds are not any more friendly to cowbirds than kiskadees.  They are fussy with almost all birds, but cowbirds, owls, and hawks in the yard really incur their wrath.  Above an irate mocker divebombs a Crested Caracara that sits across the road in a cotton field.  

Ladder-backed Woodpecker

Another bird that is often scolded by other birds in the yard is the European Starling.  They are beautiful birds but their tendancy to chase off other cavity nesters when competing for nest sites doesn't endear them to me. When we moved here 15 years ago there were no starlings but now two pairs have already nested in the dead cottonwood trees in the vacant lot next  door.  But since we already have Golden-fronted Woodpeckers mating for a second time and Ladder-backed Woodpeckers checking dead branches of the Royal Poinciana for insects, I guess we still have cavities to spare.  The GF Woodpeckers are usually the excavators of the holes in dead trees and the starlings move in later. 

Golden-fronted Woodpeckers

The yard is not large, but it's big enough for me.   I could never get to know a larger patch as well as I want to know this one.  

I'm reminded of what William Faulkner once said:   "I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it."  Postage stamp or patch, my yard is small but filled with drama.  It's a patchwork quilt of color, a crazy quilt of drama.  

and the winner is....

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May is not only a month of migration in the yard, but also a bustling, interesting time to observe the "ordinary" year-round residents and summer nesters that are easily overlooked when so many warblers and tanagers and other bright migrants distract us. 

Of course, these birds are not really ordinary at all.  For example, nothing beats a Buff-bellied Hummingbird for beauty and spunk. This one, perched in a patch of sunlight, is as lovely as any bird could be.  We are so lucky to have multiple buff-bellieds living here in ourTexas Rio Grande Valley yard.   I've been looking for their nest--I'm certain there's one in the yard --but the nests are so tiny, I haven't found it yet.   

an unfinished Altamira Oriole nest

Some of our yard nests are more obvious than others.  The Altamira Orioles, for example,  build a nest that cannot be ignored.  It hangs down, sometimes two feet long,  from a branch high on the northwest side of an oak or ash or cedar elm tree.  A busy pair of the orioles might build one nest and then, because of nervousness about the Bronzed Cowbirds that wait for a chance to lay eggs in the nest, or just fickleness about where they want to live, abandon it and build another. 

 That's what happened again this year.  A pair worked for several days and defended their nest from the cowbirds and even other Altamiras--and then left it to be blown apart by the wind.  I don't know where the new nest is, but it's somewhere close by--maybe in the neighbor's Tepehuaje tree or maybe across the Arroyo.  I haven't gone looking for it yet.  The orioles still eat oranges and seed from the feeders many times a day, but I'm disappointed that they abandoned the nest they built in one of our oak trees.

The last day I saw the birds at their abandoned nest was the day I took the picture on the right.  It was a spat between a first-year bird and one of the two older (more orange) Altamiras that had built the nest.  These are not usually fussy or aggressive birds (though they do join in on the mobbing of the screech-owls), so I was surprised to see them tumbling onto the neighbor's driveway below the nest.

Brown-crested Flycatchers started a nest in a birdhouse in the butterfly garden.  They put a large gray feather in the box that can be seen in the entry hole.  Not all cavity-nesting birds put nesting materials in their nest cavities (the screech-owls don't; I don't think our Golden-fronted woodpeckers do--both just lay eggs on the floor that is sprinkled with wood shavings or sawdust from the excavation, if it's a natural cavity, or that we have put in there if it's a man-made box). 

BC Flycatchers put all kinds of things in their nests:  feathers, snakeskins, grass, bark.  They usually have three broods, building a new nest in a different location each time.  At least that's what they've done in our yard. 

Brown-crested Flycatcher nest:  note the extra-large feather!

Brown-crested Flycatchers are not year-round residents here.  They arrive in March or April and raise several broods.  Unfortunately, some of the eggs hatch baby cowbirds.  See this post for photos of last year's feeding frenzy when they had hungry young ones.  

Carolina Wrens are year-round residents.  This one is grooming itself while taking a break from its nestlings that were snuggled in a hanging artificial plant on my neighbor's porch.  Wrens love to nest in man-made things: pots, plants, even one time the pocket of a pair of pants another neighbor had hung on his porch railing!  

My daughter's neighbors may wonder why she still has Easter decorations beside the front door.  It's because behind the bunny's ears is a nest containing five newly-hatched Carolina Wrens!

I don't know where the Black-crested Titmice built their first nest this year, but four just-fledged titmice had lots of fun with their parents at the bird baths this morning.

The young ones have crests that are more gray than black, making them look like the closely-related Tufted Titmice that live further north.  

These guys win the prize for strange nesting places.  Last year they nested in a cow's skull that decorates the neighbor's storage house.  Other times they have nested inside  metal posts on the boat trailer and the satellite dish.  Wherever these little guys nested this time, they are now out of the nest and all over the yard.  I think they win the award for cutest babies in the yard so far this year.

A few years ago the cute baby award went hands-down to the Plain Chachalaca chicks.  Precocial, they are out of the nest on the day they are born and soon are chasing around after the adults.  (If a bird is altricial, it is born naked and helpless and stays in the nest for a while.  By the time it is out of the nest, it's hard to tell an adult bird from a young one.)

adult Plain Chachalaca in a Wild Olive tree

I've been hearing  a Chachalaca chorus every morning for a week or so,  but  I'm sure they won't nest in our yard since neighbors on both sides have outdoor cats that are too much of a danger to the little chicks. Before cats lived so close,  these interesting birds nested in the Anacua tree beside the driveway.  

Clay-colored Thrush

Award for the most exciting bird in the yard today goes to the Clay-colored Thrush that sang all morning long from the tops of several trees.   We have never had a nesting pair, though we occasionally see them in the winter.  Until a few years ago (when they were called Clay-colored Robins) they were very rare in the US.   Now they nest in several locations in the Rio Grande Valley--but until now not in our neighborhood.  The song is beautiful (similar in tone to an American Robin) and I would love to have these birds be summer nesting residents.  

As long as we're handing out awards, Cutest Couple would definitely go to the Inca Doves, one of six species of doves that nest in the neighborhood.  (Other doves that are year-round residents are Mourning, White-winged, White-tipped, Common Ground Dove, and Eurasian Collared-dove.)

The most endearing thing Inca Doves do while courting (in addition to snuggling, grooming, and cooing a soft whirl-pool, whirl-pool) is raise their wings to show the soft pink underneath.  This guy raises his left wing; 

whereupon his mate raises her right.

No spring migrating warbler, tanager, nor even Painted Bunting can rival one of our resident birds for sheer beauty:  the Green Jay wins Most Beautiful no matter what the competition.  

Green Jays are not building their nest in our yard this year, but they are gathering nesting material here. 

Look closely (or enlarge with a click) and you'll see this Green Jay has a twig grasped in his feet.  He seems to be shaping it so that it will fit the nest he is building close by.

He holds it with his feet and shapes it with his beak.

When it's to his liking he takes it in his beak and flies away to the west where his nest is. A pair of Green Jays spent one afternoon flying back and forth from our yard to one a few yards over where I presume they are building the nest in a native tree or shrub.  I can't wait until they fledge a family of lively jays that will decorate the yard later in the summer.  Last year's Green Jay family was unrivaled in beauty and joyous antics.  (See this post from last summer for the jay family doing the Green Jay dance.)


Spring migration, which was certainly spectacular this year, is drawing to a close.  The colorful parade of birds that thrill us because of the brief time we have with them may be over for the year, but the fun of watching our yard will continue as it does every summer.  I can't imagine living in a better place for backyard birdwatching.  Living here makes me feel as though I've won first place in the birders' sweepstakes.

Homesteading Update

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So much avian homesteading is going on in the yard  that I'm actually posting an update only a day after yesterday's post! ( I'll add the update to the  Saturday "Camera Critters" meme  posted by Misty Dawn over at her blog.   Be sure to check it out.)

One of the little Eastern Screech-owls above is probably the one I photographed giving the "stink eye" yesterday when I walked past the new owl box.  Looks to me like it's the guy on the right.  I say "guy" because in this species, as with most owls and raptors, the male is the smaller of the pair, sometimes 20% smaller than the female.  (The difference in posture in this photo might make it hard for me to tell for sure which owl is actually bigger.  I can tell which one is giving me a dirty look, however.) I looked up some information on screech-owls in   The Eastern Screech Owl: Life history, Ecology, and Behavior in the Suburbs and Countryside, by Frederick R. Gehlbach. He says the larger size helps the female to survive while nurturing young and also to defend her nest when the male is away hunting.  The male's sleeker size helps him catch the more abundant smaller prey and means he won't need as much food himself when his job is to provide food for his mate and the growing, hungry nestlings.

 The owl on the right in the picture of the duo had been in the box until I walked along the driveway.  When I stopped close-by to adjust a hose, it flew across the drive to a pine tree.  The Sabal Palm  frond in the background makes a little shelter for the owls, and it's a common place to find them resting. It's also a great background for a picture!

Because Eastern Screech-owls in South Texas can be nesting already in February, I was afraid that we might not get owls in a box that wasn't put up until March. Imagine my surprise when, in just a few days,  we started seeing an owl regularly peering out of the new box.  I'm still not convinced that there will actually be eggs and young.  These owls seem more skittish than others that have nested in the old box in the same location, owls that would peer at us patiently all day long without flying to the safety of the trees.  Perhaps these homesteaders are younger than previous residents.  But the appearance today of two screech owls makes me hopeful.

I don't know where the closest nest was last year. We had removed the old one because of a bee hive, but the nest was probably close by since I was able to photograph this adorable owl in the pine tree last August.  It was being mobbed by Green Jays and a Mockingbird that pecked it on the head. No wonder its feathers are ruffled!   I think from the feathers this must be a fledgling, but Gehlbach's book says that molting for all Eastern Screech-owls peaks in late July--- so maybe this is an adult that is molting.

(Bragging Alert!  What follows is relevant to discussion of these owl photos, perhaps, but is also unabashed boasting.

Our Arroyo Colorado Audubon Society had a photo contest open to members last November, voted on by visitors to our booth during the Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival. My little owl won 2nd place in the contest---apparently cuteness counted most!  The prize of a gift certificate at a local  framing store came in handy when I had my Ochre Oriole watercolor framed last month.  [Check out the RGV festival, one of the first and best in the nation, by clicking the link.  You can expect me to talk about it quite a bit this year since I've joined the planning committee.  I helped with it in the early years and am excited to be involved again.]

Owl photos are lucky for me.  Another one won a blue ribbon in last month's Laguna Vista Birding Festival amateur photo contest. It was of an owl that perched in our oak tree one night last June as I stood on the deck a few feet away.  I ran back into the house to get my camera.  Not sure how to take a night photo, I held a flashlight in one hand and the camera, flash on,  in the other.  Amazingly, the photo turned out well, capturing for my memory and blog one of several screech-owls, some of them fledglings just out of the nest, hunting and trilling in that June night.

The other photo that won a ribbon (3rd place) at the Laguna Vista festival is the one of a Cedar Waxwing with a dark blue berry in its mouth that I posted a few weeks ago,  just after a small flock of the birds visited the ripening berries on the ligustrum tree.   The Laguna Vista Birdfest was a really fun small festival held at the Laguna Vista golf course near South Padre Island, about 20 miles from here.  A very active group of birders who live there have the small festival every year and really outdo themselves with interesting speakers and activities.  It's a great example of what a small dedicated group of organizers can accomplish.)

Okay, enough about my ribbon-winning.  You can tell I'm not used to winning anything.  I'm just glad to be learning more about my point-and-shoot camera.  I always wanted to be able to take pictures of birds and now with relatively low-cost amazing cameras (mine's a Canon SX10IS), even I can take photos I want to keep and share.

Now on with the update on nesting and pre-nesting activity in the yard:

Here's a series of photos of Eurasian Collared Doves getting to know each other on top of the boat dock.  At least the male would like to get acquainted.  That's him in the back (I presume), pursuing the lovely lady in the lead. She is keeping an eye on him though she continues stepping out.

She walks on--- but knowing she's aware of him behind her, he begins a kind of nodding, bowing dance.  

Maybe he gets just too forward for her sense of propriety---and she flies away.

Eurasian Collared-doves are, as the name implies, not native to the United States, having been introduced from Europe---but their range here in South Texas is rapidly expanding.  I had never seen one before 2002 when I saw three near the high school parking lot where I taught in Rio Hondo (about 12 miles from here).  Since then, they have spread to Arroyo City and are now nesting in the neighborhood.  I will keep an eye on this couple and hope to find a nest.  This is just one of several species of doves that frequent the yard:  Inca Doves, Common Ground Doves, White-winged Doves, Mourning Doves, and White-tipped Doves are also common and year-round residents.

One more "couple" piqued my paparazzi-like interest today.  I put a few orange halves on the front deck this afternoon and immediately attracted a pair of  Golden-fronted Woodpeckers.  The male is on the left, distinguished by the red patch on his crown as well as gold on the nape and forehead.  The female on the right lacks the red on the crown.  They are similar to the Red-bellied Woodpeckers I remember from my Oklahoma childhood.

Golden-fronted Woodpeckers nest in the yard every year.  They are the excavators of about a dozen holes in two dead cottonwood trees that the former next-door neighbor cut down to about fifteen-twenty feet, forming condominiums for starlings, woodpeckers, and titmice.  Until the dead trees proved so enticing, the woodpeckers used to make holes in our house, pull out the insulation, and build nests in the walls.  We tried to discourage this, of course, but they were persistent.  For a few years we lured them to nest boxes.  Finally,  we patched the holes in our house, beat on the walls when we heard the birds, and hoped that they would stick to the cottonwoods.  So far it has worked.  Last week, for insurance,  we also put up a new nest box in the back yard where an old one had, like the owl box, been taken over by bees.

Now that I am retired, I can spend all the time I wish exploring the nature in  our yard and writing about what I see.  The yard is not really very big, just about a third of an acre,  deeper than it is wide, but it's a fascinating place.    Blogging gives me a chance to keep records of my observations.  Today, reading Thoreau's journals, I found this entry for April 7, 1853.  It says just what I've been thinking:

"If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged."

I wonder what Thoreau would think of nature blogging.  He could take a laptop to his cabin at Walden pond, but I don't know where he'd plug it in.  

Home Sweet Home

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Look who's building a home at our home!  It's the Altamira Orioles. (Click here for another post about these champion nest-builders.) Over the years I've seen their amazing pendulous nests in the area, but this is the first nest that will actually be completed in a tree in our yard.   Sure that the Hooded Orioles had decided on homes in our trees, I was concentrating on that and  had really given up on  being lucky enough to host the Altamira Orioles.  

But yesterday morning,  walking  past the Ebony tree where the Kiskadees are nesting , I found the nest quite by accident.  Scanning the Ash and Live Oak trees along the side of our yard, I looked up and there it was, construction well under way! I'd been in the yard off and on all day Tuesday but somehow had missed the very obvious nest swinging from the northwest side of a 20-foot Live Oak tree that overhangs the neighbor's drive. (I've never seen an Altamira nest that wasn't on the northwest of a tree on a branch that hangs down and sways in our strong winds.) 

Here's a closer view of the nest.  See how the orioles begin construction at the top and work their way down?  I'm sure you've spotted the oriole inside the nest in the photo, bottom left.  Click to enlarge it.  I want you to get a good look at the strip of something blue on the bottom right. 
If you read an earlier post about Altamira Oriole nests (or clicked the link at the top of this post), you recall that they have helped themselves to the garden twine from a neighbor's greenhouse.  This time they  scavenged some kind of plastic and recycled it into their home. What resourceful birds!

I don't know exactly what it is,  but I've seen bits of that blue plastic in the yard for months.  I even photographed a piece of it on the ground in December!  (It was interesting and kept sort of moving from place to place around the front yard.  I should have picked up the scrap and thrown it away--but instead I took a picture!)  

You may be sensing both what kind of yardskeeper I am (messy) and  also something about my artistic sensibility (I have no idea what adjective would describe that or why I took a photo of torn bits of plastic in the yard).  As soon as I uploaded the photos from camera to computer and looked closely at the blue plastic streamer in the nest, I recognized it and located the other photo taken months ago. (I think the strip of blue plastic may be from a woven tarp that was torn off of a shed or something in Hurricane Dolly.  Or maybe it's part of an old lawn chair. Longer strips of it are still somewhere around because the orioles found them and began their nest by weaving them around the top, letting the ends fall down the sides of their amazing nest-in-progress. The little scrap I took a picture of is still somewhere in the yard.  Maybe I'll continue photographing it as I find it.) 

This morning the nest is quite a bit bulkier than it was a day ago.  I am restraining myself from watching it all the time.  The Bronzed Cowbirds are doing enough of that.  Yesterday, while one oriole was inside of the nest, a cowbird flew across the yard to the nest and circled it quickly without landing.  The other oriole,  just as quickly, chased the cowbird back across the yard.

I've noticed that male Hooded Orioles also stand guard while the female builds their nest, and continue to do so all during the nesting process, chasing cowbirds that get too close.    It's a constant battle for them to fend off the parasitizing pests.  I have not seen Altamiras feeding fledgling cowbirds, but I see Hooded Orioles doing so almost as often as I see them feeding young orioles.  (Perhaps that's why the Hooded Orioles raise as many as three broods each summer, to make up for the heavy parasitizing of their nests by the Bronzed Cowbirds.)

You can see by this photo how interesting the cowbirds look.  Their eyes are demon-red and their mating ritual is fascinating to watch.  The males puff up their neck feathers in a mane (some call them "lion birds") and hover two or three feet off the ground, going straight up and down like little helicopters in an attempt to attract a mate.  If it were not for their habit of laying their eggs in the nests of other birds, sometimes even displacing the eggs laid by the bird whose nest it is, they would be welcome in our yard.  These home-wreckers, however,  are not welcome!

Other pairs of birds are playing musical chairs with nesting sites.    Remember the little Black-crested Titmice that were inspecting various nesting sites in the side and back yards, the male trying to entice a female with food offerings by the nest? (If not, here's a link to the post about them.)  I thought they had  leased the hole in the cottonwood stump (the one on which the titmouse had perched with his caterpillar),  but  as I watched yesterday, a female Golden-fronted Woodpecker emerged from the hole.  It was the woodpecker, after all, that had made the cavity,  so it's only fair for it to use the home if it wants it. 

Look at the beak of the woodpecker in the photo.  It's easy to see how such a strong sharp instrument could quickly excavate a hole in a dead tree.  (Or in the siding on my house.)

Meanwhile, the  titmice have been inspecting yet another nest box, this one hanging from a tree in the front yard.  It has had nest material protruding from the hole.  I don't know what birds have nested there previously.  For days, a House Wren has sung incessantly  close by.  One year I saw the family of some kind of mouse (large with snow-white  breast and belly) in the house.



The 2010 Yard List continues to grow quickly with migrants making brief stops or flyovers.  (I'm a couple of days behind but I think when I add to the list it will be over 130 for the year.) Indigo Buntings and Hooded Warblers (pictured below)  flitted around the yard yesterday and today.  Three kinds of Vireos ( White-eyed, Yellow-throated, and best of all Warbling Vireos) have been in the front yard this week as well as three kinds of wrens (Carolina, House, Bewick's). A Bullock's Oriole came to the nectar feeder midmorning.

We are still waiting on some of our summer-only nesting birds.  Beside the driveway there's a nest box that Brown-crested Flycatchers  have used every year for a decade.  Before that they nested in  old railroad ties that stand on end near the road.  Cavities had rotted out at the ends (the tops) which made nice little nesting places.  When bouganvillea and esperanza (yellow bells) overgrew the raillroad ties, the flycatchers moved to the nest box.  We don't usually see them back home until May.  That's also the month that the Yellow-billed Cuckoos return.  I don't know where they nest,  but it's somewhere close.  They fly through the yard daily, black and white tails streaming, and call from the trees.  My mother always called cuckoos "rain crows," an old-fashioned name for them. Their guttural  kluck-kluck-kluck-kluck-kluck in the stillness that sometimes precedes summer rains reminds me of my childhood home in Oklahoma.

We moved into our house exactly 14 years ago this week.  The yard looks a lot different  than it did then.  Then you could see the house from the road; now it is obscured by trees and shrubs.  Then it had a lawn of "carpet grass"; now there are only small patches that we mow with a push mower.  Then it was landscaped with tropical plants by the previous owners; now it is landscaped by the birds who drop seeds that spread fiddlewood (negrito), chili pequin,  pigeonberry, turk's cap and other native plants.  I love our yard because I love the birds that make their home here.  They share their space with us