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Predictable / Unpredictable and Other Musings 7/2009 Arriving in the North Woods in late May, we can count on the phoebes (birds) having beaten us and set up housekeeping. For their nest, their first choice of real estate is the ledge over our back door (driveway-side and western exposure), which is protected under the porch. Mama had already laid 6 eggs; not only didn't I have the heart to remove the nest, but it is also illegal to do so! From previous experience of finding dead babies when they built over our garage entry door one year, Bill and I knew we had to accommodate the birds, i.e., not use that door because every time one does, the mama flies the coup and may eventually abandon the needy babes, thus their demise.
Using the lake
side is much less convenient, and certainly to carry groceries in
from the car! On rainy days (which have been plentiful) under those
circumstances, we were undoubtedly annoying to her! We can only be
accommodating to a point! Generally, phoebes are good to have
around because they eat bugs (including blackflies). Well, at least
I thought this was good until I saw her eating dragonflies which are
GOOD guys, and right in front of my eyes -- the kitchen window
afforded a view not more than 5 feet away! It takes a couple of
weeks for the eggs to hatch and a couple more weeks before the birds
fledge, so this is a month-long ordeal. Well, 2-1/2 weeks into
this, just before we took our NYC trip, I peeked again into the nest
to find a VERY full, breathing mass of feathers (Picture 1 -- you
may be able to see 2 beaks sticking out, with the rest buried under
the pile someplace). The birds were fledged by the time we returned
after a week.....having left their calling card about 1/2" deep on
the landing in front of the door! Phoebes have 2 or more broods
every year, so after cleaning up and taking down the empty nest, one
must become watchful that they don't start a new one in an unwelcome
spot, including that very same one! They tried there again, as well
as on several corners of our log structures up under eaves. They
are persistent, but putting rocks on these places is a good
deterrent, and I'm doing some creative thinking about what I should
do over winter to foil these messy interlopers for next spring. I
know they have found alternative sites as we still see their
tail-pumping antics and hear their "fee-bee fee-bee" calls.
Foxes are still living up the road in a wood pile, and across from that, Bill saw a cow moose and her yearling this morning in our meadow. Early on, a LARGE moose (from the size of the track) had a habit of walking through my small veggie garden. I noticed it the day before I planted and it roamed through again the night after I planted, stepping in a row of lettuce and a row of beans; the plants came up anyway! However, what was particularly interesting was that the rain settled into those hoof depressions and attracted a "puddle lick" of Canadian tiger swallowtail butterflies.
They have a habit
of congregating where there is moisture; I have seen them do this in
puddles on our dirt roads, but hadn't seen it so vividly in my
garden (Picture 3). I was also witness to something that I know
goes on in nature but had never seen. A garter snake that I have
nicknamed Jake (actually I think there is more than one Jake or
Jackie) likes to hang out around our back steps and the shrubs in
that area. It was lying curled and really still, tongue not even
flicking, apparently asleep, on a wooden partition that separates
the garden from the yard. As I walked through the grass, a toad
jumped from in front of me, right in Jake's direction. In a flash,
in mid-air, Jake had that toad by the left hind leg, cross-wise in
his mouth. He dragged his prey under a piece of dri-ki (Indian word
for wood that had been in the lake but is decorative in a garden),
and in 5 minutes, had pulled in that whole leg up to the crotch; in
another 5 minutes, the snake had worked up to the abdomen, but the
toad was still alive and would lift itself on its front legs and try
to pull away, without success. A little longer, and the toad was
swallowed up to the chest and by then, presumably from fang
punctures to the heart, the toad was looking pretty lifeless. In a
half hour, the only thing still hanging out was the right hind leg.
A snake essentially swallows its prey whole and it digests as it
moves down the snake's length, which in this case is about 2 feet.
I saw Jake the next day, and the broadened area was down about 5
inches. For the past couple of days, Jake has been lounging under a
board under our bottom step. There are no poisonous snakes in
Maine, and these snakes want most to get out of our way rather than
attack us. Now for the
Unpredictable.....how detailed would you like the description of the
weather over the past 5 weeks? In summary, RAIN, RAIN and MORE
RAIN! Before we left for our NYC trip, it rained on average every 2
days and was cold at night (40s and low 50s); with sun, during the
day it warmed to the 70s, but if rainy or gray, it remained in the
50s-60s. While we were away for a week, my rain gauge recorded
3-3/4"! We returned to find the dock underwater by 4" with the 55
lb. panels almost floating away and 3" of water IN our motorboat,
which couldn't drain down through because the bilge was full; it
took more than an hour for the automatic bilge pump to expel it all
-- lucky the boat had not sunk! Bill and I have cranked up the dock
as far as it goes, and it is only 1-1/2" above water level, but with
wind and waves, the decking gets wet. The bottom step of the stairs
that go down to the dock is still under water. In short, this is
probably the highest we have ever seen the lake. Yesterday, we
walked to the stream bringing water into our lake, and it is rushing
like Niagara Falls; we have not been down to the dam at the bottom
of our lake to see its outflow, but it must be somewhat equivalent
as the water level has been relatively stable for the past 2 weeks.
The rain has not diminished, however. Over the past 16 days, it has
rained some part of every 24 hours, sometimes hard, and this morning
was no exception. Yesterday provided a few hours of off-and-on sun
and I remember about 3 hours of sun 4 days ago -- that's it for
sun! Remarkably, the flowers have been glorious, the wild
strawberries ripened (although a little late), and plants for the
most part continue to grow in my veggie gardens....but will they
produce fruit? The only benefit to all of this rain is that I have
not had to water the gardens! On the down side, the SLUGS love it!
I have never seen so many slugs in my life!! I go on "slug patrol"
every day. One day, I squished around 100, another day about 50,
and I must be gaining on them because the count continues to
decline. I have also used the beer trick in a couple of key spots
in my veggie garden as they are attracted to that smell and then
drown in the alcohol. In the meantime, while I was gone, they ate
my first planting of lettuce and the petunias planted in an old
stump. |
