ENHS Nature Trails September 2003 Article 3

Notes from the Farm
By Reida Kimmel

I've lived on farms for most of my life, and as a consequence, have become rather toughened to things that are a bit disgusting or maybe just plain sad. Still, sometimes, I get really taken aback. Our horse barn sits high and dry on a little rise of land. It is surrounded by rock, gravel and coarse wood chips to ward off the winter's mud--not a suitable habitat for salamanders. But this morning, rejoicing in the rain, I came upon a sorry sight. A great big Dicamptodon, sleek, shiny, and beautifully marked, lay stepped on, cut, and apparently dead in front of Chuck's horse Angy's stall door. I picked up the poor body and instantly the creature assumed the arched back pose of a threatened salamander. Alive! I rinsed off the wood chips in a bucket of clean water, being careful not to touch any more of the Dicamptodon's skin than absolutely necessary, and carried it down to the rushes at the edge of the pond. The wounded creature moved off immediately towards the new puddles at the water's edge. His left hind leg dragged uselessly, but the rest of the limbs and perhaps the tail carried it forward. Chuck says salamanders have marvelous healing powers, so perhaps, if he can keep away from the great blue heron that visits us every morning, the Dicamptodon will live and thrive. Oddly, our busy barn is a Mecca for wildlife. The pair of Brewers blackbirds that we refer to as the idiot blackbirds, return annually to nest unsuccessfully, two or three times a season, in the eves of the barn right over the stall doors. The parents attack everything that moves for weeks, dogs, people, even the horses. The adventurous young jump out of the nest and are stepped on by the horses, just like that poor salamander. This year, on their second try, the idiot blackbirds finally fledged a youngster. Along with the red winged blackbirds, they devoured all our cherries from our four trees, as usual, and then departed for the summer. I was not sad. The summers that the blackbird flock decides to stay, we lose our corn and our grapes as well as our cherries.

Everyone's favorites are the swallows. We have both olive green swallows and cliff swallows soaring above the pond, zeroing in on the mosquitoes and other insects. Only the cliff swallows breed on the farm. Of course, they choose to breed in the barn. One pair breeds in the alley and are very successful, raising two broods almost every year. The alley is a very busy place. It's where the dogs hang out. People are always going back and forth through the passage, but the birds overhead don't mind. The swallows have two nests, side by side, and use the second nest as a sort of family room. Before fledging, the young go back and forth between the nests, and sit in both, resting, after they have begun flying. Sadly, after the first clutch of five were successfully in the air, the adults lost the second hatch of three during that horribly hot week in late July. After the deaths, that family of swallows left us for several weeks. Meanwhile, a second pair of swallows had a nest in the barn (that always results in the horses getting little mounds of poops on their backs, but what the heck, anything for the birds that control the bugs!) They raised three young which made a family of five, and that little mother was on the nest with a second clutch when the killer heat wave struck. Her brood and her mate ran off with the other swallows leaving poor brave momma swallow alone with those precious eggs for several weeks. It was really good news to see the family return in August to help care for the hatchlings, who did fledge successfully. Now all the swallows are gone. The barn and barnyard are full of silly, tame, young juncos and the usual large population of Fox sparrows. But, here's a problem. Something has gone wrong with the predators around here (fewer raccoons and coyotes), and we are having a population explosion of mice. The birds get trapped in the mousetraps, even if I only set them at night. So I can't trap. Life is always full of problems and adventures when you live next door to a barn.

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