THE HOLE IN THE BANK, AND OTHER TALES

The hole in the bank.  Who lives there?

Cycle of Life, I:  On the House and Around It

The sand cherry bush behind the house held nearly thirty goldfinches at once.  That was in May, when spring was still unfolding. Its dark purple leaves hadn’t opened yet.  After the goldfinches the bird visitors were other kinds of finches, plus woodpeckers, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, titmouses (titmice?), grosbeaks, and mourning doves that picked up what seeds fell on the ground.  In July the feeder has become a draw for aggressive starlings and a few red-winged blackbirds.  Nevertheless chickadees, finches and grosbeaks still stop by when the big birds aren't hovering.   On a recent hike we found a bird feeder lying on the forest floor, one of those feeders that have a cage around the main tube to screen the seeds from large birds.  We’re giving it a try.  But we weren’t encouraged when we saw a couple of starlings stretching their necks through the opening to cop a few seeds.  We could just stop feeding, but we don't want to.  At least we haven’t had bears at the feeders.  Even when they're hungry I suspect crossing a large open area to get to the seeds would be intimidating.  

A few of the goldfinches decorated the sand cherry bush in May

Come to think of it, our raspberry patch is very close to the woods...

And that reminds me, what exactly was out there that night last week when Skyler got all wrought up?  Around ten o'clock or so he got very agitated and began to whine, whimper, pace, and bark.  He would not stop barking, and kept trying to look out of windows.  Of course we were trying to sleep.  It was nearly two in the morning when I decided to get out of bed and take him outside to face down whatever he thought it was.  (My thinking was, if we confronted what was or wasn’t there––I had decided on the wasn't, that he was only barking at ghosts––he would understand and would therefore stop barking.)  I put him on the leash and we headed out.  The motion detector light had switched on illuminating a circle around the cars.  Beyond that was complete blackness.  I hadn't thought to grab a flashlight so when Skyler started up a low growl I turned us around and headed for the front door.  He didn’t calm down for another hour.

Skyler stands guard against whatever

Woodpeckers seemed bent on eating the house last week.  The pileated, the downys, they were all in on it.  There’s a corner section they seem to favor near the bird feeder where one after another likes to perch and thump away.  Insects underneath rotting wood, wouldn't you think?  A search finds nothing noticeable.  They keep at it.  We look again.  There’s no rotting wood.  No sign of insects.  We give it a heavy dose of bug spray anyway, follow that up with a thick layer of wood filler, and follow that up with a coat of fresh paint.  Later that day, a woodpecker lands on the same corner and starts to peck.  Maybe he’s just showing off.  Nobody’s going to tell me where I can peck!  Or maybe it’s only habit:  Well, it was perfectly fine this morning!  This bears watching.

On the front porch we are on constant lookout for burgeoning wasp nests.  Last year I was slow to notice; too much looking down at book or iPad and not enough gazing at the ceiling.  Glued up there  in places where the rafters toe in tight V’s there were about ten starter nests that I knocked down, each a bit smaller than a golf ball.  As for the swallow nests, we had left the ones from last season thinking the swallows might reuse the nests, hence avoiding the messy (for us) project of making them anew.  They didn’t.  A new nest appeared right next to the top of one of our doors to the porch.  In no time heavy droppings began to appear and thicken.  Eventually four chicks appeared and fledged days later.  The last time we saw the chicks there were three perched next to the nest.  Then there were two.  Then they were gone.  But not gone very far:  it’s hard to say which swallows are which, but five or six or more continue to swoop under the porch ceiling as they scoop insects around the yard and pond.

 

Three of the four swallow fledglings next to their nest.  The fourth has probably already flown off the perch.

Cycle of Life, II:  In the Field

I don’t know how many creatures live in our field.  Many.  Fortunately for them, our local farmer doesn’t mow until August when everything has bred and left the nest.  Birds fly out every several yards as you walk around the paths Ken has cut in the high grass.  Deer nap in groups in the dense cover.  (We see the parted grass giving away where they walked, and the large flattened areas where they bedded down.)

The meadow is full of wild flowers and the grass is getting tall

A turkey with three poults (chicks) appeared in the field last month.  According to my readings, a turkey may lay 10-14 eggs, usually one a day, and incubate them for nearly a month.  (At that rate it could take a month and a half for them all to be incubated.)  The nest is merely a shallow depression, so it was probably right in the field.  Of course turkeys are everywhere, even on suburban lawns, but here they prefer open forest, preferably with oak and hickory with interspersed clearings and fields.  Ideal territory, this.  On the down side (if you are a turkey, that is) there is a long list of turkey predators in addition to man:  skunks, raccoons, groundhogs, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, and hawks, all of which we have in varying degrees of abundance.  To that add: dogs. While Ken was walking Skyler on a long leash Skyler pounced on a half grown chick that popped out of the tall grass onto the trail.  Ken pulled him back, but it was too late.  One dead poult.

Cycle of Life, III:  The Hole in the Bank

Doings in the pond pick up in early spring.  Ducks come to visit:  mergansers first, then mallards.  They hang around for a day or two, then disappear.  The occasional heron.  One duck party left behind a single egg, only discovered last month.  (Were there more?  What happened at the nest?)  A pair of Canada geese stayed the longest.  Wisely, they never strayed from the far side of the pond.  Skyler threw them the occasional bark, but mostly got used to their presence.

One day not long ago we saw something brown swimming across the pond. The long way, from the bank to the bridge.  Almost every day he (she?) swam this same route, disappearing under the bridge.  Sometimes it had a small branch in its mouth.  It had to be a muskrat.  One day we noticed a path in the grass that led in a straight line from a small opening in the tall reeds at the pond edge across a mulched planting of shrubs and on into the uncut meadow.  The trail was only about 6 inches wide and was some twenty feet long from pond to tall grass.  It was as if someone had dragged a small bag of sand across the lawn.  

The mysterious trail

What was more surprising was that once it entered the meadow the path meandered in several directions and circled around on itself in a section of maybe ten yards or so.  We puzzled over this.  The creature that swam across the pond was clearly a muskrat.  Would a muskrat have made this trail?  Could it have?  (Their long tails drag when they walk across land.)  What else, if not a muskrat?  Muskrats build lodges that generally protrude from a marsh or muddy pond (ours certainly qualifies).   But we saw no lodge.  

The disturbed meadow at the end of the muskrat's trails, probably the result of foraging.

A tunnel next to the bridge.  Another muskrat creation.

Wikipedia reports:

“In areas where they become abundant, they are capable of removing much of the vegetation in wetlands. They are thought to play a major role in determining the vegetation of prairie wetlands in particular. They also selectively remove preferred plant species, thereby changing the abundance of plant species in many kinds of wetlands. Species commonly eaten include cattail and yellow water lily."

More than likely the muskrat(s) are entering the meadow for sedges or other plants they like.  I have no idea what those might be, as all I see are clover, a bit of wild parsnip, buttercups, and the usual meadow grass.   At one end of the pond our usually abundant cattails are nearly gone.  Muskrats also eat the occasional frog and tadpole (which we have in abundance). I’m saying “they” because like every other creature muskrats are surely reproducing.   And muskrats reproduce mightily:  Two or three litters a year of six to eight young each is a lot of muskrats. But where are they?  We looked for a small lodge or “push-up” and thought that maybe they lived on the other side of the pond where the water drains into a seasonal stream.  Then I remembered they like to burrow into steep banks.  There’s only one section where the pond has steep sides and that is alongside the driveway.  There it was:  a large hole in the bank just inches above the water.   There were also hints of possible underwater entries.  A muskrat family is what we have.  How many muskrats are too many?  We will have to wait and see what comes of these neighbors.

Entrance to the muskrat lodge