New Tenants

The view out the back stairwell window is almost always my first glance at the out of doors every morning. It changes with the weather and seasons, of course, but you’d expect that it would otherwise be a fairly static view. I would think that too, but it often surprises me.

At the corners of the house we have these little ledges. They are an architectural element that has been there since the very beginning:

And my Uncle, I believe, made efforts to preserve or reflect those elements despite the re-siding of the house over time - what was once wood is now reflected as metal, but still present.

These residential plots out here in the agricultural territory of the prairie are, as I’ve mentioned before, little islands of wooded area. As such, birds of the tree nesting variety (as opposed to the ground-nesting avians out on the prairie itself) tend to congregate heavily around the house. Spring mornings from mid-May until the earliest days of summer are a riot of jumbled birdsong. Even with the curtains pulled tight against the morning light there is no confusion as to whether the sun has risen.

I can readily verify that we have now reached the point of the year where that is happening before 5:30 AM... ugh...

At any rate, it’s clear that even though we have an abundance of trees, there simply isn’t enough room at the inn for all comers, and it’s inevitable each year that some poor robin or sparrow will try his hand at building a nest on one of those ledges. They are master builders, each and every one, but even mastery can’t defeat physics - the lightweight material atop a smooth surface inevitably succumbs to the spring winds.

Given this history, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise to see a nest under construction on the ledge just out that back stairwell window the other morning. And, when I saw it, it was with the thought that it would be only a short while before the avian architect saw the error of his ways. "Poor chap", I thought, "must be a young whipper-snapper on his first nest building foray, not yet experienced in the trials and travails of trying to nest on our old house".

But then as I watched the master builder came in to do some work and I got lucky enough to capture his image:

Seeing the type of bird I looked closer at the nest. Swallows, in addition to being the aeronautical acrobats of the prairie, build their nests not to nestle in, but to stick. And that does appear to be what is going on here.

The swallows have always been here - or at least as long as I can remember. Our resident population appears to mostly nest in our Old Gray Mare of a decaying barn. I don’t believe that I’ve see any try to nest at the house in the time that we’ve been here. Perhaps the returning population has grown to the point where they need more room than the barn can offer, or perhaps the progressive decrepitude of that structure has caused some of them to look for a nicer neighborhood. Perhaps it’s a combination of both situations.

In any case, we appear to have new tenants for the season here in the homestead.

Return Visitor?

Last year, around this time, we had an unusual visitor. Back then I’d seen him at least once before, but had not been in a position to take pictures. Then MLW and I happened across him while we were in the car together, and she was able to snap some pictures of him.

Now, a year later, give or take a couple of weeks, he’s back!

Full disclosure - I have no idea whether this eagle is the same one as before, nor do I know it’s gender identity. But the pictures here are taken approximately a mile and a half from the location we saw the eagle last year. That’s a mile and a half as the crow - or eagle - flies.

Being able to catch him on camera this time was just sort of dumb luck. I was in the car coming back towards home, but the road was empty and I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere. I first saw him standing in the field, and did get a couple of shots of that, but oddly enough, a brown and white bird doesn’t stand out well in contrast against a field full of dirt and snow...

As with last year, this was a brief encounter. As I mentioned, when I first saw him he was standing in the field. I was probably 50 yards away from him, but clearly that was too close - my presence agitated him and he decided to go.

Last year we didn’t see the eagle again much after the February sighting. It could be that it had moved on - that it was passing through our area on the way to somewhere else. Or it could be that I just didn’t get lucky again. Still, two years in a row, around the same time of the season, suggests that the first event wasn’t just a fluke. I’m hoping we start to see them more routinely.

These shots were all taken with an iPhone XS Max

Flash of Red

Most mornings as I wake up and walk down the back stairs I take a glance out the window at the top of the stairwell to get my first impression of the day.

This morning, as I looked out towards the old gray mare I saw a flash of red in the decrepit honeysuckle bush at the end of the sidewalk.

Can’t see it? I’m not surprised. It’s here:

Cardinals are not especially rare out here. They overwinter with us, and when we’ve put out bird feeders we’ve routinely seen them happily eating with all of the LBB’s in the snow. I also see them fairly regularly when I’m out riding, flitting about between the trees.

I tried, with limited success, to get a closer look with the camera:

Some things become mundane, boring, and begin to fade into the background with repeated exposure. Somehow, cardinals escape this for me. While they are semi-ubiquitous on our landscape, I experience a little bit of joy each and every time I see one. Each and every time I feel like I’ve discovered something wonderful - albeit again - and like nature has given me a special little gift.

I feel the same about blue jays (which are otherwise kind of hateful) and goldfinches (which are decidedly not hateful). Perhaps it’s the unusual flash of bold color against the greens, browns and, increasingly with the season, grays of our landscapes that allow them to give that dopamine rush upon discovery.

Perhaps. But this is the rare type of event I don’t really want to examine in detail. For this I’ll just enjoy.

Mystery Nest

So this showed up in the yard the other day:

Bird nests showing up on the ground in our yard is not an uncommon occurrence. The wind out here is such we fairly routinely come across one or another on the ground. On very windy spring days it’s not uncommon to find multiple nests, and a little later in the season a bad storm can also result in multiple hatchlings finding their unfortunate end in the same fashion. It’s wonderful to be out in nature, but she does sometimes remind you that she’s often unkind.

Most of the nests we see, however, are the typical "cup" style - those that look like a little bowl that you’d keep something in (gee, like, I dunno - eggs maybe?). But this one is different. It’s larger than the others, and the hole that you see in it is the entrance. It’s composed primarily of grass, though there’s also a bit of synthetic stuffing (undoubtedly gleaned from one of the dog’s less-than-fortunate stuffed toys or beds).

Usually, when I find such things I will spend some time on the interwebs trying to sort out the details. In this case, I’d like to know what type of bird would have made this.

Unfortunately, an internet search on this topic thus far provides primarily information on what you need to know to identify a bird nest - e.g. shape, size, composition materials. I can find multiple sites that tell you those are the important, relevant pieces of information. And then none of them tell you anything about which birds go with which types of nest.

So today I live with a mystery. Anyone out there know what type of bird matches this nest?