Sometimes, days just hummm!

Even though Minnesota has an early season for teal and geese, I don't (won't) hunt waterfowl when the temperature's in the 70's and 80's. It would feel so unright to not be freezing sensitive parts of my anatomy while in a duck or goose blind. The current forecast includes temperatures at or above 80℉ through mid-week. Archery deer season opened yesterday when the high reached 82℉. That's weather for standing in a trout stream, maybe even wet wading, rather than sitting and sweating on a deer stand. At least that's according to me but judging by the number of parked vehicles in the area, some folks see it otherwise.

female ruby-throated hummingbird at feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of deer and warm weather, I'm please to note that the replacement serviceberry bushes are still showing green leaves inside their wire protective cages. Deer and/or rabbits and/or pocket gophers haven't yet done any obvious damage. Our fingers remain crossed but, to be honest, with the current state of the world, I feel a little like Merwin in the poem below. I heartily look forward to being proven wrong by events (or lack thereof).

Despite the return of summer after a recent cold front, I don't think I've seen a hummingbird at the feeder for a day or two now. It's about that time of year, for them to follow orioles south. UPDATE: as I was typing the previous sentence, a female ruby-throated hummingbird landed on the sugar water feeder. That pleases me almost as much as yesterday's discovery that we have some wild asters (perhaps silky asters) in bloom up on the slope behind the serviceberry bushes. I noticed them as I was watering the bushes.

Perhaps fall weather will arrive, and stay for a while, as we get to the autumn equinox a week from tomorrow, at 1:19 pm CDT. I've had enough of heat, humidity, and wildfire smoke for this year. Maybe cooler weather will also help cool some rhetoric and hot heads. That would be a help to avoid triggering the last day of the world.

Place

By W.S. Merwin

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

what for
not for the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time

with the sun already
going down

and the water
touching its roots

in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing

one by one
over its leaves

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Weathering August

I finally managed to get some mowing done in the back yard. The tractor was moving slowly enough that a frog had no trouble jumping out of the way and into the water in the wet spot behind the house. We tore up a little of the still damp soil in areas that need reseeding anyhow. More rain is in the forecast for later today and tonight. Sigh! NOAA’s early forecast for the upcoming winter keeps our part of Minnesota wetter than usual. At least so far I’ve not had to shovel the rain.

Also on the home front, today we translocated a third chipmunk that’s tried setting up house under the front stoop. That’s about one a week for the past three weeks. Would that we could reduce the mole/vole/pocket gopher population as quickly and easily as live trapping chipmunks.

bees tending Giant Blue Hyssop

Photo by J. Harrington

Multitudes of bumblebees are visiting the Blue Giant Hyssop flowers in the yard. There are a few small clusters of flowers on the lilac bushes. Within the past week, several ruby-throated hummingbirds have begun battling over the feeder hanging from the deck. Morning temperatures are running in the mid50’s. The return of joy to the Democratic presidential campaign is almost giving me some hope for the future. Maybe it will turn into a joy filled autumn for many of US. Stay tuned.

For the Chipmunk in My Yard

By Robert Gibb

I think he knows I’m alive, having come down 

The three steps of the back porch 

And given me a good once over. All afternoon 

He’s been moving back and forth,

Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs, 

While all about him the great fields tumble 

To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky 

To be where he is, wild with all that happens. 

He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows 

Living in the blond heart of the wheat.

This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires 

Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots, 

Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter 

On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

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Peaked summer; piqued for autumn!

Tomorrow, weather permitting, is pick up day for this week’s Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share. The forecast hints at the possibility of severe thunderstorms. That could mean downed trees across country roads and this old codger doesn’t intend to hack his way in or out of the way to the farm. That said, here’s what we get this week:

• CANTALOUPE
• BROCCOLI
• CUCUMBER
• SUMMER SQUASH, and
• SAVOY CABBAGE

The Better Half has, once again, gone above and beyond, finding creative ways to serve vegetables to make them more palatable and less boring. (You’re right! I’m what Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) turns into when he gets older. He never does grow up.) I find the similarities among cucumbers, zucchini, and summer squash quite distressing, lots of water, little flavor. On the other hand, the occasional watermelon, and, come autumn, acorn squash, is delicious. Broccoli in cheese sauce is okay too. Summer has peaked and left me looking forward to cooler temperatures as well as the return of soup and stew season.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m not sure but I believe we’re seeing this year’s hummingbird hatchlings showing up at the feeders. At least the one I saw earlier today looked smaller than any we’ve seen so far this season. I continue to have a hard time getting my head around something the size of a hummingbird flying as far as they do. Soon they males will begin their 2,000 mile trip south to their wintering grounds, followed later by females and young. Meanwhile, the American goldfinches are busy nesting and lining their nests with thistle down. Different strokes for different folks.

Summer Story

by Mary Oliver

When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine,
into the funnels

of the blossoms
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,

I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in this world

that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power-------
that nobody owns

or could but even
for a hillside of money-----
that just float
in the world,

or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines,
and now here I am

spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself

a small bird with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast

it is only a heart beat ahead of breaking------
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.

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Who’s the real invasive species?

As close as I can figure out, we have four or five pairs of ruby-throated hummingbird nesting around the house, two or three behind the house and two or three in front. Or, there are only two or three pair in all and they use both the front and back feeders. Looking at the size of a female at the feeder hanging from the deck as I type this, I’m astonished at the distance something that size migrates. Since, in my younger days, I’ve been miles out on the open ocean in a 19 foot boat, I think I have a decent sense of relative size to distance traveled.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

I know monarch butterflies also undertake a long migration, but they take several generations to do it in one season, which is also astonishing. Most of the time, unfortunately, I tend to take for granted the wonders in front of me. In part because I don’t get to personally watch the details of those trips, just as I don’t recall my embryonic development, which limits my ability to relate to what goes on in a chrysalis.

Do you suppose the increase in fine particle pollution from Canadian and Western U.S. wildfires will affect birds or butterflies or other critters in more ways than habitat loss? What, if anything, do we know about the effects of PFAS/PFOS on fish, wildlife and invertebrates? I’m pondering these questions after reading several articles on felt wading boots and fly fishers as vectors in spreading aquatic invasive species such as 

"rock snot" (Didymosphenia geminata); a gastropod, New Zealand mud snails (Potamopyrgus antipodarum); and particularly out west, whirling disease which is caused by a cnidarian (Myxobolus cerebralis) of the class Myxosporea. Viruses are another potential threat to coldwater streams. Viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) has garnered the most attention recently but there are other potential viruses that can be considered AIS

The definition of an invasive species usually involves creating some sort of economic or ecological harm to the human species and its environs. Now that we’re in the Anthropocene, haven’t we, by definition, become the only species with negative global impacts? Isn’t there a biblical saying about the qualifications of who should cast the first stone? And shouldn’t we do a better job of remembering that denial is not just a river in Egypt?

Maybe after the current air quality warning ends I’ll be less cranky, if another one doesn’t come along soon.

Prayer for the Mutilated World

By sam sax

what will be left after the last fidget

spinner’s spun its last spin

after the billboards accrue their thick

layer of grit masking advertisements

for teeth paste & tanqueray gin

after the highways are overtaken

by invasive forests

after the ministers give up their gods

& the rabbis their congregations

for drink

after new men rise to lead us sheep

toward our shearing, to make bed

sheets from our hair

after the high towers have no airplanes

to warn away & instead blink purely

toward heaven like children

with one red eye

after phone lines do nothing

but cut the sky into sheet music

& our phones are just expensive

bricks of metal & glass

after our cloud of photographs collapses

& all memories retreat back

into their privatized skulls

after the water taps gasp out their final

blessing

what then?

when even the local militias run

out of ammunitions

when the blast radii have been

chalked & the missiles do all they were

built to

when us jews have given up our state

for that much older country of walking

& then that even older religion of dirt

when all have succumbed to illness

inside the church of our gutted pharmacies

when the seas eat their cities

when the ground splits like a dress

when the trash continent in the mid-atlantic

at last opens its mouth to spit

what will be left after we’ve left

i dare not consider it

instead dance with me a moment

late in this last extinction

that you are reading this

must be enough

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A matter of perspective

This morning a brightly colored Baltimore oriole male arrived at the grape jelly feeder. We hope he hangs around and isn’t just passing through. And later, we saw our first ruby-throated hummingbird of the year. Now the questions become: will any of the bulbs we planted last autumn grow this season and will we see scarlet tanagers or purple finches this year?

Baltimore oriole male at grape feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m embarrassed to confess we have yet to wet a line this season. Of course, until recently, snow melt has affected the trout streams we would have been fishing. The current plan is to get licenses this Wednesday and hope that action doesn’t trigger a spring blizzard. Then I get to curse myself for never getting around to having finished cleaning and organizing my fly-fishing gear last winter. Oh well, there’s always the theory that the best way to get gear organized is to use it.😉

The Better Half [BH] likes to actually fish on a fishing outing whereas I also enjoy getting out and just poking around. I suspect that means some solo scouting trips for me in the days ahead while BH is watching the Granddaughter. That will probably turn out to be good for all three of us, especially if I remember to spray permethrin on my fishing shirts in anticipation of mosquito season. It seems like only weeks ago that the ground was snow covered and now... oh, wait! It was!

As we drove past a recently plowed farm field this morning, we noticed half a dozen or so swans and a couple of Canada geese. Rarely do I think about how large swans really are, but seeing  them next to the  geese provided an often lacking scale. Swans are BIG!

The Swan

by Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

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A different September song.

The holiday weekend is over. The furnace tech visited this morning and said we’re good to go for the winter. We have two family birthdays coming up this month, autumn Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] shares begin next week, the Equinox occurs on the 22nd and World Rivers Day is the 25th. Those are the current, known, high points this month for us. I’ll see what I can do to sneak in some pleasant surprises between now and month’s end.

Brake for Snakes

Photo by J. Harrington

Female ruby-throated hummingbirds are still coming to the sugar water feeder. Yesterday and the day before we say a “baby” snake about six inches long in the woods on the south side of the house. I think it was a hog-nose snake but wouldn’t want to have to swear to that in court. As I recall, that’s the only (live) snake we’ve seen all spring and summer, but we haven’t been walking the property much so that’s not surprising. Since the township paved the gravel road, it’s been more hazardous for reptiles to warm themselves on the roadway. We did see a couple of snake corpses last spring. It would be nice if the county and township would put up some snake crossing signs to go with the turtle crossing signs already in place, although we could use a few more of the latter, also. Isn’t this about the time of year when little turtles hatch and head for the ponds? It was the end of August a couple of years ago that I rescued a baby snapper from the road, parked him or her in the birdbath overnight and released the critter the next day in the pond up the road.

turtle crossing

Photo by J. Harrington

(Today's title refers to this.)

SEPTEMBER

by: Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

HE golden-rod is yellow;

The corn is turning brown;

The trees in apple orchards

With fruit are bending down.

 

The gentian's bluest fringes

Are curling in the sun;

In dusty pods the milkweed

Its hidden silk has spun.

 

The sedges flaunt their harvest,

In every meadow nook;

And asters by the brook-side

Make asters in the brook.

 

From dewy lanes at morning

The grapes' sweet odors rise;

At noon the roads all flutter

With yellow butterflies.

 

By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer's best of weather,

And autumn's best of cheer.

 

But none of all this beauty

Which floods the earth and air

Is unto me the secret

Which makes September fair.

 

'T is a thing which I remember;

To name it thrills me yet:

One day of one September

I never can forget.

"September" is reprinted from Poems. Helen Jackson. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1892.

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‘Tis a day of hummers and chirpers

 After suffering through a “spring” that was more like a weak winter, and taking down the sunflower seed feeders due to avian flu, we’ve finally got some weather to enjoy and, a pleasant surprise! We’ve put up hummingbird/oriole feeders because rarely is there more than one bird at a time at those feeders. During the past few days, a couple of downy woodpeckers have been feeding at the oriole feeder. Today, midday, a female ruby-throated hummingbird arrived at the small, red, window-mounted feeder in front of the house. It’s the earliest I remember seeing a hummer at our place.

mid-May: female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

Meanwhile, inside the house, the upstairs, hard-wired smoke detector is doing a five chirp sequence every ninety forty-five seconds or so to let us know it’s expired. The “quick-connect” plug’s disconnect tab isn’t functioning so I can’t just disconnect the damn thing and, as far as I can tell, it’s on the master circuit so I don’t want to just trip a circuit breaker. Fortunately, I can’t lay hands on either the idiot at First Alert who decided a repeating chirp sequence instead of a flashing light was the way to inform a homeowner who couldn’t readily disconnect the unit nor the idiot who laid out the wiring circuits for our house. Having to turnoff the main circuit breaker to replace a smoke detector isn’t the brighest design decision I’ve ever encountered.

I can’t simply get away from the annoying chirps by doing outside work because there’s an outside chance our electrician, scheduled to come tomorrow, might get an opening today and come early. If I’m outside and missed that text, you can be sure that’s the opportunity I’d miss a chance to confirm. Later today I’ll spend time outside when the Better Half is home and can baby sit my cell phone while I’m away from the damn chirps. Maybe now that the weather’s warmer, I can listen for frog choruses tonight.

Hummingbird

By Mark Roper

Not just how
it hung so still
in the quick of its wings,
all gem and temper
anchored in air;

not just the way
it moved from shelf
to shelf of air,
up down, here there,
without moving;

not just how it flicked
its tongue's thread
through each butter-yellow
foxglove flower
for its fix of sugar;

not just the vest's
electric emerald,
the scarf's scarlet,
not just the fury
of its berry-sized heart,

but also how the bird
would soon be found
in a tree nearby,
quiet as moss at the end
of a bare branch,

wings closed around
its sweetening being,
and then how light
might touch its throat
and make it glow,

as if it were the tip
of a cigarette
smouldering
on the lip of a world,
whose face,

in the lake's hush
and the stir of leaves,
might appear
for a moment
composed.

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Signs of (wild)life! #phenology

 Late yesterday afternoon, or early evening if you prefer, the back yard was visited by half a dozen whitetail deer in two groups of three each. Their coats looked kind of scruffy as winter hair is being replaced by summer pelage. The visit was a short one since there isn’t much to eat back there, nor anywhere else this time of year. Not much has greened up or budded out in our neighborhood.

April wood ducks

Photo by J. Harrington

The pond and its feeder creek up the road are ice free again. Maybe this time for the season? (Below freezing overnight temps are forecast to return midweek.) The open water looked appealing enough that a pair of mallard drakes were loafing on the creek’s waters and a drake wood duck skittered off the pool as the dogs and I walked by late this morning. It’s hope-raising to see signs of wildlife after a long winter broken only by a visit from Santa.

The buds on the maples in front of the house haven’t really broken yet, although we noticed bud burst on a number of the local poplars. Despite the tardiness of spring this year we’ve hung hummingbird feeders. Regular feeders with sunflower chips are down thanks to avian bird flu. Rarely do we see more than one or two hummers at a time so we’ve got our fingers crossed that the nectar feeders are okay.

This weekend or next week spring chores will have to get started or we’ll be doing spring chores all summer, although that’s often the way it works around here. More and more dead branches keep dropping during the storms and winds we’ve been having. They’ll need to get collected and burned before we clean up some of the oak leaves that need to be tidied so we can seed some bee-friendly lawn and cross our fingers the birds don’t eat most of the seeds before they germinate and root. Meanwhile, we’re looking forward to picking up our first community supported agriculture spring share come Friday. Despite contrary weather, life can be good if we let it.

April Clean-up

by Hayden Carruth

He isn’t quite a eunuch but that’s 
what he calls himself, this old
two-beat codger on this spring
afternoon picking up the winter’s 
crop of twigs and bark from the lawn
to make it “look nicer” and to supply
the house with kindling next winter
for himself or his heirs, meanwhile coughing
and gasping, cursing the pain in his back,
thinking always of the days when 
each year after the run-off he was in
the woods with the early trout lillies
and violets and with his ax, saw,
and canthook, doing a man’s work 
that has no connection with sex at all. 

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Finally? spring? #phenology

We finally seem to have moved away from a persistent threat of overnight frost. Highs in the sunshine are now in the upper sixties. Yesterday we saw a large garter snake sunning in the roadside ditch (a much safer location than on the road itself). Today we noticed the first dandelion puffball of the year. There are still many, many, yellow flowers, but an early starter has already set seeds. Speaking of seeds, many of the local farm fields are in the midst of being planted. Tractors, harrows and planters are cluttering the local roads and slow-moving semis are hauling last year's grain someplace.

Today we observed, for the first time this year, a male ruby-throated hummingbird. It was at the front feeder. He may have been here before, but we couldn't see any ruby-red throat feathers until this morning. Late yesterday the downey woodpeckers kept startling hummingbirds away from the big nectar feeder hanging from the deck railing.

male rose-breasted grosbeak

Photo by J. Harrington

Male goldfinches have, for some time now, been wearing chrome yellow mating colors. When they share the feeders with male rose-breasted grosbeaks, it looks like someone spilled a box of bright-colored crayons on the perches.

The Farm

By Joyce Sutphen

My father’s farm is an apple blossomer.

He keeps his hills in dandelion carpet

and weaves a lane of lilacs between the rose

and the jack-in-the-pulpits.

His sleek cows ripple in the pastures.

The dog and purple iris

keep watch at the garden’s end.

His farm is rolling thunder,

a lightning bolt on the horizon.

His crops suck rain from the sky

and swallow the smoldering sun.

His fields are oceans of heat,

where waves of gold

beat the burning shore.

A red fox

pauses under the birch trees,

a shadow is in the river’s bend.

When the hawk circles the land,

my father’s grainfields whirl beneath it.

Owls gather together to sing in his woods,

and the deer run his golden meadow.

My father’s farm is an icicle,

a hillside of white powder.

He parts the snowy sea,

and smooths away the valleys.

He cultivates his rows of starlight

and drags the crescent moon

through dark unfurrowed fields.

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Is there a phenology of migration triggers?

Yesterday afternoon we drove a circuit on the local roads around a large chunk of Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area in Chisago County. We were looking for robins and red-winged blackbirds. Not a feather of either was to be seen, although we did see an osprey and two turkey hens on the northern leg, plus the waterfowl we've been reporting, and the Better Half spotted a cluster of pussy willows near a wetland on the southern leg.

Spring arrival, male red-winged blackbird

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning we had to drive the southern leg of the same loop to run an errand, picking up heart worm and flea & tick meds for the dogs. Blond SiSi showed the season's first tick the day before yesterday. On our way to get the meds, we noticed two robins and two or three red-winged blackbirds. Where were they yesterday? Did they just arrive overnight? Was the time of day a significant factor? We'll probably never know, but their recent appearance puts the season's migration phenology back into a more usual framework.

Elsewhere, Journey North shows that both robins and blackbirds have been arriving in much of Minnesota only within the past week or two, while monarch butterflies and ruby-throated hummingbirds are still well south of our North Country. According to All About Birds:

The mechanisms initiating migratory behavior vary and are not always completely understood. Migration can be triggered by a combination of changes in day length, lower temperatures, changes in food supplies, and genetic predisposition.

Redwing Blackbird

Feet firmly perch 
thinnest stalks, reeds, bulrush. 
Until all at once, they attend my 
female form, streaked throat, brownness.

Three fly equidistant 
around me, flashing. 
Each, in turn, calls territorial 
trills, beckons ok-a-li, ok-a-li! 

Spreads his wings, extends 
inner muscle quivering red 
epaulet bands uniquely bolden. 

Turn away each suitor, 
mind myself my audience. 
Select another to consider, 
He in turn quiver thrills. 

Leave for insects. 
Perhaps one male follows. 
Maybe a few brood of young, 
line summertime. 

Silver Maple samaras 
wing wind, spread clusters 
along with mine, renewing Prairie. 

As summer closes, I leave 
dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies, 
mosquitoes, moths, spiders, crickets for 

grain, see, Sunflower; 
join thousands to flock Sky— 
grackles, blackbirds, cowbirds, starlings— 
Swarming like distant smoke clouds, rising.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke 

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Getting perspective, shifting focus

We learned something new this morning. Perhaps you already know about the air quality images of the Boundary Waters available online. We didn't. If you're interested, here's a screen capture showing the area of coverage. (Use the preceding link to visit the site.)

This is one of the nicest discoveries we've made on social media (Twitter) in quite awhile. For the autumn, it will be interesting to compare, from time to time, the current image with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Fall Color Finder. Then, this winter, we can watch for snowfall and, maybe?, Northern Lights?

Once again the ruby-throated hummingbirds seem to have disappeared but, so far this month, every time we thought they were gone, one showed up at one of our feeders with 12 to 18 hours. We'll see what happens this time. [UPDATE: 15 minutes after posting, a hummer arrived at the front feeder.]

hummingbird perched on dead branch

Photo by J. Harrington

Recently, we've been trying to figure out whether, and how much under what circumstances, we should be removing dead branches from our trees and whether we should remove some of the oaks that have clearly died. It is less than a straight-forward exercise in decision making. A lot depends on a lot of other things. Folks who are focused primarily on the health and appearance of trees lean toward removal. Those with more of an ecological systems bent point out all the roles dead branches and trees serve. We are going to spend some time studying permaculture to see if we can establish a framework within which we can assess the pros and cons of different approaches. Our primary objective at the moment is to avoid being guilty of the dictum "when your only tool is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail." In our case, substitute saw for hammer and dead wood for nail. Plus, to be honest, we've often felt deprived by the lack of design courses in our education. Studying permaculture design may help rectify that deficiency.

Speaking Tree 

Joy Harjo - 1951-

I had a beautiful dream I was dancing with a tree.

                                                                   —Sandra Cisneros

Some things on this earth are unspeakable:
Genealogy of the broken—
A shy wind threading leaves after a massacre,
Or the smell of coffee and no one there—

Some humans say trees are not sentient beings,
But they do not understand poetry—

Nor can they hear the singing of trees when they are fed by
Wind, or water music—
Or hear their cries of anguish when they are broken and bereft—

Now I am a woman longing to be a tree, planted in a moist, dark earth
Between sunrise and sunset—

I cannot walk through all realms—
I carry a yearning I cannot bear alone in the dark—

What shall I do with all this heartache?

The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk
Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway—
To the edge of the river of life, and drink—

I have heard trees talking, long after the sun has gone down:

Imagine what would it be like to dance close together
In this land of water and knowledge. . .

To drink deep what is undrinkable.

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Heading South so soon? #phenology

For the past week or two, I've been refilling the oriole / hummingbird nectar feeder, hanging from the deck railing, with sugar water every day or every other day. There's been up to a half  dozen ruby-throated hummingbirds at a time trying to guzzle it down plus, I think, an occasional young of the year oriole and several downy woodpeckers helping out. So far today I've noticed only a few hummingbirds at that feeder. Have some of the adults decided to head for warmer climes? Audubon Guides notes that:

As early as July, ruby-throated hummingbirds start accumulating fat.  According to Cornell’s The Birds of North America Online, a ruby-throated hummingbird’s body weight can double in just seven to ten days.  Research has shown that the average amount of weight gained by hummingbirds prior to migration is sufficient to fuel a 500-mile flight – a necessity if they choose to cross the Gulf of Mexico.  For those who wonder if leaving their hummingbird feeders up late into the fall might delay the birds’ departure, fear not.  The hummingbirds visiting feeders in the fall are probably migrants, not residents, and will help, not hinder, their migration.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

The Journey North web site has announced this week that Fall Migration Season is Underway! I've noticed a male or two this week so, if the local birds are leaving, it's just begun yesterday or today. Comparing the size of a hummingbird with the distance of their journey leaves me just as astounded, perhaps more so, that the migrations of monarch butterflies. Butterflies migrate using different generations to run legs of a relay migration. Hummingbirds do it in one generation; the youngsters have never done it before; and both parents leave ahead of the young'uns. How does that work?

Hummingbird Abecedarian

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Arriving with throats like nipped roses, like a tiny
bloom fastened to each neck, nothing else
cuts the air quite like this thrum to make the small
dog at my feet whine and yelp. So we wait—no
excitement pinned to the sky so needled and our days open
full of rain for weeks. Nothing yet from the ground speaks
green except weeds. But soon you see a familiar shadow
hovering where the glass feeders you brought
inside used to hang because the ice might shatter the pollen
junk and leaf bits collected after this windiest,wildest of winters.
Kin across the ocean surely felt this little jump of blood, this
little heartbeat, perhaps brushed across my grandmother’s
mostly grey braid snaked down her brown
neck and back across the Indian and the widest part of the Pacific
ocean, across the Mississippi, and back underneath my
patio. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been silent in my lungs,
quiet as a salamander. Those times I wanted to decipher the mutter
rolled off a stranger’s full and beautiful lips. I only knew they
spoke in Malayalam—my father’s language—and how
terrific it’d sound if I could make my own slow mouth
ululate like that in utter sorrow or joy. I’m certain I’d be
voracious with each light and peppered syllable
winged back to me in the form of this sort of faith, a gift like
xenia offered to me. And now I must give it back to this tiny bird, its
yield far greener and greater than I could ever repay—a light like
zirconia—hoping for something so simple and sweet to sip.

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Mid-August #phenology

We're half-way through August. Have you noticed the wild cucumber showing and growing, almost like a Northern version of kudzu? Well, not really, since kudzu is a non-native invasive and wild cucumber is native and doesn't seem to harm much.

The Minnesota wild rice season is now open.

The waning crescent moon becomes new in a couple of days. In fact, it will be a Black Moon. The past few early mornings the crescent moon has been gorgeous, hanging low in the Eastern sky about 4 or 5 am. Early evenings now we can watch for common nighthawks, looking like stunt fliers as they feed on insects and head toward the South for the Winter.

Even though mid-day temperatures today were in the 70's, that's warm enough to quickly and easily work up a sweat doing outside chores. Well, it was for me anyhow. I was "policing" the yard and then pruning a downed oak tree so the way will be clear to reduce the larger branches to firewood.

male ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

From the numbers we've been seeing st the feeders, it looks like this Summer produced a bumper crop of ruby-throated hummingbirds. Past years we've noticed 3 or 4 hummers. This year up to half a dozen have been chasing one another, or chased by "bees," around the nectar feeder on the deck. The front feeder has seen about the usual one or two at a time. All told, the hummers, with the assistance of some woodpeckers, have been consuming between 1/2 and a full pint of sugar water daily. The is the first year we've had to refill the feeder with that frequency.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

We've now reached a time of year to reacquaint ourselves with An illustrated guide to the signs of Minnesota fall, brought to us by the multi-talented Greta Kaul at MinnPost and the Minnesota Phenology Network.

Summer Story

by Mary Oliver

When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine
and the funnels

of the blossoms,
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,

I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in the world

that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power–
that nobody owns

or could buy even
for a hillside of money–
that just
float about the world,

or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines
and how here I am

spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling
so that I feel I am myself

a small bird
with a terrible hunger
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast

it is only a heartbeat ahead of breaking
and I am the hunger and the assuagement
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight and shaking

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A prince in disguise?

From time to time in these blog posts I've mentioned the "wet spot" in our back yard. In Spring-time it's full of frog choruses which, for the most part, sound cheerful. I'm not sure where, specifically, all those noisy anurans disappear to during the Summer, although we see gray treefrogs on the windows, screens and railings from time to time.

is a frog in a bird house like a cat in the hat?

Photo by J. Harrington

A day or so ago, I went to check the restored bluebird house, the one that someone had filled with twigs, to see if anyone else had started a nest. I was surprised to discover, inside the house, a treefrog. At the time I didn't have either a camera or cell phone with me. Today I checked again. It's not clear whether the frog was back in the bluebird house or still in the bluebird house. In either case, the frog is unlikely to be consuming many insects while ensconced in a bird house. I may have to consider an eviction action. The frog is large enough to consume deer flies but the fact that it mostly hunts at night probably means it doesn't help reduce that population very much. Which might also explain why this particular frog spends its days in a bluebird house. I wonder if current inhabitation by a frog would deter bluebirds from nesting. I also wonder if we humans know nearly enough to try to pick winners and losers in nature.

That's it for today, except for a brief report that much of the time I've been writing this, several hummingbirds and bees or yellowjackets have been chasing each other away from the "oriole" feeder. All of which triggers my parental reaction of "if you can't play nice together, I'll take away your toys until you learn to get along and take turns." But then, see the last sentence in the preceding paragraph.

The Frog

By Hilaire Belloc

Be kind and tender to the Frog,

   And do not call him names,

As ‘Slimy skin,’ or ‘Polly-wog,’

   Or likewise ‘Ugly James,’

Or ‘Gape-a-grin,’ or ‘Toad-gone-wrong,’   

   Or ‘Billy Bandy-knees’:

The Frog is justly sensitive

   To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay

   A treatment kind and fair;

At least so lonely people say

Who keep a frog (and, by the way,   

They are extremely rare).

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Arrival of the hummingbirds #phenology

This morning the first sighting of ruby-throated hummingbirds occurred. About 8:15 am a male appeared at the window feeder in front of the house. What I  think may be a female arrived an hour or two later. With the bright sun backlighting the bird, it was hard to note the neck patch color.

ruby-throated hummingbird male

Photo by J. Harrington

The Daughter Person and Son-In-Law report that a female ruffed grouse flew into a window pane in their house and broke its neck. I thought this only happened in Autumn, during "crazy flight" time. Obviously, grouse and I don't read the same field guides or natural history essays. While the Better  Half was off supervising the dismemberment of the unfortunate bird I managed to accomplish a few more transitional season chores. I'm hoping I wasn't overly optimistic taking the back blade off of the tractor and that any additional snow events will promptly melt away, at least until next November.

pear tree in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

The pear tree has started to leaf out. No signs of blossoms yet. As I recall, last year we were hit with a strong storm or two almost immediately after the pear tree bloomed. The flowers were mostly destroyed and we had a poor fruit crop come Autumn. Maybe this year will be an improvement.

Hummingbird

by Mark Roper

Not just how
it hung so still
in the quick of its wings,
all gem and temper
anchored in air;

not just the way
it moved from shelf
to shelf of air,
up down, here there,
without moving;

not just how it flicked
its tongue's thread
through each butter-yellow
foxglove flower
for its fix of sugar;

not just the vest's
electric emerald,
the scarf's scarlet,
not just the fury
of its berry-sized heart,

but also how the bird
would soon be found
in a tree nearby,
quiet as moss at the end
of a bare branch,

wings closed around
its sweetening being,
and then how light
might touch its throat
and make it glow,

as if it were the tip
of a cigarette
smouldering
on the lip of a world,
whose face,

in the lake's hush
and the stir of leaves,
might appear
for a moment
composed.

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In anticipation! and welcome!

With less than a week left in April, I'd say it's officially "late April." According  to Minnesota Seasons, that means we can anticipate the arrival of male ruby-throated hummingbirds anytime soon. As much as I love the arrival of waterfowl and wading birds such as Canada geese and sandhill cranes, I am constantly delighted and amazed by the arrival of tiny sparks of life embodied in hummingbirds.

male ruby-throated hummingbird, mid-May

Photo by J. Harrington

If we get a  foot or so of snow anytime over the next couple of weeks, feel free to blame me and the hummingbirds for  our  optimism. I filled and hung a couple of feeders, based largely on the report of a hummingbird having been sighted today at Maiden Rock, WI.

Journey North web site

It'll probably be a week or two, or more, before a grape jelly feeder goes up for Baltimore orioles, but it's really encouraging to feel that we're coming into Spring instead of just out of Winter. Turning that corner at the end of this years Earth Week, more of us may be able to admit that some things in this world simply arrive as gifts and our responsibility is to pay attention and enjoy them and be thankful that they're sharing their lives with ours.

Think about this for a moment: in a universe whose very existence some find improbable, during a span of time beyond my comprehension, an improbable life such as mine, or yours, crosses that of an even less probable hummingbird so sometimes both arrive together in the same place and the same time in an impossibly huge universe is miraculous, isn't it? Looking at the size and duration of the universe, what's the probability of you or I seeing a hummingbird within arm's reach? But it happens. It's a gift from the universe to us.

“Hummingbirds”

by Mary Oliver

The female, and two chicks,

each no bigger than my thumb,

scattered,

shimmering

in their pale-green dresses;

then they rose, tiny fireworks,

into the leaves

and hovered;

then they sat down,

each one with dainty, charcoal feet –

each one on a slender branch –

and looked at me.

I had meant no harm,

I had simply

climbed the tree

for something to do

on a summer day,

not knowing they were there,

ready to burst the ledges

of their mossy nest

and to fly, for the first time,

in their sea-green helmets,

with brisk, metallic tails –

each tulled wing,

with every dollop of flight,

drawing a perfect wheel

across the air.

Then, with a series of jerks,

they paused in front of me

and, dark-eyed, stared –

as though I were a flower –

and then,

like three tosses of silvery water,

they were gone.

Alone,

in the crown of the tree,

I went to China,

I went to Prague;

I died, and was born in the spring;

I found you, and loved you, again.

Later the darkness fell

and the solid moon

like a white pond rose.

But I wasn’t in any hurry.

Likely I visted all

the shimmering, heart-stabbing

questions without answers

before I climbed down.

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Do Summer temperatures slow raptor migration? #phenology

A hummingbird showed up at the feeder yesterday. Perhaps with today's temperatures in the mid-80's it thinks Summer has returned. Further North, numbers of raptors should be heading South over Hawk Ridge in Duluth. The migration timing shown below is from several years ago, but we doubt if there's been much change.

Hawk Ridge raptor migration timing

Photo by J. Harrington

Candidly, we haven't been paying much attention to the wind directions near Duluth but, if you're headed in that direction, you might want to check the wind and weather forecast to see if you can pick a better day to visit Hawk Ridge.

Hawk Ridge raptor migration pattern

Photo by J. Harrington

This Saturday there'll be an Indigenous Foods Expo in Duluth, so, if you're looking for an excuse to head in that direction, now you have one. As if anyone needed excuses to head up North and see Lake Superior at this time of year!

(We spent a couple of hours in the dentist chair today so our posting is short and sweet. We need a nap or something.)

The Hawk's Cry in Autumn

By Joseph Brodsky

Wind from the northwestern quarter is lifting him high above

the dove-gray, crimson, umber, brown

Connecticut Valley. Far beneath,

chickens daintily pause and move

unseen in the yard of the tumbledown

farmstead, chipmunks blend with the heath.

Now adrift on the airflow, unfurled, alone,

all that he glimpses—the hills’ lofty, ragged

ridges, the silver stream that threads

quivering like a living bone

of steel, badly notched with rapids,

the townships like strings of beads

strewn across New England. Having slid down to nil

thermometers—those household gods in niches—

freeze, inhibiting thus the fire

of leaves and churches’ spires. Still,

no churches for him. In the windy reaches,

undreamt of by the most righteous choir,

he soars in a cobalt-blue ocean, his beak clamped shut,

his talons clutched tight into his belly

—claws balled up like a sunken fist—

sensing in each wisp of down the thrust

from below, glinting back the berry

of his eyeball, heading south-southeast

to the Rio Grande, the Delta, the beech groves and farther still:

to a nest hidden in the mighty groundswell

of grass whose edges no fingers trust,

sunk amid forest’s odors, filled

with splinters of red-speckled eggshell,

with a brother or a sister’s ghost.

The heart overgrown with flesh, down, feather, wing,

pulsing at feverish rate, nonstopping,

propelled by internal heat and sense,

the bird goes slashing and scissoring

the autumnal blue, yet by the same swift token,

enlarging it at the expense

of its brownish speck, barely registering on the eye,

a dot, sliding far above the lofty

pine tree; at the expense of the empty look

of that child, arching up at the sky,

that couple that left the car and lifted

their heads, that woman on the stoop.

But the uprush of air is still lifting him

higher and higher. His belly feathers

feel the nibbling cold. Casting a downward gaze,

he sees the horizon growing dim,

he sees, as it were, the features

of the first thirteen colonies whose

chimneys all puff out smoke. Yet it’s their total within his sight

that tells the bird of his elevation,

of what altitude he’s reached this trip.

What am I doing at such a height?

He senses a mixture of trepidation

and pride. Heeling over a tip

of wing, he plummets down. But the resilient air

bounces him back, winging up to glory,

to the colorless icy plane.

His yellow pupil darts a sudden glare

of rage, that is, a mix of fury

and terror. So once again

he turns and plunges down. But as walls return

rubber balls, as sins send a sinner to faith, or near,

he’s driven upward this time as well!

He! whose innards are still so warm!

Still higher! Into some blasted ionosphere!

That astronomically objective hell

of birds that lacks oxygen, and where the milling stars

play millet served from a plate or a crescent.

What, for the bipeds, has always meant

height, for the feathered is the reverse.

Not with his puny brain but with shriveled air sacs

he guesses the truth of it: it’s the end.

And at this point he screams. From the hooklike beak

there tears free of him and flies ad luminem

the sound Erinyes make to rend

souls: a mechanical, intolerable shriek,

the shriek of steel that devours aluminum;

“mechanical,” for it’s meant

for nobody, for no living ears:

not man’s, not yelping foxes’,

not squirrels’ hurrying to the ground

from branches; not for tiny field mice whose tears

can’t be avenged this way, which forces

them into their burrows. And only hounds

lift up their muzzles. A piercing, high-pitched squeal,

more nightmarish than the D-sharp grinding

of the diamond cutting glass,

slashes the whole sky across. And the world seems to reel

for an instant, shuddering from this rending.

For the warmth burns space in the highest as

badly as some iron fence down here

brands incautious gloveless fingers.

We, standing where we are, exclaim

“There!” and see far above the tear

that is a hawk, and hear the sound that lingers

in wavelets, a spider skein

swelling notes in ripples across the blue vault of space

whose lack of echo spells, especially in October,

an apotheosis of pure sound.

And caught in this heavenly patterned lace,

starlike, spangled with hoarfrost powder,

silver-clad, crystal-bound,

the bird sails to the zenith, to the dark-blue high

of azure. Through binoculars we foretoken

him, a glittering dot, a pearl.

We hear something ring out in the sky,

like some family crockery being broken,

slowly falling aswirl,

yet its shards, as they reach our palms, don’t hurt

but melt when handled. And in a twinkling

once more one makes out curls, eyelets, strings,

rainbowlike, multicolored, blurred

commas, ellipses, spirals, linking

heads of barley, concentric rings—

the bright doodling pattern the feather once possessed,

a map, now a mere heap of flying

pale flakes that make a green slope appear

white. And the children, laughing and brightly dressed,

swarm out of doors to catch them, crying

with a loud shout in English, “Winter's here!”

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