ENHS Nature Trails December 2005 Article 3

Summer Adversaries May Bring Fall Friends
By Reida Kimmel

We suffered a plague of voles in the vegetable garden late this summer. Their holes and tunnels were everywhere in the fields and garden. They ate a lot of beets, severed the roots of both my parsley plants, and also destroyed several (naturally the prettiest colored) rainbow chard plants. Of the winter squashes, only those growing up on wires went unscarred. The tiny, vicious teeth also did in a number of pattypan summer squash, but by that time we had had our fill and were happy to share.

Perhaps related to the explosion in vole numbers, the red-tailed hawks are staying around this winter. We hear them calling close to the house and see them soaring over our fields everyday. The great horned owls are also hanging around, quite close to the house. We hear them who-hooting most nights--It seems very early in the winter for them to be calling. And most days when we ride the horses, we meet three ravens about halfway between Fox Hollow and Ham roads. The ravens travel along with the trotting horses, turn when they do, and escort us home. They will fly ahead, land on a branch, wait for us to catch up, and then fly off again, all the time vocalizing companionably. I do not know why the ravens like horses--we certainly do not scare up any food for them--but they are fun to travel with, and when they don't appear as sometimes happens, we miss them.

WINTER BIRDS: THEY MAKE US HAPPY. LETS KEEP THEM HEALTHY!

Of course the little birds are a delight too. We have kinglets and chickadees of several species doing a wonderful insect removal job on the perpetually challenged rowan tree (Sorbus aucuparia) on the west side of the house. Next to the rowan is a Liquidamber styraciflua that I used to curse and threaten with a chain saw because its gloomy brown leaves hung on till spring. Then last year I noticed all the little songbirds sheltering in it during storms and the tree has become one of my favorites. My big bird-feeding breakthrough this season has been figuring out how to set out suet in a raccoon-proof fashion. Now, until the clever creatures learn to shinny up eight-foot tall metal poles and down ten feet of slender chain, the birds can enjoy all the suet they want.* Maybe if I am lucky, I will finally be able to attract the bushtits that live in the nearby woods but scorn our feeders.

Just last week, however, I was devastated to discover that my feeder sanitation techniques were very poor, because I was cleaning the feeders only on a seasonal basis, not weekly. Our mild, damp winters provide ideal conditions for the spread of disease among the birds crowding at and beneath feeders. Wondering what to do, I asked the experts, my neighbors Maeve Sowles and Dick Lamster for their best advice on how to keep feeders clean and birds happy. They kindly sent a worthwhile article that has encouraged me to clean feeders more often and to think about the process. I realize that if I use only tube feeders, I can dunk them in tall buckets, two at a time for soaking, cleaning and bleaching. As I have three old tube feeders, I can keep one going while I clean the other two. If I'm slow getting the job done, the birds will still have one feeder to go to. Now, if I had four tube feeders, I could wash two and use two and that would be the best solution for a lazy washerwoman and the beloved birds.

-Reida Kimmel

If the clever critters, squirrels as well as raccoons, learn to gain access, just grease the poles with petroleum jelly. I find Vaseline lasts a long time, through rain and summer heat, allowing me to hang even a much-lusted-after platform feeder from one end of a copper (pipe) "T" with a cylindrical feeder dangling from the other end. I didn't intentionally mean to humiliate my favorite grey squirrels, but they are rather humorous when attempting the vaselined ascent. -Editor

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