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Wildlife Management Notes

Wildlife Management Notes and Observations
June 15, 2001

Woodland pond at Birdsong.

Weather Overcast skies and sporadic rains have been a real blessing for all our nesting birds - anything to help cool things off. Three days ago the big storm came through, the tail-end of Tropical Storm Allison. We got over 6 inches of rain in a 24-hour period, not quite the 10-inch deluge that fell on Tallahassee. It will certainly help toward balancing out the rainfall deficit.

Erosion Prevention We experienced some sheet erosion on slopes in our fields, and some minor erosion on our steepest perimeter fire lane. This is why we only harrow the perimeter lane (because it is a legal requirement) and do not harrow fire lanes within the property boundaries. We use mowed roads for our fire lanes, which requires more care when burning than if we harrowed everywhere, but to us it is worth it. We also harrow the outside fire lanes as close as possible to the burn date, and then let them grow up over the rest of the year so there is less soil exposed to rain events. These are very beneficial management practices - we lose a lot less topsoil, we don’t have ditches instead of fire lanes, we end up with less silting in our ponds and streams, and aesthetically the property looks more beautiful without harrowed fire lanes.

Summer Land Management Our burning being completed, and the growing season in full swing, we will need to mow the nature trails fairly frequently. We will also initiate our summer terrace mowing. Blair Johnson has been helping us with this project for the last four years, something Betty Komarek initiated to create more habitat variety in our open fields. Blair will start mowing a single swath along one side of each terrace, then two weeks later mow the alternate side, and so on through the summer. This results in three different sizes of emerging grasses and other herbaceous vegetation. Smaller grasshoppers apparently oviposit in shorter grasses, larger grasshoppers prefer taller vegetation, and so on. By providing three different heights/growth stages of vegetation we attract that many more grasshoppers to these areas that are great feeding grounds for insectivorous birds and other wildlife.

We will also commence a bush-hogging project in Big Bay Field to help control shortleaf pine encroachment. It may take more than one mowing this year and we will burn it again, very hot, in December, like last year. It will probably take two or three years of this treatment to see how effective it will be. These pines are absolutely amazing in their tenacity and ability to grow back. It’s not easy to keep a field a field!

Surprisingly, the beavers have not responded to this week’s downpour by immediately damming the Farm Pond and swamp spillways. A lot of water is flowing very freely right now. Had this rain occurred two months ago they would have had two feet of mud and branches stacked up in both places overnight. We’re not sure what is going on in the beaver life cycle or the beaver mind as to their apparent lack of concern with maintaining a high water level at this time. Anybody know? We’ll just have to keep our eye on them in case the damming begins.

The Gin House Field now looks frothy with all the daisy fleabane that is blooming. Many of the normally white flowers now have a beautiful lavender tint - very pretty. There are grasshoppers everywhere. Just walk along the edge of the main trail and each footstep you take will raise a spray of them. No wonder the Gin House is so populated with birds - we’ve got many pairs of bluebirds, blue grosbeaks, red-wing blackbirds, several pairs of kingbirds, and indigo buntings. A group of nine cattle egrets have moved in and they line up and eat their way through sections of the field. They will apparently consume everything within their path including insects, lizards, and quail eggs or even babies. We had a wonderful flock of about 50 bobolinks - the males and females are so strikingly different. The crimson clover has fully seeded out and now we’re seeing a lot of agalinis beginning to emerge and grow tall. It will be blooming by September, host of the buckeye butterfly. We’re also seeing a lot of passion vine, the host plant of the gulf fritillary butterfly.

You can now relax and enjoy observing all this activity on a wonderful rustic bench at the entrance to the Gin House. Site Assistant Bill Waite has made good use of a fallen tree and some lighter wood to create this unique bench and allow our visitors to sit in the shade and enjoy the beautiful view. Thank you, Bill!

The Listening Place Things are still very lively in Big Bay Swamp. At least eight anhinga young have fledged from five or more nests all within view of the Listening Place. These big, somewhat gawky babies have been very entertaining as they move around in the water tupelo trees, using feet and wings to climb about. They are still begging and being fed by the parents.

Two great blue heron nests at either end of the swamp are also still active, with parents continuing to feed their enormous offspring, with all the attendant noise and racket that goes along with each visit back to the nest.

There is a lot to listen to - all this nesting activity, ongoing courtship, a myriad of frog and insect sounds and ... alligators. They are roaring. That bellow is one of those in nature that elicits a deeply visceral response. It stops you in your tracks. Quite wonderful.

The Cooper’s/red-shouldered hawk baby fledged on May 23rd. He or she was delightful to observe as it grew from a fuzzy white head with very dark eyes peering over the edge of the nest down at us, to a full-sized long-legged, still speckled fledgling climbing around in the trees. We’ve seen several pairs of adult Cooper’s and red-shouldered hawks in the vicinity, so we still don’t have a confirmed identification. Maybe next year.

Purple Martins The martins have had a very successful season. We are really grateful for all the cloudy and overcast days we had, especially after that one week of searing heat about a month ago. The babies were hanging their heads out of the gourd entrances looking exhausted. We were afraid they would get so hot they would bail out too early. Fortunately, it got cooler and cloudy and since then all babies are out and flying and we found not one fatality this year under the pole.

Watching the martins throughout this courtship/nesting/feeding and fledging process this year, it was obvious that raising martins is a very intense and serious business. There was a lot of competitive behavior, many attempts at stealing another’s nesting material or food being brought back for babies and lots of mid-air attacks and squabbles, resulting in both adults ending up on the ground. The martins also demonstrated a lot of protective behavior, such as buzzing the observer and one instance of a female martin spending a good ten minutes harassing a red-shouldered hawk, both complaining the whole time, until it left the vicinity. She then came back and rested for a long time in the upper branches of a nearby pecan tree. Again - this baby-raising thing is extremely serious, and the parents will risk everything to protect their young. Not news to any of you who are parents, of course.

One other note - last year the pair of parents who nested in the upper left gourd raised two broods of offspring; all others, just one. This year, the pair in the upper left gourd raised their brood faster and fledged them a week earlier than any other pair. I haven’t seen any evidence of them starting a second brood this year, but I wonder if it might be the same pair, claiming the same gourd as before ...

The Bird Window We did not have quite the spectacular showing of late-spring migrants as last year. One beautiful exception was a male black-throated blue warbler who visited the bath off and on for several days in early May. Our summer residents are now actively using all the feed and suet we put out and they cart it off by the bill-load to feed their young back at the nest. These include cardinals, thrashers, carolina wrens, red-winged blackbirds, jays, grackles and red-headed woodpeckers - most of them very pleased about the suet. Chickadees and titmice are actively using the Betty feeder or exclusion feeder where they can collect seeds without interference by large birds. Chickadees and cardinal parents have been particularly active in bringing their offspring to the window. Other birds visiting the bath and other feeders include the ruby-throated hummingbird, orchard oriole, summer tanager, bobwhite quail, pine and parula warblers, house finches, and mourning doves. We also continue to be vastly entertained by our two cotton rats who dearly love the harrow-disc corn feeder.

Other Observations A truly unusual sighting occurred on May 14 when late in the afternoon Deborah Valentine spotted an anhinga sitting in the middle of the back lawn. We watched it move toward a more sheltered area, and it eventually worked its way up into a tree, where it roosted overnight. It was there, moving from branch to branch, until around 2:00 PM the next day, then after that it wasn’t seen again. Member Doris Marsaglia got some photos of it roosting with its head tucked under a wing. It seemed not to have much energy - so our hope is that it rested up overnight and was able then to get back to Big Bay Swamp. You don’t see an anhinga sitting in the garden every day.

There are lots of turkeys .on the place - several groups of all adults, and several family groups of a female with poults - beautiful birds. We’re glad we had all our burning done before their nesting season began.

On a recent morning tour of the place, six young deer were startled out of their bedding sites and dashed wildly off. One small doe was going so fast she skidded on the wet grass and slid on one haunch for several yards before regaining her footing. She then took off, just fine.

Bill Waite had an exceptional experience last week. He watched a fox squirrel do the usual elusive maneuver up a tree - but then instead of disappearing like they usually do, this one sat on a branch and barked at him, twitching its tail like any aggravated gray squirrel, and stayed there for a good three minutes. Very atypical. We speculated that there must have been babies in the vicinity ...

Bill also had an encounter with a big beautiful rattlesnake. He was walking near the swamp edge, well off the trail, and got the warning rattle and of course left the vicinity. This is why we encourage visitors to stay on the trails. Rattlers appear very rarely - in the 15 years I’ve been here I’ve only seen two on the trails. Of course you just give them a wide berth and move on. They are an important part of the food web and cycle of life in this ecosystem.

Carolina wrens are nesting madly. In the last two weeks we’ve seen them start nests in the extra wheel rim of Ashley Chastain’s jeep, inside Kathleen’s office on a bookshelf, on a shelf in the gift shop, in Kate Bell’s backseat under some papers (difficult to remove - they had nearly completed this beautiful nest where we found them working hard going in and out of Kate’s open car windows) and now back to a cross-strut in the ladies’ room. We’ll have to put up a barrier like we did last year so the little ones don’t go for a swim their first flight out.

The seasonal cycle has definitely moved into summer. We now have hot and humid days with thunder storms like we used to three years ago before the drought. Mother Nature is responding powerfully, with lots of fast-growing greenery and the early summer bounty of baby birds. Every year is different, with something wonderful to experience each day. We hope you’ll come out and enjoy Birdsong with us even though it’s hot - you’re sure to see something you’ve never seen before.

    From Betty
    Love to you all.
    Praise and thanks!
    Blessed be.
    - KDB

"Wildlife Management Notes" appears regularly in our bi-monthly Newsletter. Below is an index of links to previous wildlife management articles:

• April 2001
• February 2001
• October 2000
• August 2000
• June 2000
• April 2000
• December 1999
• October 1999
• April 1999
• February 1999
• December 1998

Copyright © 1999, Birdsong Nature Center
Revised -- July 1, 2001