Time for nesting, every one #phenology

We bet that many of your are familiar with Pete Seeger's wonderful folk song Where Have All the Flowers Gone. The past few days we've been asking the same question about the birds that had been coming to our feeders. There's been a notable drop-off in attendance recently. We think we know why, but this is speculation on our part. The next line in our version of the song would be Gone to nesting, everyone. It is that time of year and we can't think of any other major reason for the disappearance. In fact, we just reviewed our June photos and found only a few of hummingbirds and a few of orioles and that's it. We're not sure if the lack of pictures is due to a lack of birds, in part, and other interests, in part, or, probably both.

June, oriole at grape feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

It's not that no one shows up. We see the occasional cardinal, oriole, chickadee or red-winged blackbird, but the goldfinches and the flocks of many kinds of birds descending on the feeders, almost like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, seem to be something of the past season. We expect, and hope, that as eggs hatch and nestlings fledge, we'll see more visitors, but for now it's a quieter period. If you're interested in bird nesting success, we stumbled across a site on the internet that you might want to visit. It's brought to us by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and is called Nest Watch, Where birds come to life.

We lost one of our bluebird houses this year to a hungry bear fresh out of hibernation. That house is now under repair and a post to mount it on will be more sturdy than the old 2" X 4" we has used, that the bear snapped off at the base.

The Exposed Nest

Robert Frost- 1874-1963

You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But ’twas no make-believe with you to-day,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
’Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once—could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might our meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven’t any memory—have you?—
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.

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