FreeLists / va-richmond-general / [va-richmond-general] nice birding article from the NY Times

["Kathy Kreutzer" <k-kreutzer@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Happy New Year, everyone!
Kathy Kreutzer, Chesterfield
 
 
 
In the Garden 
A Crop of Azure, Scarlet and Gold 

HAPPY RETURNS Bird species gone for decades have come back to Maryland,
altering a gardener's plans.

By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/anne_raver
/index.html?inline=nyt-per> ANNE RAVER
Published: January 4, 2007

A FEW years ago, when I first glimpsed the azure wing of a bluebird in
the hedgerow that borders my meadow, I could hardly believe my eyes.

Eastern bluebirds all but disappeared from my farm in central Maryland
decades ago, their numbers reduced by pesticides and habitat loss. But
now that farmers are cutting back their use of poisons and, thanks to
government subsidies, turning some of their cropland into native grasses
and trees, the bluebirds are coming back.

So are other birds. Just the other day, I was startled to see a pileated
woodpecker drilling for insects in my old pear tree. Another day, a fat
cinnamon-colored Carolina wren alighted on the railing outside my
kitchen, chirping furiously.

And the bluebirds are no longer the shy denizens of the trees that edge
the meadow. One pair, and then another, took up residence in the
cavities of two old black locust trees that line the lane that passes by
our loft, which was built out of an old haymow in the barn. 

I was standing in the kitchen, looking out the window, when I noticed
one of these birds flying down from the tree and across the field, with
that curious dipping motion I've grown to recognize as that of a
bluebird in flight. But there was something else that made me certain it
must be a bluebird: It was one of those gestalt moments that birders
talk about - like that indefinable something that tells you that a
figure walking on the beach in the distance is your brother, even though
he is much too far away to see his face.

I thought I saw a flash of blue, too, but then again, I told myself,
maybe that was wishful thinking. So I grabbed my binoculars, which I
keep handy on the counter, and waited.

Two birds flew back up the field soon enough with that same dipping
rhythm, and one of them landed on the broken branch of a locust tree
about 30 feet from my kitchen window.

"Please, please, don't go away," I chanted as I clumsily tried to find
the bird with the binoculars.

After several tries, I spotted him: a male bluebird with a satiny round
head of the most sapphire blue and a rusty red breast, so close my heart
was pounding.

I don't consider myself religious in any conventional sense. But that
bluebird brought me closer to the sacred than I've ever been. Maybe it
has something to do with loss and return.

At any rate, the male and his mate made their nest that spring in a
cavity in one of the old trees. Another pair set up house in a different
tree, about 50 feet away. Those black locusts, planted by my grandfather
more than a hundred years ago, are full of hollows, perfect for
bluebirds.

I watched the birds coming and going all spring, pecking insects out of
the vegetable garden, as I turned over the cover crop and planted
greens, sweet corn and huge patches of sunflowers and zinnias. By late
summer, I was watching fuzzy fledglings teetering on the tall weeds
growing up beneath the trees.

I realized that my various plantings over the years - the roses, now
laden with rose hips, the Alpine strawberries nestled in a nearby
garden, the elderberry bushes next to the wild cedar and mulberry trees,
the blackberry canes I let ramble, for their delicious fruit, in the old
barnyard - were beginning to accumulate into a bona fide bird habitat.

Just as important, the things I had never gotten around to doing -
cleaning up the brush pile, pruning the overgrown forsythia, pulling the
wild grape out of the Gold Flame lonicera - were enhancing that habitat.

All this mess was providing the wildlife with cover, insects, fruit and
seeds. I kept meaning to cut back the poison ivy that scrambled up the
locust trees again this summer, but it got away from me - and produced a
bumper crop of fruit for the birds.

When I decided not to mow the weeds beneath the locust trees, the birds
feasted on the purple berries of the pokeweed, the seeds of the asters,
foxtail, goldenrod, chickweed and Indian grass.

And thank goodness I didn't cut down the old pear tree.

"It's blocking your view of the curving fields," a landscape architect
friend had pointed out last summer. "And you never eat the fruit."

It was true. It hadn't been pruned in years. The pears were full of
worms.

"But the cardinals love to perch in the branches," I said.

And then, when this magnificent woodpecker showed up to feast on the
insects in our neglected tree, I felt right with the world.

I looked up pileated woodpecker on my new favorite Web site, the Cornell
Lab of Ornithology ( <http://www.birds.cornell.edu/>
www.birds.cornell.edu) by clicking on "All About Birds" and then "Bird
Guide," and selecting the name from the drop-down list.

There he was, my goliath: a 16- to 19-inch bird with a red crest and a
white stripe extending beneath his eye and down his neck and black
shoulders. He was probably eating ants, I learned from this site. And he
and his mate would probably stay around all winter.

Then, I clicked on "listen to the song of this species" and was treated
to a series of high-pitched squeaks that built to a crescendo, followed
by the thunk-thunk-thunk sound of the drumming of his beak.

When I looked up Eastern bluebird, I was able to see that the juvenile's
blue feathers are speckled with white. I had thought so, from my own
observations last summer, but the little ones never sat still for long.

The Eastern bluebird's song is a series of musical whistles and "dry
chatter," as the guide puts it, and I played it over and over again,
staring at the various pictures of male, female and juvenile. Next
spring, when I hear that chatter, I may recognize it as a sign that the
bluebirds have returned.

The Carolina wren, I was happy to find out, is here to stay.

It is possible to spend days on this Web site, not only learning the
calls of birds and what they look like, but also watching videos - of a
robin eating berries in a cedar tree, for instance - and surfing through
cover-girl images of must-have shrubs for birds (bayberry, staghorn
sumac, winterberry and viburnum).

What can I say? I'm in love with birds. I want to be able to recognize
them by their calls when I'm walking through the woods. I want to plant
everything they like, for food and shelter.

So be careful if you pick up a pair of binoculars and focus them
clumsily on some blurry thing you think you see on a branch. You may
lose yourself in a very different kind of garden from the one you
thought you were making.