Odds and Ends

Rain is still in short supply here, though this morning I am surrounded by thick fog and mist. I’m starting to see some more signs of greenery around the cabin. Even on the forest floor, many of the seedlings are now developing their second set of leaves. That pretty much leaves them still unidentifiable, though given where the tiny plants are located, I’m thinking that many of them are likely mayapples.

I have reached something of a milestone at the cabin. The pine siskins are still around, which makes this the first time I’ve seen them here in April. In fact, this is the first year they’ve been regular feeder visitors throughout a winter. I’ve had them show up before here and there, for a day or so at a time. However, this winter they moved in during January and have appeared every day since then.

My photo today shows moss on one of the boulders in my front forest. The moss has gotten quite green over the last week and seems to be growing nicely.

This year I, like many people, am planning to grow more vegetables than I usually attempt. Here in the woods, I don’t get much sunlight, so my attempts at growing things are not always successful. Last year my neighbor, who gets a little more sun than I do, had nice success with her tomatoes and that has spurred me to attempt some, too.

I will grow the veggies on my back deck, where I should avoid deer and rabbit issues, though will still likely have to deal with the raccoons and opossums. At this point the little plantlings are safe and under a plastic dome on my kitchen table. They will remain there for several weeks yet but I will keep you apprised of my progress (or lack thereof) as time goes by.

Bare trees, angry sky

The first boom of thunder sent the Dog, Baby Dog and assorted cats cringing and then darting for cover. They’d all forgotten, apparently, what thunderstorms are. Winter and summer are usually the times I expect extreme weather—extreme cold, heavy snow or heat and drought. However, this weekend reminded me that extremes are just as common in spring too.

Thunderstorms, tornados only a few miles away, the telephone knocked out by a lightning strike. Grandmother Nature was throwing her weight around again. In the end, I was lucky, the tornados missed me and the cabin, though wreaked havoc not far to the south and destroyed mobile homes next door in Lancaster County.

This morning, the sky still has an angry look to it, less angry perhaps than yesterday, but still angry enough. The freshening air brought the local vultures and Red-tailed hawks out this morning before the sun was well up. Ahead of the storms, the weather was rainy, overcast and foggy, so the raptors were taking advantage of the early morning conditions that were better for their hunting than it had been for days.

I thought, perhaps, that once this storm cleared, I would start to see more of spring around the cabin. That may happen tomorrow or the next day but it hasn’t happened this morning.

Yesterday, 15 pine siskins ate their way through my bird seed. These little finches are not inclined to move north again just yet, apparently. I am hoping, for no good reason whatsoever, that they will hang around for at least another two days so I can record them on my April bird list, which would be a first.

The trees are still not showing any sign of impeding leaves, as you can tell from this morning’s photo. I do see a few fat buds here and there but even those aren’t common. Sunday, I noticed a few tiny seedlings pushing through the ground on the forest floor, but it’s still too early to call them anything but seedlings.

I did see and hear the first eastern phoebe of the season this weekend. So far, I’ve only encountered a single bird and that not at the cabin, but it was on Roundtop. This is the first time I've ever seen siskins and phoebes on the same day. That's amazing enough for me, at least for this Monday morning.

More siskins than ever before!

Sometimes I’m surprised when I am looking for information about a species and find that the information apparently doesn’t exist. Such is the case with today’s pine siskins.

All winter long I’ve had 3 or 4, and perhaps as many as 5 pine siskins at my feeders. After a late arrival compared with other local feeders, the birds have appeared daily and often multiple times each day at my feeders. This weekend, I suddenly have 10 pine siskins. The siskins visit at least three times a day and likely more as even I don’t spend every waking moment in front of the feeders to keep track of them.

So, my question was simply, are these likely to be 10 new siskins or my regular 5 siskins plus 5 new arrivals? And what I’ve discovered is that the spring movements of these birds are apparently not well studied enough to even provide a reasonable guess to that question.

Because these birds are irruptive and only head south when food supplies in the north are lacking, studying spring movements of siskins here in the south is inherently problematic. I found no studies about when the birds are likely to head north again.

The only answers I can find are anecdotal. Spring movements back to the north are called "protracted," based on when they return to their breeding grounds, with no actual peak to their movements. In my area, anecdotal evidence suggests the birds could continue to eat pounds of seed here in Pennsylvania well into April.

So I don’t know how long these little beauties will continue to grace my feeders or for how much longer they will continue to eat a hole in my birdseed budget. The only thing I am really sure of is that whenever they do head north again, they will be as fat and happy as my seed can make them.

Birds on ice

Yesterday brought yet another snow/sleet/ice/rain event to my cabin. This one, for once, produced somewhat more snow than ice—until sunset, that is. Then a bit of rain fell, which instantly soaked into the snow and then immediately turned everything to ice when the temperature dropped below freezing. This morning, I don’t have a skating rink, I have a glacier. It’s that bad.

When I’ve said in the past how much I like winter, I meant the old winters, when actual snow fell. These new climate-change / global-warming winters that bring more ice than snow are for the birds. And I doubt they like this very much.

My feeders were busy during this latest precipitation event, and I saw more birds than I have all winter. Until yesterday, I never saw more than one goldfinch at a time at the feeders, and I suspected I was seeing the same goldfinch not multiple goldfinch that appeared one after the other. Yesterday, I had plenty of them, and with them came several pine siskins—the first of the season at my feeders.

What I found most interesting is that the siskins and the goldfinch happily fed together at the feeders. Both species appeared to arrive and leave at once, as though they are all hanging out together when they are not at my feeders, too. I also observed that both are exactly the same size, at least to my eye. I don’t think I’ve seen them side by side like this before, so that wasn’t something I’d been able to observe before.

No photo today

The cabin is warm, and the dogs are sleeping. I'm at home doing some office work with one eye and watching the birds at my feeders with the other. Four inches of snow came first, then sleet, now freezing rain. Supposedly, this will change to just rain but up here on the mountain, I'm not holding my breath for that part. If I'm holding my breath for anything, it's that I don't lose electricity as the icing continues to worsen.

Wasn't it just Monday when I was whining about not having any pine siskins to call my own? They're here now. Nothing like an ice storm to bring out all the residents. Between the squirrels, the siskins and a not-seen-before horde of goldfinch, it will soon be time to refill those feeders this morning.

Stay warm! I'm going back into my burrow until this passes.

A few visitors

Lots of bird feeders in my region have pine siskins visiting (or hogging, depending on your point of view) their feeders. Mine isn’t one of them. Fortunately, my parents’ feeders do have them, so I was able to get a photo of one of them. These tiny finches are a bit nondescript, except for the pretty yellow bit on their wings.

This year my own feeders are much frequented by the local birds, though I haven’t yet had even one unusual species. My feeders are on the back deck, which the current crop of sparrows don’t appreciate. I do see various sparrows on the ground but they haven’t come in to the feeders this year. Here are the species I’ve had so far.
1. Black-capped chickadee
2. Carolina chickadee
3. Tufted titmouse
4. Northern cardinal
5. Blue jay
6. Dark-eyed junco
7. American goldfinch (only 1 as best I can tell)
8. Downy woodpecker
9. Hairy woodpecker
10. Red-bellied woodpecker
11. White-breasted nuthatch
12. Dark-eye junco
13. Carolina wren
14. House finch—not since January 1

It’s not a very exciting list this year. That’s the way it goes. Even the non-exciting birds can eat lots of food, which they are happily doing. I use a variety of food at the feeders. Suet, mealy worms (which they love), sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, peanuts and a mix from Lyric called "Woodpecker" that everyone seems to enjoy, especially the non-woodpeckers.

Snow is in the forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday so I’d better keep those feeders filled. I know they will empty quickly, if that happens.