Updated Chateau Papillon Bird List

It's that time of year: Spring migration, and time to keep an eye and ear to the skies for any new birds for the Chateau Papillon list.  Although we haven't added any "life birds" via the yard in a while (not since the Red-breasted Nuthatch last September), April and May have nonetheless contributed three new birds to the yard list.

In addition to two more warblers (a nicely-colored male Palm Warbler a few days back and a Northern Parula I identified by ear this morning), a long-time expected species finally put in an appearance with a mixed blackbird flock in early April: the Red-winged Blackbird.  Though the latter is perhaps North America's most abundant bird and the Palm Warbler one of the most common wood-warblers, they're still welcome additions to the list.  I also heard a Great-crested Flycatcher several times today, despite never being able to get my binoculars fixed on him.

Male Eastern Towhee on the fence at Chateau Papillon

All of our work naturalizing the yard and making it as bird-friendly as possible is paying off, and I only expect us to see more new species ahead--we're only at three warblers so far, and we ought to be able to chalk up a dozen or more in time.

Spring has brought the early arrival of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds as well, forcing us to dig out the nectar feeder a couple of weeks before we usually would, along with several "old friends" passing through, including a large flock of Purple Finches, several Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and a Northern Catbird.  The springtime evening breeze carries the calls of the Barred Owl from the woods behind us, and of course our friend the Pileated Woodpecker pays frequent visits for our suet.

Sally asking for a meal worm handout

And, of course, Harry and Sally--our resident Eastern Bluebirds--are hard at work on a clutch of four eggs.

We stand now at 59 confirmed species in the yard; maybe we can make 60 before the end of springtime:

1. Blackbird, Red-winged
2. Bluebird, Eastern
3. Bunting, Indigo
4. Cardinal, Northern
5. Catbird, Grey
6. Chickadee, Carolina
7. Cowbird, Brown
8. Creeper, Brown
9. Crow, American
10. Crow, Fish
11. Cuckoo, Yellow-billed
12. Dove, Mourning
13. Finch, House
14. Finch, Purple
15. Flicker, Northern
16. Flycatcher, Great Crested
17. Goldfinch, American
18. Goose, Canada
19. Grackle, Common
20. Grosbeak, Rose-breasted
21. Hawk, Cooper's
22. Hawk, Red-shouldered
23. Hawk, Red-tailed
24. Heron, Great Blue
25. Hummingbird, Ruby-throated
26. Jay, Blue
27. Junco, Dark-eyed
28. Kingbird, Eastern
29. Mallard
30. Mockingbird, Northern
31. Nuthatch, Red-breasted
32. Nuthatch, White-breasted
33. Owl, Barred
34. Parula, Northern
35. Phoebe, Eastern
36. Robin, American
37. Siskin, Pine
38. Sparrow, Chipping
39. Sparrow, Fox
40. Sparrow, House
41. Sparrow, Song
42. Sparrow, White-crowned
43. Sparrow, White-throated
44. Starling, European
45. Swallow, Tree
46. Thrasher, Brown
47. Thrush, Wood
48. Titmouse, Tufted
49. Towhee, Eastern
50. Vulture, Turkey
51. Warbler, Palm
52. Warbler, Yellow-rumped
53. Waxwing, Cedar
54. Woodpecker, Downy
55. Woodpecker, Hairy
56. Woodpecker, Pileated
57. Woodpecker, Red-bellied
58. Wren, Carolina
59. Wren, House

Chateau Papillon Bird #54: Red-breasted Nuthatch

It's fall migration season, and that means the chance to see all sorts of birds winging their way southward.  Beth added bird #54 to Chateau Papillon's list this afternoon with the sighting of a Red-breasted Nuthatch who had stopped to visit our feeders.

I got an e-mail from Beth asking where the Sibley's guides were, followed by an excited, insistent note that she'd found a new bird for the yard.  When I got home from work, I grabbed my camera and came out to sit and birdwatch with the hope of seeing what would be a life-bird for me: I've listed the smaller, similarly-marked Pygmy Nuthatch before from a west-coast trip--and of course the much-more-common White-breasted Nuthatch--but a Red-breasted would be a new bird for me.

The early evening provided some great birding, with appearances by a Pileated Woodpecker, several Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, an Eastern Phoebe, and all sorts of the "usual suspects" of the backyard scene.  And yes, I did get get to see the Red-breasted Nuthatch several times, and even snapped a couple of decent photos despite the dwindling light.  The evening was not without casualty, though; while I sat and waited, some feathered friend far above decided to make a deposit upon my shoulder.

Reveling in Nature's Spectacle: Firefly Storm at Chateau Papillon

I saw one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever witnessed tonight, compliments of Mother Nature: a firefly "storm" which unfolded in the fading hours of the evening in the woods at Chateau Papillon.  Thousands of lightning bugs lit up the trees in a rapid-fire display of bioluminescence, blinking on and off several times a second  like camera strobes in the stands of a fantastical stadium.

I've always marveled at the beauty which is out there simply for the viewing to those who care to take the time to look, and I've certainly seen my fair share of Mother Nature's artwork (often shaped and refined by Father Time).  I have to put the firefly storm up there with the most poignant of those images.

These weren't the “normal” fireflies I caught as a child, either; those blink slowly, showing a greenish-yellow flash off every few seconds and with a duration for each lasting a lengthy half second or so.  We've had that sort of firefly in the yard since late May.  No, tonight's performance consisted of staccato, rapid-fire flashes, durations less than a tenth of a second but much more frequent (to the point individuals seemed to flash two or three times a second, perhaps).  And where the lightning bugs I'm most familiar with put on their show no higher than waist level, these filled the trees to their tops.

Our neighbors had their lights off, which really helped (they usually have a large lantern serving as a streetlight in their front yard), although the skies were still a far cry from solid black--more a 50% grey between clouds and the light pollution that’s been part of my life outside the occasional trip to the spaces of the desert west or the isolated Appalachian forest.  The evening, too, was unusually serene; even the frogs habituating our pond and the damp woods kept mostly to themselves to admire the light show in silence.

However, this was not a sight easily captured or preserved.  The low intensity of the fireflies' glow necessitated long exposure and high ISO (light sensitivity) on my camera; however, the short durations of the individual flashes even then barely registered, and the high ISO coupled with long exposure times did introduce a lot of noise into the photographs--which incidentally is evident as a lot of small dots, much like the fireflies themselves!  Additionally, the longer-flashing, "traditional" fireflies I grew up with registered best (visible in several cases above as streaks of light as they moved across the image while alight), when I wanted to capture the rapid-fire, photo-strobe effect I'd never seen before.  I also tried to film the display, but my video camera just couldn't render the scene at all due to the extremely low light.

To deal with what I could photograph, I cleaned up the image by taking a second long exposure with the lens cap in place; this resulted in a photo with the worst of the noise still present against an otherwise-black background; blending that layer in "difference" mode in Photoshop over the original image cancelled out a large amount of the worst noise.

Not having a video or really much of a photo to share really don't disappoint me that much, though; in fact, it reinforces the true beauty of Nature as I witnessed it, something transient and elusive, resisting the grasp of technology and the possessive hand of mankind.  You truly had to be there to see it, and I for one feel the better for having done just that.

Finishing Touches for Lac du Papillon: Native Ferns for the Shady Woods

This weekend was a sauna, but that didn’t stop the yard work at Chateau Papillon. We finally put most of the finishing touches on Lac du Papillon, our back yard pond project, with the addition of one of the most important elements: the plants.

Most water garden books start with the assumption your pond will be in the sun; indeed, the majority of those plants so archetypically associated with ponds—cattails, water lilies, and many reedy grasses—either require or perform best in full sun.  Sun is not something we have in abundance at Chateau Papillon, though; our own yard is bordered by several established shade trees, and the back corner abuts Fairfax Villa Park and its undisturbed, towering trees.  Being near the lowest point of the surrounding terrain, the back yard does, however, have moisture in quantities rivaling its shade.

Enter then the unassuming fern: these woodland inhabitants are a natural fit for the shores of Lac du Papillon, with several native species (natives are big at Chateau Papillon) well-adapted to damp, acidic woodland soils and shade ranging from dappled to eclipse-esque in density.  Ferns also have that primitive, prehistorical aspect to them (as well they should, being one of the more common plants found as fossil form and a large part of the coal and oil we bring up from below the earth), which can instantly transform a space into some primeval jungle setting.

During last year’s abortive pond construction, we brought home a lone Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) from the garden center, then promptly got sidetracked by the unsolvable leak in our hastily-placed pond liner and our many other garden tasks.  Autumn brought its own hectic schedule, and our ostrich fern languished in a pot near the pond’s edge until winter, when not one but two blizzards of over two feet in depth each left it buried and, we worried, done in.

Springtime is associated with the archetypal memes of resurrection, rebirth, and new life for good reason, though, and the passing away of winter found our little fern survivor thriving beneath its overturned pot.

Once we finished the pond itself—and acting on the advice of the Northern Virginia Audubon Society—we paid a visit to our favorite local garden metropolis, Merrified Garden Center, in search of more ferns to bring to the back yard.  We picked out several new species to plant:

Sensitive Fern (Onoclea sensibilis), (pictured, right) with its uniquely broad fronds, is my favorite of the new additions.  Apparently, some consider it a weed, but I wouldn't mind this fern spreading across the newly-naturalized back corner of our yard.

The sole evergreen of the lot, Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), is one I hope does quite well, as maintaining a bit of off-season greenery in what is otherwise a rather drab section of the yard is a plus in my book.  Supposedly it is very adaptable and easy to cultivate, which make it a good plant for the shady, often-damp-but-sometimes-dry soil of our pond corner.

We do need to add a few more evergreens into the mix; research through the Virginia Department of Agriculture and several native plant guides for the region list several possibilities, including Dryopteris intermedia (the intermediate wood fern) and Dryopteris marginalis (the marginal shield fern).  Given several similarly-named ferns are considered exotic invasives in Virginia, we do have to be careful to identify any we bring home by their scientific names!

Another of my favorite ferns is the "Lady in Red" (Athyrium filix-femina), a deciduous native with striking red stems.  Like our other ferns, the Lady in Red is considered an easy-to-grow specimen which tolerates a wide range of light and moisture levels, which should work well where we planted it.  During the summer months, it should get a couple of hours a day of part-sun, and the ground will be soggy after rains but tending toward the drier side in between storms.

Our Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) is another red-stemmed variety, but it's not quite as lush as the Lady in Red--though I believe one of its selling features are its spore-forming fertile fronts, which give the plant its common name and persist well into the winter as red-brown stalks.

All of these ferns are supposed to spread fairly well, even aggressively in a few cases, so we're hoping the few well-spaced specimens we planted this weekend eventually take over and carpet much of our back yard corner, draping around Lac du Papillon and making it lush where it had before been a junk space.

We didn't just add ferns around Lac du Papillon, mind you, though ferns certainly are the lion's share of our plantings by sheer number.  We also planted a couple of very nice looking False Solomon's Seals, a native wildflower which we already have a few specimens of growing naturally in our yard.  And we added a native Snakeroot as well as several Cardinal flowers and two more foamflowers.  Shrub-wise, we added a native Arrowwood Viburnum, native Oakleaf Hydrangea, two beautiful Eastern Hemlocks, and an Eastern Redcedar (Virginia Juniper).  All of these plants, to some degree or another, will do fairly well in the woodsy, damp-at-times, forest-edge conditions of our back corner (the juniper being the most dry-loving of the bunch and thus mounded up in a higher planting than the rest).  Already, we've notions of adding more viburnums and hydrangeas, and perhaps some native yews if we can find one which the pupsters don't want to chew on (they're toxic).  Not to mention another Eastern Redbud... the list goes on and on!  Gardening is something which is going to be an ongoing pastime here at Chateau Papillon.

Baby Bluebirds Growing Up & First Daylily of the Season

Our resident Eastern Bluebirds have been very busy raising their clutch of four babies, and have done a great job--though they've kept us busy, too, refilling the mealworm feeder up to four times a day!  Checking in on them this morning, it looks like the babies are almost ready to fledge; they're nearly full-grown (or, at least as full-grown as nestlings get) and feathered, with the eldest and largest of the brood showing a fair amount of blue on his feather shafts.

This is a great success story.  Last year, we had a pair of bluebirds nest, with their first clutch hatching only one egg; their second clutch hatched five babies, but a cat got the parents before the babies were grown enough to survive on their own.  (We saved two of the babies, hand-feeding and stabilizing them long enough to get them to a wildlife rehabilitator who nursed them to full health, then transitioned them to a wildlife facility in Winchester, VA, where they rejoined the wild.)  So it was really a great joy to see bluebirds again visiting our yard early this winter; perhaps the male was Harry, the offspring of our first clutch last year?

The only worrisome happenings have been the several hawk sightings in our yard the past couple of days, including one who buzzed the roof and which Chance chased across the yard.  I hope we don't have an opportunistic Cooper's or Sharp-shinned pulling up to the counter for a meal of fledgeling bluebirds!

Today also saw the season's first daylily blooms, from the oddballs which seeded themselves right up against the side of the house.  Our other patches of daylilies are in various stages of bloom prep, with one bunch putting up the blossom stems and the larger one still thinking about it.  (All but the seedings along the side of the house were gifts from generous gardening friends.)

The past few days have also seen the first hummingbirds of the season, scouting out the sugar water feeder and the salvia Beth planted for them.

Is "Jug Boy" Cursed? Welcoming a Creepy Statue to the Garden

Ever since we began working on our garden, Beth and I have been in search of some really creepy statuary to add to the atmosphere: things like cemetery angels with pupil-less eyes and twisted garden gnomes. The fountain sculpture we found the other day meets that description almost flawlessly, I must say. Welcome "Jug Boy" to our garden... and pray he isn't cursed!

Last Friday, I got a last-minute call to go to Saint Louis for work, and on Monday before my flight out, I passed by Sam's Farms garden center in Falls Church. What caught my eye was their vast statuary collection. Yesterday afternoon, Beth and I paid them a visit and found quite a spectacular group of garden statues, all cast in concrete or metal (not cheap resin like many places), and quite a good number of them creepy indeed.

We saw a Medusa-headed wall fountain tile (well, her hair was probably grape vines instead of snakes... but she sure looked evil nonetheless), several fantastically frightening (but expensive) gargoyles, all manner of typical children, angels, monks, and animals... and even some gnomes I'd swear were inappropriately touching themselves--and you can just imagine where the fountain hook-up was on those last few.

But what really caught our eye was this fountain statue tagged "Jug Boy." The garden center actually had three or four of this same piece, but the one pictured somehow had a just-slightly-different expression than the others--and a clearly twisted and evil one at that. Combine the effects of weather with the leering face, and you can easily imagine this little imp pouring buckets of blood or coming to life beneath the light of a bad moon to set forth on some murderous rampage, collecting souls to be dragged back to hell.

So now Jug Boy has a new home; he joins the creepy naked cherub fountain Beth found tossed to the curb and a demented little gnome we found on clearance at Home Depot and awaits the coming of a fallen angel or perhaps a sacrificial altar.

We're working on a small pond; I picked up a decent pump (to replace the one in the flowerpot fountain I made for Beth a couple of anniversaries back) so we can plumb the ewer held in the demonspawn child's hands, and now we've got another project, and another creepy member of the backyard.

Chateau Papillon Bird #52: Yellow-billed Cuckoo

After a brief yet incredibly intense rainstorm this afternoon, I heard the 52nd confirmed bird species for Chateau Papillon: the Yellow-billed Cuckoo.

I'd opened my office window to shush the Papillons who'd gone out to do business when I heard the unmistakable call from the trees somewhere overhead. The cuckoo wasn't an unexpected bird, but at the same time, not one we got in our rental home's yard in Vienna, either, and thus made for a nice addition to the list.

Outdoor Cats: An Unnatural Tragedy for the Bluebirds

When I got home from work yesterday, I went to put out some mealworms for our busy Eastern Bluebird pair, who had recently hatched their second clutch of the year and were feeding five hungry babies. Oddly, I didn't see or hear either adult, who normally make an almost immediate appearance when the mealworms are out and rarely stray far from their nest box.

When Beth returned from a petsitting appointment, she said she'd fed them around 2:00pm, and had watched the parents feeding the babies at that point. Keeping careful watch on the feeder and nest box, I watched well into the evening for the mysteriously-absent parents, and also checked on the crying, hungry baby birds.

At ten days old, the babies would be able to go 24 hours without feeding, and as it grew dark, I didn't want to risk scaring off the mother's return, so I left them for the night.

Early this morning (around 6:00am), I went out to check on the nest and see if the parents had returned. Unfortunately, they had not, and tragically, several of the babies had died during the night. I quickly rescued the remaining two from their nest and got them inside, on a warm blanket, and did what I could to feed them. One was strong enough to take whole mealworms from my hand and ate a dozen or so in several feedings; the other appeared much weaker, and I had to feed it small pieces of watermelon and dry dogfood "mushed" with water to a soft consistency.

We got both the surviving babies to a licensed wildlife rehabilitator, who said she thinks both will pull through, fortunately (even the weaker baby). She'll feed them for a week or so every hour, then eventually take them to a bluebird site in Winchester (about an hour to the west of us) to be released.

The real tragedy is that the parents were apparently killed by neighborhood cats. Cats kept outdoors kill literally hundreds of millions of birds in the United States each year, and in Hawaii have caused the extirpation and even extinction of species. Cats simply should not be kept outdoors; they are not natural predators in our environment, and those cats fed and kept up with veterinary care easily out-compete the natural predators.

We're utterly heartbroken for the two adults, as well as the three babies indirectly killed by these two cats--two cats we successfully rescued a baby robin from earlier this summer. Worse, they may have in effect extirpated the neighborhood bluebird population, as I've yet to hear or see them anywhere else in the neighborhood or surrounding woods. We'll really miss our cute little bluebirds.

Please, if you have cats, keep them indoors! Killing birds is not "natural" since domestic cats are not a natural part of the environment. No one likes to get a feathered "trophy" dropped on the doorstep, either, even the cats' owners. Beth and I are both cat lovers, and Neptune is one of the sweetest kitties we know--but we'd never let him outside!--and after this most recent cat-borne tragedy, we find ourselves really hating that pair of neighborhood cats.

The American Bird Conservancy has a Campaign for Safer Birds and Cats program if you want to read more about this problem.

The Second Clutch Hatches

After a first clutch of five eggs which hatched only a single baby, our backyard bluebirds at Chateau Papillon, Eloise and Nathaniel, have successfully hatched a second clutch. Joining little Harry (or Harriette?)--now a juvenile getting brave enough to visit the yard proper--are five new arrivals.

As of about 1pm, Beth checked and saw that the first three eggs had hatched, and we both figured that the other two, if they hatched at all, would do so over the next couple of days. So imagine our surprise this evening when we went to check on the box and saw that all five had hatched in the same day! (I can only see four in the photo I took, but Beth said she counted five in the box itself--and one might be a bit hidden in the photo on second glance.)

Already, whistling will bring the babies to poke their heads up and open their mouths, begging for food. We're ramping up the number of mealworms we put out for the bluebirds so they'll have plenty to feed the new arrivals without having to hunt all over the neighborhood for bugs and the like (and expose themselves to the hawks I've heard calling out from the woods).

The Bluebirds Go for Clutch #2

After suffering through one of the rainiest and dreariest Mays on record, our back yard bluebirds have started their second clutch of the year. Bluebirds often will lay eggs up to three times in a given year, starting on subsequent nests almost immediately after the young from their previous one have fledged.

Although only one of the first clutch's five eggs hatched, we're hopeful that this time around, with more cooperative summer weather, our bluebird couple of Eloise and Nathaniel will enjoy greater success. Within a day of baby "Harry" fledging, Eloise had already begun a nest in our other bluebird box, but when Beth removed the first nest, she returned to that box as her favored location and soon had a new nest constructed. (It's very important to remove nests between clutches, as the previous nest can attract ants and harbor bacteria from any unremoved droppings, etc.; the birds know this and will choose another site if the first nest remains.)

As of this morning, there were four eggs in the new nest. More to come...

Battling the Noxious Weed: Me vs. Poison Ivy

I've fortunately never developed an allergy to poison ivy, something rather remarkable when you consider my childhood. Between the literal years I spent exploring the woods around my home and the many games of spotlight tag which found me hunkered down in the underbrush along the edges of the neighborhood yards, I'm sure I came into almost constant contact with the noxious weed.

I grew up never really being able to identify poison ivy; "leaves of three" will take you only so far, given the number of trifoliate plants out there. I just didn't have to know what it looked like, and the only part of the plant I could reliably identify was its tree-bound vine, resplendent in tiny red "hairs" of aerial rootlets. (Before anyone comments: yes, I'm aware you can develop an allergy to poison ivy at any point in your life, and I don't take my immunity for granted--though I did as a kid!) It wasn't until I met my wife Beth that I studied the finer points of poison ivy ID; she's incredibly allergic, and on one occasion, her dachshunds brought some urushiol oil (the toxic substance in poison ivy) in from her yard, leaving her arms terribly broken out right before a friend's wedding (see the picture at the end of this post; there's a reason she's wearing black and opera-length gloves to a wedding!)

Last summer, when we first looked at Chateau Papillon during our house search, I did walk the yard, but I didn't notice the poison ivy at the time. Granted, we'd been several weeks into a minor drought, so it's possible there wasn't that much foliage present. Fast forward to our move to home ownership, and in making detailed plans for the yard in late winter, I discovered several trees hosting poison ivy vines.

I spent a warm late-February weekend sawing through the vines--some 2" or thicker in diameter--at several points from the ground up, hoping to nip the problem in the bud (figuratively and literally) before spring came. For the most part, I was successful; many of the vines never leafed out at all, and those that did largely put out new growth very close to the ground.

After that, it was a game of wait and watch, particularly in the back "wild" corner of our yard. I pulled up several plants as they appeared, making sure to get the entire vines and root systems for each, and also put down "sheet mulching" along a large periphery of the yard (whereby overlapped cardboard sheets beneath several inches of mulch--obtained free from Fairfax County--helps kill off any weeds beneath). Our ridiculously rainy spring (almost 5" above normal already) has complicated the task, keeping me out of the yard for a week at a time and giving plenty of impetus for new weed growth, but I've successfully pulled up three garbage bags full of poison ivy to date.

Now, for the shocker: in watching our bluebird house, I noticed that one of the "branches" of a nearby tree was in fact poison ivy. I'd missed it in the late winter vine cut, thinking it to be a tree limb; the vine was at the back of the tree, and who'd expect a six foot long "branch" to be the spawn of a weedy vine? But spring brought those terrible little flowers and the beginnings of berries--a treat for birds but a pest to us, along with ivy leaves a good 5-6" long and 3" wide. Eeek!

Pictured above is one of the lower-hanging poison ivy "branches," near our bluebird house. I've since trimmed it back significantly, but the branches go up the tree (sprouting from a 2.5" thick vine) 30 feet or more into the air, so I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to control it in the long term. I sure don't want the berries to go the route of bird poop and spread the weed across parts of the yard I've managed to keep clear of poison ivy.

Worst, we have plants and trees growing in close proximity to the poison ivy, meaning I can't just spray weed killer. Nope, it's double-gloved hand-pulling of the vines and foliage, and crossed fingers that I don't accidentally give myself a massive exposure and trigger an allergic response.

I certainly don't want to end up like Beth did, taking steroids for a couple of weeks with massive welts from the weed along my arms or legs. And given how much our dogs enjoy the yard, I don't want them bringing poison ivy inside on their fur to cause an allergy attack on Beth, either.

The Crows Bully the Jays

Blue Jays have a reputation as bullies in the avian world, much of it quite deserved. They're loud, messy, and crowd out other birds at back yard feeders. Jays have been known to steal eggs and baby birds from the nests of smaller species. Yet as I had posted previously, Blue Jays aren't always bad, such as when they mobbed the prowling Cooper's Hawk in our yard.

We witnessed an event today which makes me feel a little softer yet to the Blue Jays around our yard. Hearing quite a racket of jay alarm calls while out gardening, I looked around to try to find the hawk or owl or other predator that had the jays so upset.

Overhead, a crow flew by with a baby jay in its beak, pursued by a small flock of angry jays. The crow had apparently found the jays' nest in a neighbor's tree and stolen the helpless little baby bird.

Nature is harsh sometimes, unfortunately. And often bullies fall prey to even bigger bullies, it seems.

Chateau Papillon Bird #47: Great-crested Flycatcher

Add another to the Chateau Papillon list (#47), as well as to both my and Beth's life lists: the Great-crested Flycatcher.  I had my office window open this morning to take some photos of a pair of Northern Flickers who'd been hanging out, foraging for ants, when I spied a fairly large bird land in one of the trees around the yard.

Although I had problems focusing on him, I did get a couple of (low quality) photos, and heard him calling... and a quick consultation of Sibley's showed the bird to be unmistakably the flycatcher, a summer bird for our region.

In Defense of Blue Jays

Many birders, myself included, do not exactly hold Blue Jays in high regard.  The loud, big birds are feeder bullies, often driving away smaller birds (which include just about all birds see at back yard feeders), and the omnivorous jays have been known to raid the nests of other birds, eating their eggs and even the young of other species.

However, this morning, I witnessed what I can only describe as redeeming behavior by the group of six or seven jays who have taken up residence in the Chateau Papillon back yard.  The Blue Jays began screaming and calling incessantly with their alarm screech, and a quick scan of the tree and fence lines revealed the reason: an adult female Cooper's Hawk.

While I admire hawks and do not begrudge them their prey--their hunting is part of nature, and an impressive sight to behold at that--we do have a pair of bluebirds nesting in the yard, too, and I'd hate to see one of the bluebirds become breakfast for a passing hawk.

In short order, the flock of jays "mobbed" the Cooper's Hawk, a behavior of prey birds where groups will flock around and even dive at predators like hawks and owls, eventually driving the Cooper's away, possibly saving the lives of birds far smaller than the boisterous jays in the process.

Updated Bird List for Chateau Papillon

As May approaches, I wanted to put together a comprehensive bird list for Chateau Papillon, along with a few choice photos I hadn't previously shared.  We're at 46 birds currently, with several additions just the past few days.

First, Beth and I heard a Barred Owl on the 24th, its distinctive "Who-cooks-for-you; who-cooks-for-you-all?" call in and of itself good enough to land the bird on our list--but then later that same evening, we saw it land in a tree at the edge of the yard, only to be mobbed by a flock of angry Blue Jays.

This morning, we got one expected but still great-to-see bird, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak, along with an unexpected delight: an Indigo Bunting.  I spotted the bunting when trying to describe the position of a female Eastern Bluebird to Beth so she could get a closer look through her binoculars; a small blue bird landed nearby--too small to be a bluebird--and then buzzed our feeder a few times, giving us a better look at the pleasant surprise addition to our list.

1. Bluebird, Eastern
2. Bunting, Indigo
3. Cardinal, Northern
4. Chickadee, Carolina
5. Cowbird, Brown
6. Creeper, Brown
7. Crow, American
8. Crow, Fish
9. Dove, Mourning
10. Finch, House
11. Finch, Purple
12. Flicker, Northern
13. Goldfinch, American
14. Goose, Canada
15. Grackle, Common
16. Grosbeak, Rose-breasted
17. Hawk, Cooper's
18. Hawk, Red-shouldered
19. Hawk, Red-tailed
20. Jay, Blue
21. Junco, Dark-eyed
22. Kingbird, Eastern
23. Mallard
24. Mockingbird, Northern
25. Nuthatch, White-breasted
26. Owl, Barred
27. Phoebe, Eastern
28. Robin, American
29. Siskin, Pine
30. Sparrow, Chipping
31. Sparrow, Fox
32. Sparrow, House
33. Sparrow, Song
34. Sparrow, White-crowned
35. Sparrow, White-throated
36. Starling, European
37. Titmouse, Tufted
38. Towhee, Eastern
39. Vulture, Turkey
40. Waxwing, Cedar
41. Woodpecker, Downy
42. Woodpecker, Hairy
43. Woodpecker, Pileated
44. Woodpecker, Red-bellied
45. Wren, Carolina
46. Wren, House

I expect to see at least several more (such as a Grey Catbird, perhaps some of the orioles or tanagers of the region, and maybe a Blue-grey Gnatcatcher and a kinglet or two) through the rest of spring and into summer.

Adding Life-Birds to the List ... in the Back Yard!

Add another bird to the Chateau Papillon bird list--this time a "life bird," meaning one I'd seen for the first time in my life.  (And two life birds for Beth; though I'd seen a Purple Finch before, she hadn't.)

I'd planned a morning outing to Huntley Meadows Park followed perhaps by a visit to Monticello Park, both of which are fantastic birding hot spots in the Washington, D.C. area.  We usually like to get to Huntley Meadows no later than 8:00 am, and Monticello no earlier than 10:00 am (due to the best birding times at each), but Beth had a petsitting visit to take care of first--so while she was out, I watched the back yard feeders here at Chateau Papillon.

Our thistle feeder was absolutely loaded with birds; typically, goldfinches are the only visitors to that feeding station, as most other back yard birds have beaks too large to reach through the tiny slits and get at the nyger seed.  But I've been watching the goldfinches closely, and they're almost entirely yellow; these birds had only a splash of yellow on their wings--and had streaking which goldfinches lack.

Ahah--an entire flock of Pine Siskins at the feeder!  I'm sure they are in the process of migrating north and stopped off between weather fronts to "refuel" at our feeders.  A couple were so tame (or hungry!) that they let me approach so closely that I had to switch my Canon EF 300mm f4L lens to "macro" focus.

Topping off the morning of excellent back yard birding, we had a large flock of Purple Finches visiting our black oil sunflower seed station (and giving Beth her second "lifer" of the morning, and my first good photos of the species).

The bird list is now up to 38 species; I'm hoping to hit the mid-40s by the end of April or early May, which will put us well on our way to our goal of 50-60 species--not bad for a back yard!

Expanding the Chateau Papillon Bird List

In the past month and a half, we've been able to add several birds to the Chateau Papillon bird list, as well as visually confirm a few we'd only heard before (Beth saw a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers fly through the yard, for example).

We've had a couple of new sparrows show up at the feeders, including a Fox Sparrow and a Chipping Sparrow.  Also, an Eastern Phoebe has been calling out all day from the woods around the yard, so it's good to know they're in the neighborhood.  And, just today, a small flock of seven Cedar Waxwings made a brief stopover in the yard; hopefully, we'll see more of them later!

Unfortunately, we've also had a visit from a male House Sparrow; because of his appearance, we're not putting out any of the "cheap seed" that they prefer--though our primary feeding stations are black-oil sunflower, we had one with a mix of various millets and other small seeds which the juncos and other sparrows really love.

The recent sightings bring the Chateau Papillon bird list to 34 species and counting.  Just with expected species we haven't seen yet, we should hit 40 before long.

Moving the Renovations from Inside to Outside

With Spring just around the corner, Beth and I have started thinking about work on the yard around Chateau Papillon. Our home sits on around 1/3 of an acre--a pretty big lot for the near-in Washington suburbs, anyway--and is adjacent to a wooded county park, making it a much more natural setting than we might otherwise expect.

The back yard is pretty much a blank slate.  We've got several towering trees along the periphery which will give us some nice summer shade, but that's about it.  The rest of the yard is a bunch of moss and a bit of grass and little else.

We want to keep the yard mostly natural, rather than creating some kept, artificial suburban lawn, while still having a large area for the dogs to run and play.  Of course, we want some room for things like grilling out, our hammock, and such, too, as well as a vegetable garden, and some kind of pond (the latter taking advantage of the natural wetness of parts of the yard).

We began with a good survey of our lot, taking note of where the sun falls, how wet the soil is, the direction of prevailing winds, existing plants and their shade levels, etc., then moved on to several books in our library, primarily The Audubon Society Guide to Attracting Birds: Creating Natural Habitats for Properties Large and Small and Bird-by-Bird Gardening: The Ultimate Guide to Bringing in Your Favorite Birds--Year after Year, which we used to make a list of the sorts of plants we wanted to bring in.

Now, landscaping and gardening take mucho dinero, and recall that Beth was laid off (and is still job hunting, though she's also working on developing a petsitting business as backup).  That does limit some of what we can do, but given both our desires to "do it yourself" to begin with, our expenses are thus limited to materials.

We began with a trip to a Merrifield Garden Center, a good local resource with a location only three miles or so from Chateau Papillon.  After going over our lot's plot and some of our ideas, one of their garden advisers showed us several sale-priced dogwoods as suggested first plants: creating an understory to break up some of the "yardy" expanse.  We picked out five, and though we paid more than we would have at a big-box retailer even with the sale, we got much better trees and over an hour's free consultation.

So far, we've gotten several of the trees planted around out yard and are already thinking of the next steps.  Because of the bluebirds in our yard, we have to be careful to leave them an open area as well as not to plant any shrubs favored by pests like House Sparrows.  We want to terrace a side yard for vegetable gardening, but that means finding good but cheap stone to be delivered, which we're in the process of researching.

Getting out into the yard has been invigorating, and although I know getting the yard to the point we want it will take us several years (and not solely due to finances!), it's exciting to see things beginning to take shape.

In parting, here are three of the best books we've found so far in planning our yard's gardening:

Bluebirds in the Back Yard

Well back in the fall when we first bought Chateau Papillon, we noticed an Eastern Bluebird poking around in the leaves along the edges of the back yard, which was quite an exciting discovery for us.  At our rental home in Vienna, we had a good list of back yard birds, but bluebirds were not among them.  So it was with great anticipation we awaited spring.

Bluebirds aren't typical back yard feeder visitors in the eastern United States, nor are they all that common in the yards of suburbia, period.  One reason is that bluebirds are (like several other species) cavity nesters, meaning they build their nests inside hollowed-out holes, typically in dead trees.  The problem is that bluebirds can't hollow out their own nest cavities, unlike woodpeckers, and we humans typically cut down the best trees as unsightly or dangerous, near our homes.  On top of that, bluebirds face fierce competition for suitable nests from a non-native pest species, the House Sparrow.

House Sparrows will enter a bluebird nest and kill both any young and their mother if given the chance, and unlike nests with openings too small for the pests to enter (such as for House Wrens and Chickadees), bluebird nests require an entrance hole perfectly sized for House Sparrow entry.

Between (human-driven) habitat loss and nest competition from (human-introduced) pest species, bluebirds face a tough road.  That's why it's so special for us to have these beautiful birds in our yard!

We're seeing at least one pair of bluebirds in the yard several times a day now; though they do visit the feeders, they're not big fans of the black-oil sunflower seed we've put out for our other birds.  So, today, we picked up a small mealworm feeder and a hundred live mealworms for the bluebirds.

We've got a few bluebird houses to go up around the yard as well; the one pictured above, which came from Beth's former boss Joy's yard, had hardly been in the ground a day when the bluebirds started to check it out.  As yet, they haven't started moving in any nesting material, but we're hopeful they'll decide the home suits them.  My parents send us another, which we'll erect out of sight of the first (bluebirds can be territorial, after all), and we've got a third to go up as well.

So far, we don't seem to have a House Sparrow problem, either; part of that is the lack of suitable shrubs around the house, as in Vienna, the Azaleas were home to dozens of the pests.  Though we do put out one feeder with cheaper seed (including millet, a favored House Sparrow food), so far it hasn't brought any of the pests around, and given that our Dark-eyed Juncos love the cheaper seed, we're hopeful it won't.  Too, putting up multiple nest boxes can serve as a decoy for the unwanted House Sparrows, and given their non-native status, we can always take out any sparrow eggs, one at a time, and sterilize them before returning them to the nest--ensuring we don't see a bumper crop of the pests.  But this does mean we'll have to be careful going forward as we work on our yard landscaping and outdoor renovations, too.

So, we're hoping we'll get to see some baby bluebirds as spring progresses, and that Beth will get over her squeamishness and be able to handle the little mealworms the bluebirds so love.

In Like a Lion? At Least It Feels Like Spring Today!

Everyone knows the old saw about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb; certainly for those of us in the Washington, D.C., area, March came in with quite a roar this year, as a storm dumped around six inches of snow on the near-in suburbs and left in its wake low-teens on the mercury for a day or two.

In a prior post, I discussed the then-apparent departure of the Dark-eyed Juncos from our yard, mentioning it as a possible sign that spring migration was underway.  Well, though spring migration is underway, and spring itself is drawing ever nearer, the season's (perhaps last) gasp of snow brought with it quite a flock of juncos.

I finally got a chance to get a decent photo of one as well.  Though I'd prefer the shadow cast by one of the tree's other branches not be present, and perhaps the snow not be hiding the junco's tail, this is actually a pretty decent junco photo otherwise.  Given how juncos tend to feed on the ground, it's rare to catch one perched like this, too.

We're less than a week later, now, and it's been in the upper 60s and low 70s.  Count me as one of those who is ready for spring and happy to see the winter head out after at last getting a good snow for the season.