Sad Houses

 ProfessorRoush has had quite the week;  a week that seems to be continuing even as I write.  

It all started last Sunday.   My intention that day was to get a number of things done around home, but most of the afternoon got delayed when Mrs. ProfessorRoush's car got two flat tires, one of which disintegrated before we could get to an air pump.   But I did get out for my main goal and cleaned out all the bluebird boxes while the weather was good.   One bad surprise; this bluebird box with 3 sweet little light blue eggs present.   These weren't a new brood out of season, these were very light, dried out, old eggs that didn't make it to hatch.  I'm guessing Mama Bluebird had an accident and never returned to care for them.   So sad.  And my bluebird houses didn't seem to do as well this year.   Eight bluebird nests for over 20 boxes is way under normal.  

Even sadder, one of the first year DVM students was killed last weekend, hit by a vehicle after she witnessed a rollover accident and tried to help; a true Good Samaritan lost to the world.   I got the call of hospital personnel looking for emergency numbers for her parents shortly after I finished the Bluebird Trail.   There are some things that happen in this life that I can't explain or understand and never will.  What a loss to her family and to her classmates and to all the pets she would have helped.

Things were looking up today as we put the house back in order this morning after our kitchen and sunroom were painted.   Mrs. ProfessorRoush is in the kitchen making caramels as we speak and I'm anticipating running out into the sunshine soon on this warm, breezy afternoon.   But then, as I started to write, I got a text that a young child of the host of our work Christmas party started a fever this morning and tested COVID positive.   Our entire surgery service was there for three hours last night, huddled in a small kitchen together.  Lots of COVID boosters are about to get tested for efficacy!

So, if I'm gloomy today and not my usual positive gardening influence, I'd like to make a formal apology and leave you with this picture of the ProfessorRoush home abode from the far end of the pasture; a view of the dry and brown back garden and prairie and of the back of the house from a vantage that I seldom get to see.   Those hills are too much to walk regularly without the excuse to tend to the BlueBird Trail.  

Houses on Halloween

It was way too pretty a sunny Saturday, yesterday, to spend indoors.  A long week and things that needed doing indoors were conniving to keep ProfessorRoush inside, but around 2:00 the call of the sunshine just grew too strong.  Surely, there must be something to do outside?

Ah, Bluebird house maintenance!  I'm a little early this year running my bluebird trail.  Normally, I'm doing this on a cold day in late November or early December, but I'll take the high 60's and sunshine anytime.  I skipped the bluebird trail last year entirely so it was doubly important that I get out there and clean house, so to speak, this year; clean house after house, after house and after house, twenty-four houses in all spread over my 20 acres and overlooking all the neighbors.  

I always start out loaded down with screwdrivers and wire and nails and wood screws and a hammer and wire cutters, because every year a house will need its roof repaired or the house need to be held tighter against a post.  I've learned, over the years, that paper wasps also like these boxes, some designs more than others (I think my newer house design had less paper wasps this year).  Bluebirds aren't harmed by the wasps but don't like to nest in houses with wasp nests, so I always carefully remove the wasp nests from every home.  I just read today that rubbing a bar of soap on the inner ceiling of the birdhouse will deter the wasps, so I'll have to try that next year. 

Some of my bluebird houses are getting quite old, showing gray weathered wood and splintered sides.  I believe I made the box above more than 10 years ago and from this closeup, you can see the patina and lichens it has accumulated, character and wisdom from the Kansas seasons.  It may look ancient and rundown, but it still housed a nest last year and that's what counts.  

Bluebirds aren't the most fantastic nest architects on the planet, a thin bed of grass is about all they place in the box, but it seems to do the trick.  I was really proud this year of the results of my NABS-approved Roush Bluebird Nestbox; twenty unmistakable bluebird nests, 20 nests in of 24 boxes, a personal best.  Or rather a personal best of my bluebird tenants.  I attribute the increased count to moving some of the boxes that previously attracted wrens to other areas away from the woods.  Two of the four remaining boxes had anemic nests that I didn't count, perhaps occupied a year ago, or perhaps there was trouble during the nest-building.  Who knows?  A snake reaching a box in the summer, a jilted male bluebird without a mate, or another bird attempting to move in.  Maybe next year, with the new porch and straightened shutters of my repairs, some poor lonely male bluebird will have a better chance to attract a mate.  Hope springs eternal in the rusty breast of a bluebird.
   

PS:  I found that the links to the Roush NABS-approved Bluebird Nestbox don't work in the original post as linked above, so I placed them on a separate page here in the blog.  Look at the top for the "Bluebird House/Presentations" tab!

On the Bluebird Trail

January 5, 2019.  Dear Garden,

As the temperature reached 55ºF early today, on its way to a high of 64ºF at 3:21 p.m., I was easily coaxed into the garden under the bright sun for puttering and the more puttering.  My gardening readers may be ringing your calloused hands over climate change, but if my 64ºF day is evidence of climate change, then I'm happy with it.   As you recall, Garden, my main goal for the beautiful day was to clean out the bluebird boxes, in preparation for another bluebird nesting season.


I've posted before about my bluebird trail and my own NABS-approved bluebird box, so you know already that this is one of my gardening focuses for normative ecology and species survival.  What I haven't pointed out before is that one of the reasons you MUST clean out these boxes annually is to eliminate paper wasp nests from the boxes.  Wasps and bluebirds don't get along.  You can't just swipe out the remnants of the nest, you have to look high into the boxes (photo at right) and remove any wasp nests.  In 22 bird boxes, there was evidence of 11 bluebird nests.  That doesn't sound too spiffy, but I have a number of old boxes in areas where I don't expect bluebirds to nest (near the woods).  There were 6 other boxes filled with nests and 5 empty ones.  All the empty ones had enormous wasp nests and about half of the bluebird nesting boxes did as well.

It was a great day to be out and to increase my Vitamin D production, but my happiest surprise of the day was the discovery of some beaver activity in the pond.  Not a huge number of chewed trees, but one substantial one around 8 inches in diameter (photo at left), and a few other smaller saplings in the process of removal (photo below). It's been about 15 years since the last beaver lived in the pond and I think the late fall rains brought them upstream into wetter-than-previous areas.  If this one stays or brings his family next year, I'm all for them clearing the pond of all the willows that have sprung up on the shoreline in the past decade.

After my bluebird-inspired hike, I puttered away a number of small chores that need to be done in preparation for spring.  A large orange pot, evidently not-frost proof, had disintegrated and needed to be trashed.  A little barbed wire needed to be re-stretched.  Some apple tree rootstock sprouts had to be pruned away.  A few unsightly, dead petunias needed to be ripped up and thrown on the compost pile.  All in all a great January day with February weather.  Here's to hoping we are planting peas early this year!

Nesting Sunday

Last Sunday, ProfessorRoush was really wanting to rest and read, but the outside weather was so temperate (55ºF) and sunny that I just couldn't make myself stay put indoors.  I also knew that if I stalled cleaning out the bluebird houses any longer, it would only lead to the task being critical later when the temperatures were 20ºF and a blizzard was forming.  If you're responsible for a trail, you can't just let it go.  The bluebird houses need occasional repair and removing the old nests decreases parasite and disease incidence.  And I needed a walk, so the Bluebird Trail was calling out to me from the brown prairie. "Come out, Come out.  I need your care."  Perhaps, ProfessorRoush was just, himself, nesting for winter.



I always gain a nice warm fuzzy feeling as I find all those nests where happy little bluebirds and various other species have raised a family under my roof(s).  When you are walking a trail of houses, you can easily tell the ones that hold bluebird nests because their nests are thin and haphazardly constructed, usually of soft prairie grass, as pictured in the top photo.  Other birds, usually wrens, sometimes nest in my boxes, and those nests are formed of coarser twigs like the one at the left.  They are also loaded much higher, sometimes stuffing the box to the top except for the opening entrance.   This year, of my 19 self-designed, NABS-approved nesting boxes scattered over the edges of 20 acres with another 80 acres around them, I counted 10 bluebird nests, 6 wren nests, and 3 empties.  The empties were all houses laying on the ground where the donkeys had rubbed them off the posts.  Donkeys seem to have something against random bird houses around their pastures. 

Walking the perimeter of my land is always educational as well.  I was surprised to notice this small nest within a dried up Babtisia australis (Blue Wild Indigo) floating around the pasture.  These prairie legumes bloom early in spring and normally grow perhaps 2.5 feet tall and round alone or in clumps over the prairie.  In the fall, they dry up, break off, and blow all over the prairie like tumbleweeds, clogging fences and flower beds and becoming perfect tinder for prairie fires.  I've never known that they might serve as shrub hosts for low nesting birds, but here is the proof, a deep little cup formed within what was once thick green foliage. 




You can see, in the closeup at left, the careful construction and perfect form of the nest.  It seems a little big for hummingbird, but whatever was here was a pretty small little guy/girl.  I would put odds on it being a Dickcissel nest, since that species is ubiquitous on the prairie and nests on the ground or in low prairie shrubs.  Whoever the architect was, I hope it was a safe home, because birds and the prairie are meant to be together.