Posts Tagged Pileated Woodpecker
Love’s Labors Lost … and Won
Posted by piedmontgardener in Favorite Plants, Native Wildlife, piedmont gardening on February 14, 2012
The price of excess enthusiasm
On this day that has come to serve as an acknowledgement of love, I thought I’d share a few pictures that illustrate how the amorous intentions of flora and fauna in my Piedmont, NC yard are faring this year. You may recall the precocious flowers of my Royal Star Magnolia that I documented here.
As you can see from the photo at the top of this entry, the groundhogs got their revenge yesterday just before sunrise, when the temperature on my hill registered 15.7 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s plenty cold enough to zap delicate white petals floating twenty feet in the air. I count that as a love labor lost; those flowers won’t be getting pollinated. However, fat fuzz-covered buds still abound on this tree, so perhaps love — in the form of new blooms — will win, as warm air returns to my area today.
The blooms of plants close to the ground, such as daffodils and crocuses, were unimpressed by Nature’s latest little cold joke. My Lenten Roses, though completely neglected by me so far this year, are cranking out flowers in profusion:
Hellebore love laughs at cold weather
The Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Aurora’ that I planted last November is showing off just a few lovely orange-and-yellow strappy petals. I can testify that they are as deliciously fragrant as advertised, and quite impervious to cold snaps.
Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Aurora’
Many of the birds that live in and around my yard are talking about love these days. The Barred Owls proclaimed their territory and ardor a month ago. I suspect they are nesting now, because I don’t hear them much these days; birds tend to be much quieter when they are nesting.
Likewise, two weeks ago, a female Wood Duck paddling on the creek adjacent to my yard was shrieking in annoyance every time I accidentally got too close. Now she has gone silent. Did our absurd winter warmth coax her into early nesting?
Also two weeks ago, I watched a pair of Red-Shouldered Hawks build a nest in a tall pine near the end of my floodplain. Two years ago, a pair successfully raised four chicks to adulthood, nesting in a Sweet Gum that we could see from our window. Wonder Spouse took some excellent photos of this family, including this shot of Mother Hawk with her brood:
Mother Hawk and brood
Last year, a pair of hawks refurbished the same nest, but we are fairly certain they did not succeed in bringing new life into adulthood. We watched the pair take turns sitting on eggs for about three weeks, then all activity stopped — love’s labors lost.
This year, we are hoping that the pair nesting in the pine will have better luck. I’ve read that Red-Shouldered Hawks mate for life, but they don’t live long, averaging only a little over two years most of the time. I don’t know if we’ve been watching the same hawks every year, or if perhaps the hawks on the pine nest are new to our yard. They may be offspring of the successful nest of 2010, because I watched the female borrow sticks from the old Sweet Gum nest, relocating them to the Loblolly Pine nest. Would offspring be more likely to notice and use their birth nest than an unrelated hawk? I don’t know.
Shortly after nest-building in the pine stopped, I tiptoed down there and tried to photograph the nest. It’s about 35 feet up, securely lodged between sturdy branches, with plenty of needle-covered branches above it to shelter the nest from weather and sun. It’s not a great shot, but this is the best I could do:
New Red-Shouldered Hawk nest
Woodpecker drumming started up a few weeks ago too, and I’ve spotted several newly excavated holes near the tops of dead trees on the other side of my creek. At least one hole is the rectangular shape characteristic of Pileated Woodpeckers, which we hear and see regularly. The woodpeckers and nuthatches have been devouring huge quantities of suet from our feeders lately. If they aren’t yet actively nesting, I’m thinking they are just about to.
The male goldfinches have not yet started to brighten their plumage to summer sunshine standards, and mixed winter flocks of chickadees, titmice, and warblers still actively forage in our yard. We’re in moderate drought here, so the bird baths that I keep stocked with clean, fresh water are very popular.
A Tufted Titmouse stops by its favorite watering hole
At least once a day, a pair of Eastern Bluebirds that has been noisily inspecting nest box options for several weeks stop by to bathe, splashing out two-thirds of the water in the process. The pair that nests in the Purple Martin house every year always raises two broods — love’s labors won twiceover!
If a love lesson can be drawn from observing the plants and animals in my Piedmont yard, I’d say it is that persistence pays. Love is hard work, but successful labors of love yield lasting beauty in the comfort of family. That’s a Valentine’s Day sentiment I think we can all endorse. Happy Valentine’s Day, Wonder Spouse — and to everyone else out there laboring for love.
Cherry Jubilee
Posted by piedmontgardener in Favorite Plants, Native Wildlife, piedmont gardening on April 12, 2011
Black Cherry Flowers Just Beginning to Open
About four days ago, the big Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) in my yard began opening the first of its many flowers. It was a cloudless, perfect spring day, and looking up at the branches of this two-trunked 60-foot high denizen of our upper floodplain, I saw that another cherry celebration was commencing.
Three native trees growing in my southeastern Piedmont yard consistently attract the biggest bird feeding frenzies when their fruits ripen: Dogwood, Southern Magnolia, and Black Cherry. In all but late killing freeze years, fruit set on these species is consistently excellent — the local pollinators love their flowers as much as the birds covet their fruits.
Today before the clouds and winds intensified, I ran out and snapped a shot to document the progress of the Black Cherry’s flowers. They are more than halfway done, judging by this shot:
Black Cherry Flowers
Note the attractive bark of the trunk behind the dangling branches full of flowers. If you click on these photos, you’ll be able to see the arrangement of the flower clusters. Botanists call this multi-flower cluster form a raceme. Individual flowers are arranged along a central rib. After pollination, the individual black cherries (botanically, drupes) develop from those flowers, creating long clusters of small fruits that begin green, and eventually ripen to red, then a deep purple-black.
When the fruits are fully ripe, the entertainment portion of the program begins. By far the funniest birds to watch are the Pileated Woodpeckers. These crow-sized woodpeckers (our largest) display impressive acrobatic skills as they dangle from thin branches to devour large beak-fulls of what must be very tasty fruits.
But the Pileated Woodpeckers don’t have the tree to themselves. Every other woodpecker, warbler, bluebird, robin, and other fruit-lover all compete for the black cherries.
My references tell me that Black Cherry fruits taste bitter to human mouths, but they supposedly can be made into a tasty wine. I can’t imagine how anyone ever figured this out, unless they lived in a forest bereft of birds. By summer’s end on my tree, all that’s left of the fruits are a few that dropped to the ground during the feeding frenzy — and those are the object of avid insect attention.
You may know that the wood of Black Cherry trees is highly valued by the furniture industry; it’s more valuable commercially in the northern part of its range. Here in the southern Piedmont, you’ll find many small trees growing along roadsides and fencerows (birds land and deposit seeds in such spots). In our region, most of the big trees grow in moist hardwood forests; that’s where my big one lives. But large specimens can also occasionally be found in uplands.
At least one cultivar — ‘Spring Sparkle’ — features aesthetic growth habits more suitable to home landscapes. If you ask me, even the plain old species — when sited favorably — is well worth the space it occupies — for the mouths it feeds — and the entertainment it provides.
Love among the trees
Posted by piedmontgardener in Native Wildlife on January 30, 2011
Valentine’s Day may still be a few weeks away, but don’t tell that to the birds in my yard. Already, the early nesters are wooing mates and preparing nesting sites. Woodpecker drumming is punctuated by the raucous calls of Pileated Woodpeckers. These crow-sized beauties prefer larger stretches of fairly mature contiguous forest, so I worried when the adjacent woods were logged. But in that strip of alluvial forest left by the loggers, these big woodpeckers have hollowed out a new rectangular nesting cavity in the top of an old maple that lost its top branches to a storm some time ago.
Practically adjacent to the woodpecker’s new abode is the mass of sticks that comprised the nest of a pair of Red-Shouldered Hawks last year. We watched them build that nest lodged in the crook of a tall sweet gum just across the creek; they raised four chicks to maturity. The hawks built the nest so that we had a largely unobstructed view from our window.
We focused our spotting scope on the nest and watched the family’s progress — although that became increasingly difficult as the trees leafed out. Ace photographer Wonder Spouse documented the family’s progress with his camera; a photo of the mother with two of her brood appears at the end of this entry.
I’ve read that hawks often re-use the same nesting site, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the pair we now hear calling to each other will allow us to watch them raise another brood. Before last year, they re-used a nest in an old pine several seasons, so our hope isn’t unrealistic.
The territorial urge is definitely rising in many of our avian neighbors. When we walk on the floodplain, the hawks vocalize their objections to our presence, and the cardinals (I conservatively estimate at least a dozen pairs live nearby) are chasing others of their gender away from bird baths, and sitting in tree tops bragging about how pretty they are.
I can think of no better argument for planting trees in a piedmont garden than to provide cover and nesting sites for the feathered beauties that fill the air with song — and eat thousands upon thousands of insects that would otherwise plague our gardens and backyards.
Red-Shouldered Hawk with two of her chicks
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