New life is everywhere you look in the great outdoors now. Hummingbirds have been hitting my feeders quite hard, probably due to the cool temperatures lately, and the orioles are keeping me busy filling grape jelly feeders. The bird feeders are close to my windows, including the tube feeder which is filled with sunflower seeds, so I can get close views of the visitors. To further enhance my viewing I put masking tape over the back holes in the tube and hummingbird feeders to force the birds to use the feeding holes on the window side. To keep the birds healthy I make sure my hummingbird feeders are thoroughly cleaned and the food is refreshed every five days so that slimy fungus doesn’t start growing; that stuff can harm the hummers. The same goes for the oriole feeders but with them it’s done every couple of days as they generally empty the cups quickly, sometimes with two birds on the feeder at a time.
There seems to be an abundance of orioles at my feeders this year and an occasional catbird or rose-breasted grosbeak stopping in for a snack. The sunflower seeds in the tube feeder are attracting a family of nut hatches, a pair of cardinals, a male grosbeak, some gold finches, a male red breasted woodpecker and some house finches.
Out and about in the Alabama Swamps I note that the goose goslings are growing extremely quickly — and now transforming from that cute yellow puffy ball stage to the ugly dark stage. Some even are developing the black neck and head with the white cheek patch. The other day I also saw a pair of geese with goslings that looked to be only a few days old. There seems to be quite a spread in gosling age stages this year.
There also seems to be quite an age spread in fox kits. The kits I was photographing a month ago have gotten quite big but last week encountered a litter of very small kits. Over the past decade it seems as though foxes are raising their families closer to human dwellings and close to roads. I note three den areas this year that are close to houses. I also see foxes crossing the road near homes at night more often; they’re probably looking for nearby food sources. I suspect this closeness to people is a way for the foxes to protect themselves and their young from the ever-increasing coyote population. Coyotes are leery of humans but they have no reservations about killing and eating foxes.
Some eaglets are fully grown now and have left their nests with others about to do so. This year has not been good for the eagles; a number of their nests were abandoned earlier in the season for an unknown reason.
Turtles are on the move presently, crossing roads and laying their eggs in gravel or a sandy area. Be careful of them on the roads and, as I mentioned last week in this space, leave the “rescuing” to people who have experience handling these reptiles.
A few weeks ago I encountered about a dozen guys wearing bright yellow vests, hard hats and gloves along a section of Route 63 that runs through Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge. They were split into two groups, one on each side of the road, and were picking up trash. They had made a couple of huge piles of orange trash bags and also placed larger items such as wooden pallets, tires and even a truck tail gate up against the roadside railings to be picked up by DOT workers. It turns out that these good citizens are members of a waterfowl hunters group from a recently formed local chapter of Delta Waterfowl.
They do these trash pickups across Western New York periodically, and so much more, including put up and do yearly maintenance on wood duck and mallard nesting structures in local wildlife management areas. These guys don’t just talk the talk, they do the walk, too. Since neither state nor federal agencies are maintaining waterfowl nesting structures anymore, this is a big boost for local waterfowl reproduction.
If you are interested in joining this active group of waterfowl hunters or just want to thank them for what they are doing, call Ian Piercy at 716-310-9418.