Hummers, Squirrels, Coyote, and Snakes
I’m a bit amazed at the hummingbirds. Even though it’s midjanuary I still have a significant number of birds coming in for their nectar. This of course means I have to continue to fill the feeders on a regular basis.
Sunday morning, before we went to breakfast, I filled each of my eight feeders. Every feeder contains roughly one quart of sugar-water. This two gallons will last four to five days.
After filling two days ago I stopped to look out at the porch. It’s nearly impossible to get an accurate count of how many birds are at the feeders at any given moment. They flit in and out, circling and weaving around so fast, one has to try to get a count while they’re hovering as they sip up the sugar-water. Often they will land and perch on the little plastic rails while they insert their beak through the small access holes. This of course, makes it a little easier to count the number of hungry hummers.
Even though it’s easier to count, the length of time they remain still is often brief. If I count three birds on this one, by the time I look to the next one in line and see two on it, one of the three may well have flown next door. So does that make three here, or is that now four?
I glanced down the row of feeders, quickly counting the number feeding on the newlyfilled stations. I saw five on one, two on the next, one on the end, and … I gave up and estimated. It seemed there were roughly a dozen birds eating at about 7:30 a.m.
I’ve been asked several times about the little red twin calves. Both are doing well, and Big Red is once again providing ample milk for both babies.
I got a call from my son, Ryan, warning me about a potential risk to my small dogs. Tinker Belle is an 11-pound chihuahua. Lucky is 14 ounds of mixed Jack Russel and something else. He’d seen a coyote near his house, which is only 100 yards from mine. Surprisingly, this was during the early afternoon not at night or even during the dusk periods. Since I let my dogs out to do their business outside on the lawn, a fearless coyote could easily be a serious threat to my two dogs.
Ryan had been thinning out the squirrel population and had deposited the remains on a clear spot, 50 yards back of his house. I spotted a couple of big birds reaping the benefit of his kills. Of course, there were a couple of buzzards, plus a good sized hawk or possibly an eagle, who’d discovered the pile of squirrels, and gathered around.
The buzzards routinely find and consume dead animals, thus earning them the moniker of garbagemen. They’re not predators for they don’t kill their meals. They simply clean up and consume what someone else kills, or that dies. The hawks and eagles common to our foothills do practice predation. Their knife-like talons and hooked beaks allow them to capture and kill with ease.
When I spied some big bird activity around Ryan’s squirrel deposit, I noticed something interesting. There’s a serious pecking order among the large birds. That’s not just a phrase meaning who stands in line first. It means who gets to peck and eat from a kill.
First, I was a bit surprised to see the raptor (I couldn’t tell from a distance, whether it was an eagle or hawk) eating what I knew to be an already-dead animal. This would usually be a meal left to the buzzards. These were evidently fresh enough kills to qualify as edible to the big raptor.
The buzzard wasn’t at all happy. He was bouncing around, walking up and down, while looking longingly at the squirrel being consumed by the raptor. The buzzard walked to one side, then the other, often with wings about half extended, almost as if he were about to take flight, trying to intimidate the raptor.
The big raptor was being defensive. He kept his wings extended preventing the buzzard from coming close enough to grab the prize away. When the buzzard hopped around toward the squirrel, the raptor raised his wings and flapped them a little in an aggressive fashion. There was no way he was going to let the buzzard get it away.
Even though we’re less than two weeks after the first of the year, I’m already seeing a couple of hints of spring being close at hand. One of them is the snack the buzzard was trying to steal away.
The squirrel activity slows down a great deal in the late fall, but I’m already seeing their level picking up. As long as these mid-january days continue to ease up into the low- to mid-60 they will continue to be animated and lively, at least during the warmer part of the day.
On Monday this week, I spent the morning walking around through the pasture to spray weed-killer on some particularly bad thistles. I assured a friend it was much too cool, as well as too early for any snakes to be out. Walking around rocks in the grass wasn’t at all risky.
Of course, today, one day later, I saw an online video taken by someone I know of a big gopher snake crawling along in the grass. In my opinion it’s still much too early for these cold-blooded creatures to be coming out. Evidently somebody forgot to tell this one.