The Ilex Buffet

The fauna show around these parts has been on winter hiatus, but a bountiful display of berries produced by yaupon trees along the fence line pulled in some regular visitors this February.

Table for two.  

Yaupon, or Ilex vomitoria, suffers a bit of a bad reputation as a result of confusion arising from its name.  According to various sources, indigenous people and early settlers used caffeine bearing young twigs and leaves off Ilex to brew a strong tea which would be consumed in mass quantities and then vomited back up, as part of ceremonial gatherings. Can't you just imagine the invitations?  "Come celebrate the harvest with our tribe!  We'll supply the tea and buckets, you just bring yourself (and a change of clothes)!".

Testing revealed it is not a chemical compound in the yaupon itself that causes vomiting.  Ritual ceremonies apparently included the ingestion of other substances or perhaps participants utilized a finger down the throat.  Either way, the "vomitoria" appellation stuck and has some folks still avoiding using these beautiful trees mistakenly thinking they are somehow protecting children and pets.

Which is a shame, because the berries are quite attractive, drawing in birds and mammals alike, especially after a series of freezes and thaws which theoretically alter their taste or texture in some fashion to make them even more desirable.  Each berry holds 4 nutlets, the protein source everybody is after, including these Eastern Fox squirrels, (Sciurus niger).  After some rather unscientific observation, it appears to me the squirrels mash the berries up in their paws and nibble the nutlets out.

Mature fox squirrels mate twice a year (young females only bear once annually) including a litter born in late January or February.   I'm not experienced enough to be able to determine the maturity or the sex of the two that have been feeding together for hours daily, but one of the two is significantly shyer than the other, retreating deep into the tree whenever I get too close.

That leads me to believe this is a female, while the handsome bolder squirrel who watches closely but rarely moves far from its selected seat at the table?  I am guessing this is her male consort.

Handsome, but he could use a napkin.

Whenever the squirrels take a break, a pair of Northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) visits, to get their fair share.

Cardinals do not molt into duller winter plumage, so this male may be an adolescent who has not quite reached full color.  He has been regularly accompanied by a female, who like Ms. Squirrel, is also a bit warier of having her portrait made.

She's in there...keep looking.

Things have been relatively quiet around our spaces the past couple of months. Aside from the ever present deer, and a handful of white tailed dove that took full advantage one afternoon of newly exposed soil underneath a bird feeder, these guests at the yaupon buffet represent the totality of our regular recent wildlife sightings.

I'm eagerly looking forward to an easing up of our spells of freezing and near-freezing weather, as warmer days and nights will trigger an explosion of growth benefitting flora and fauna alike.  The wildlife visitor bureau assures me traffic will pick up in March, and from here forward fauna watching should become a daily pleasure again.

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Thanks as always to Tina at My Gardener Says, for hosting Wildlife Wednesdays, a salute to the wonderful creatures who not only share but decorate our spaces with their colorful beings and behaviors.  Be sure to check out the other wildlife posts from all around as linked to in the comments section of Tina's post for March.  Happy Wildlife Wednesday everybody!

The Usual Suspects

Welcome back for another post as part of Wildlife Wednesday, when garden bloggers stop to appreciate the fauna that goes along with the flora in our outdoor spaces.

Here at austin agrodolce, we don't simply welcome birds, we work hard to lure them in.

Chief Bird Watchers: Bijou and Sketch

We keep our cats indoors.

Lesser Goldfinch couple

We put out feeders,

Blue Jay

we provide lots of water,

Beauty Berry Bush

we plant native perennials known to provide berries and habitat.  And, we use very few chemicals in our outdoor spaces.  If that means things get a bit buggy here?  The birds don't seem to mind one bit.

Black chinned hummingbird

To reward our efforts we have a fairly consistent cast of feathered characters who serenade and otherwise keep us good company whenever we venture outside.  Above and to follow are the stalwart regulars that make up our Avian Ensemble.

Ruby throated hummingbird

House Sparrows

Black crested titmouse

Poppa Cardinal - We are pleased to share our gardens with a nesting pair.

Carolina Chickadee

Mockingbird

Yellow Warbler

Carolina House Wren - A mating pair leads us a merry chase each year as we try to prevent them from nest building in a car bumper or empty shoes or the tip bag stored in the garage.

Eastern Screech Owl adult

Eastern Screech Owl fledgling

White tailed Dove

There are a few other feathery visitors coming our way.  We get the occasional flock of Robins and Cedar Waxwings stopping by to feed on seasonal berries.

There are smaller Mourning and Inca doves that tend to show up later in the summer and a crew of woodpeckers that work the trees out back.  I recently got a photo of a woodpecker though it wasn't great.  They're pretty shy.  The other doves always seem to catch me without my camera.  But I'll get them all, sooner or later.

Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall, birds in the garden here are as constant a presence as the weeds, but they are a lot more welcome and a lot better company.  We love them all.

Adapting to August

Faced with folks complaining about June or even July's heat, native Texans can be a bit dismissive. "You think it's hot now - wait until August!" we hoot with equal measure of scorn and delight.

Frankly, the last weeks of August are discouraging for even the most enthusiastic local boosters.  A typical August in Texas does not provide much of what most would consider tolerable, much less pleasant. Challenging, sure, but enjoyable? That's a tough row to hoe.

Grocery store rose, replanted in a garden bed.  Bless their hearts, they don't know any better.

The weather parses out into an all too familiar pattern.  It is hot, it has been hot, it will stay hot.  It is dry, it has been dry, it will stay dry.

The Hub's plethora of potted Plumeria.  August is their time to shine.

As we wait out August, people and plants alike can get a little bedraggled. While locals hunker down, banking energy for September and beyond when it eventually cools and we get some much needed rain, it falls to resilient yet oft disparaged non-natives, our relative newcomers, to provide some late summer flair.

Hibiscus syriacus, Rose of Sharon or Althea, in common use here but actually the national plant of Korea.

Speaking of bedraggled, my attitude matched my landscape.  End of summer heat or no, my chore list had narrowed down to one last task:remedial weeding. Due to previous neglect, weed seed banks in the soil of our beds and paths were well financed. Completely clearing the paths this year as a starting point had taken sequential weeks of work. Keeping the paths clear was going to take many subsequent sessions.  Including the last few days of August.

As the weed's numbers reduced, I worked to make the best of my enforced August experience.  My focus shifted from the square foot in front of my sweaty face to the general ambience of being out in our garden spaces.  I savored the coolness of the morning hours relative to the afternoon's heat to come.  I took time to appreciate the slightly gentler nature of the angled light before the sun rose to brutal height.  As I looked and listened, a certain repetitive sound began to filter into my active attention.

It sounded a bit like a finch.  It was similarly high pitched but less a song and more a call.  I don't know how to explain this other than it sounded bigger. The calls were coming from close by, behind me, and continued until a raucous scold of jays arrived. The calls were first drowned out, and then ceased altogether.

Over the next span of days as I scouted for reappearing weeds I heard the calls again and again. When I finally caught a glimpse of the source it was obvious why they sounded bigger than a finch.  My calling bird was a hawk!

A real beauty, majestic in flight, impressive at rest, and yet conveying a certain immaturity in demeanor.

When unmolested by jays it routinely perched atop a nearby power pole spending the better part of an hour each morning, looking first one direction, calling, then rotating a quarter turn, looking out and calling again.

I had trouble identifying what type hawk this was, and turned for help to local naturalist/bird blogger/photographer extraordinaire Mikael Behrens of Birding on Broadmeade.  He reassured me that hawks can be particularly tricky to differentiate but what he thought I was seeing and hearing was a juvenile Broad-winged Hawk (Buteo platypterus).

Though the officially recorded range maps for broad-winged hawks don't currently include our area, Behrens confirmed these hawks are showing up in Austin more and more as summer residents.  Folks, please greet another well adapted non-native into the fold.

I realized, as temperature patterns shift, our previously fixed ideas of who and what are considered "native" to Texas will require shifting as well. Turns out Lyle Lovett was prescient when he famously sang, "That's right, you're not from Texas - Texas wants you anyway!".

Who knew weeding could lead to so much delight and unexpected beauty? August may be the month Texans love to hate, but given the chance, this August revealed it had a few surprises yet in store.


Nerd Out: Behrens graciously pointed me towards two remarkable resources for those of us interested in understanding and identifying local (for now) wildlife.  iNaturalist ,which hosts information and spectacular photographs of sightings of all sorts of fauna, and a site specifically for reporting bird sightings,  eBird.

Probably a Downy, but you can call him Harry

I occasionally see woodpeckers out working the trees on our lot.  As these things go I won't have my camera with me and by the time I get back out with one to take a photo the bird has already moved well out of range.

Linda Blair in the movie The Exorcist has nothing on this guy

Even when I do get photos they rarely turn out.  Most woodpeckers seem sort of shy and on top of that they are very VERY busy feeders.  I can't tell you how many shots of woodpeckers I've excitedly taken only to discard in frustration when editing.

Once I get the shots I've taken of a woodpecker off my camera and onto my computer, I often can't identify the type or really even clearly see what they are up to.  It is an ongoing frustration.

Today proved to be at least partly an exception.  I did manage to squeeze off a handful of half decent shots of this little guy busily working the treetops, but once again, nothing as clear as I'd like, due to my distance and his motion.

I'm thinking this is probably a downy woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) because they are the most common to our area.  That said, in some of my photos, the head looks a little more square and the bill is a little longer than I'd been led to look for in a Downy. There is an outside chance this is a hairy woodpecker (Picoides villosus) even though hairy woodpeckers aren't typically seen in the hills around Austin.  So yes, probably a Downy.

The calls are distinctive and certainly would helped with an ID but this bird was busy eating and didn't cooperate with making any sound other than tapping on the tree branches.  Speaking of which...

These photos did clear up one question for me.  When the woodpeckers are tap-tap-tapping on the trees, they most definitely close their eyes.  I figured as much.  I know I'd close MY eyes.

Ladies and gents, say hello to Harry, the Downy Woodpecker.  (Probably...)

Gusted

We've been having a lot wind lately, and no, I'm not talking about the commentary regarding various sitting and ex-presidents visiting town for the Civil Rights Summit.  I'm referring to actual wind, incessant gusts of it, ranging in the 15 to 25 mph velocity and setting up what I figured was going to be a lousy, no-good, won't be seeing any winged visitors situation.

You'd think I'd get tired of being wrong....

I was standing at the window watching the primroses toss about.  Leaning first this way then that, they resembled nothing so much as a rough sea with alternating pink and green waves. Then a swallowtail butterfly of some sort caught my eye.  You know what happened next.

This time I'm fairly certain my visitor is a Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor) even though the telltale metallic blue on the back of the wings towards the tail is not particularly prominent.  None of the butterflies I spot seem to match up exactly, so this is simply my best guess.  I got a series of shots with the wings open and closed. Whatever type of Swallowtail this one is, I'm sure it isn't confused at all.

When I glanced out later to see if the butterfly was still working the primrose patch, I noted a more readily identifiable Lesser goldfinch, or Carduelis psaltria, at our feeder.  This little guy stocked up on nyjer seed and then headed over to one of our birdbaths where it was joined by a female.

I keep reading these birds travel in large groups but honestly I usually only see this little guy and his lady around our spaces.  I'm wondering if they have a nest nearby?

Identification Frustration

Boy oh boy (oh boy!) do I generally stink at identification.

Mockingbird!

Bluejay!

(fat, complacent) Eastern Grey Squirrel!

Sure I can nail the names of the handful of regular visitors to these spaces (as could most third graders), but when it comes birds especially, I am as often as not totally stumped when pressed to determine anything other than the most general typology.

I wish it wasn't so.  I search out and spend hours on sites featuring recorded songs, rows of photos, silhouettes and habitat maps just to be able to say with confidence "that is a juvenile female Flibberty Gib.  They are migratory, generally traveling in mated pairs".

As it typically turns out, whatever I've taken a photograph of doesn't look exactly like anything on the sites.  I'll think I've narrowed the process down to a positive ID only to realize my bird in the photo doesn't have the "characteristic identifying" patch of color for this, or the "distinctive tail shape" for that.

Maybe "my" bird has been visiting the feeder all by its lonesome when the text about the species I think it might be clearly states "these birds travel in large numbers often overwhelming feeder sites".

Case in point?  This adorable little gal (because I decided she was a she, that's why!), who I've seen off and on the past few days.  I finally snagged a couple of shots from waaaay far away.

She's shy.  Even though I kept all the way across the yard once she noticed me she shot me an annoyed glance and promptly flew off (ahem, caff!) exhibiting the characteristic roller coaster flight of a goldfinch.  (Sorry.)
 

I spent way too much time trying, and yet I've still got no firm grasp of what particular sort of goldfinch she might be, because I couldn't find one single description or photo that precisely overlapped.

If you know, feel free to weigh in below in the comments section.  At the moment I'm leaning towards saying she is a Garbo Finch, (Finchus mysteriosus), noted for their tendency to shun paparazzi and travel sans entourage.  Anybody else want to weigh in?