Feeding the Birds, and Occasionally the Bears, too

This year, I have been attempting to feed the birds through the summer. Usually I only leave feeders out in the winter, and as I've written here, I often have numerous chickadees, nut hatches, and some finches. It is quite enjoyable to see all of these little creatures crowding in for sunflower seeds. So far this spring, I've had lots of purple finches, some vibrant gold finches, a few nuthatches and chickadees, chipping sparrows and even an indigo bunting. And of course, the hummingbirds are here. They've been back for about a month now.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my stash of sunflower seeds had been disrupted: The large can in which I keep them had been tipped over. The lid was off, but most of the seeds were still there. This was the same morning that the garbage shed had been invaded, so evidently the bear had decided to look for fresher food than the bags of leftovers in the cans. But something must have scared it off before finishing the seeds. I put the lid on the can, and resolved to remember to bring it, and the feeder, in before I went to bed that night.

Of course, I forgot. I'm fifty now, and they tell me it will only get worse. At two a.m. I remembered, but only after hearing the ruckus on the porch, one story down from my bed. I got up, muttering something about "....that darned bear...", and Greg joined me in my pursuit. We turned on the outside lights, and saw a small bear across the driveway, standing up to reach the feeder on a pole. And there on the porch, half-buried in the tin can of sunflower seeds, was the mama. To my surprise, there was a second little one sitting next to her, loudly crying. We watched for a few moments, long enough to see her get upset with the crybaby. She pulled her head out of the can and let out a very fierce reproach that startled even me, on the other side of the window. At this point, we knew that it was time to put an end to the antics, so Greg moved toward the door, and then rapped on the window. I snapped open and shut another window, and all of that noise was enough to scare the mama and baby on the porch. The mom took off running down the steps, and baby two quickly climbed down the post. They dashed across the driveway, joined baby one, and headed off into the woods. Greg and I brought the can inside, but left the feeder, since it was now in three pieces on the ground, empty of seed.

A half hour later, they were back. Greg said something about "that mama needing some negative reinforcement." She was back up on the porch, this time further in to the front, screened area. We have two other cans out there, but one contains charcoal, the other has grass seed in it. Again we rapped on the windows and she started to run off the porch. Greg threw a chunk of firewood at her, and she ran across the driveway. Meanwhile, the baby near her had climbed into the pine tree just off the corner of the porch. I was ready with the camera, and Greg got two good pictures of the little one before it scampered away with the rest of the family.

(Note: Trouble uploading pictures--I'll try again later.)

Fortunately, that negative reinforcement did the job. They didn't return that night. I've heard that it takes three weeks to change a habit. Why then, does it only take two nights for a bear to pick up the habit of looking on our porch for sunflower seeds? Paul says he sometimes hears them return in the late evening, make a run up the porch to check things out, then head off into the night.

Bear Encounters

The cool weather this spring has delayed the typical plant growth in the forest. The trees took some extra time to leaf out, and the flowers and underbrush are behind, too. I went to gather some wildflowers to put in to a cabin, and it was slim pickings. This is just a minor inconvenience for me, but for the animals, it is a much more serious issue.

In particular, I have read that the bears are challenged in finding enough food to fill their bellies after the long winter. Strawberry blossoms are just starting to peek out, so it will be a while before that fruit is available. The blackflies are still very much with us, and that has me thinking that they haven't finished their job of pollinating the blueberries, so we will wait longer yet for those tasty treats. The foliage on the thimbleberry bushes is still quite small. It all adds up to very little sustenance for the bears. And that means that they are looking elsewhere.

If we have bears in camp, their first stop is the garbage shed. I wrote three years ago how Addie and I were dealing with a bear when Greg and the boys were on a trip to Alaska. That time, I put a hasp with a turning clasp on the shed door, and the bear took one look at it and tossed it on the ground. Never mind that it took me about a half hour to properly install it, with my limited powertool skills. Since then, we haven't had that many intruders, so a new system for locking up the garbage shed has never been installed. When Greg had built the new door some years back, he planned to finish it with quarter iron all around the edge. That way a bear would have a difficult time getting a good purchase on it, as they can with wood. With no immediate need to do this, it fell lower on the priority list.

Until a few weeks ago, that is. I noticed the door open wide on the shed one day, and there on the ground at the base of the porch was all the evidence of a bear binge. We've been through this drill before....we know to follow the trail, with rake and shovel, well into the woods, to pick up the garbage strewn about. This time we were lucky that the shed wasn't very full, so it was only a bag or two that needed to be cleaned up. Greg took care of it, and when he came back inside, he complained that he could still smell bear. I couldn't, so I have no idea what bear smells like.

That day, he cleared his schedule and worked on the door. He put the iron in place, and then worked on a new latch. The one that he came up with, to me, is a real stroke of genius. If a bear can figure this one out, I'll be a monkey's uncle...or aunt, as the case may be.

So far, so good. The garbage has stayed in the shed, and the ground has been clear. We're one step ahead of the bear.

Spring Music in the Woods

We've been having some fun with the white throated sparrows lately. Greg can whistle the exact song of these sweet little birds. One day while we were enjoying our lunch on the side porch, we heard several sparrows singing in the yard. So he started to sing back. It wasn't long before a couple of them flew to the trees near to us, trying to find this new neighbor they were hearing. I got to see a little one in the white pine by the corner of the porch, and was able to capture a photo while he was singing.

I love how they lift up their little heads and how their little chests puff out while they sing.

Another bird enounter we had was with a pair of killdeer. Our neighbors had been telling us about these birds and their behavior. When we looked it up in the bird book, the description fit them to a T. If they have a nest nearby, they will leave it and make a big show of acting like they have an injured wing. This is to distract the "predator" from the nest. We watched both of the birds do this little act several times for us, and as we retreated, they would get up and then find a new spot to do it again. It was quite a thing to watch. We didn't look for the nest, as we didn't want to disturb any little ones. We did get a few photos and video clips of the adults. I am impressed with how well they blend in to the background scenery.

Last week, Paul spotted an indigo bunting in the birch tree right outside of our window. I had not seen one before, so that was a fun sighting. And finally, on a recent walk on the side road, I heard a lot of chittering noises as I approached a large aspen tree. Looking up, I noticed a small hole, and somebody poking a beak out of it. A mama hairy woodpecker flew out, and went to a neighboring tree to peck for insects. While she was gone, those babies in the tree made such a loud ruckus, I thought for a moment that the tree was shaking. She kept up a steady chirp to them, in between her peckings, but it didn't calm them one little bit. I continued on my walk, but paused again as I passed by on my return. The little ones were still making a fuss, though not as loudly. Evidently, their mama must have found enough bugs to keep them satisfied for a bit.

This time of the year it is a real pleasure to wake up early in the morning. The chorus that greets me is a wonderful reminder that spring is really here.

Good Fishing...and Catching

There's been some serious fishing--and catching--going on in these parts lately! The late spring has kept the water temperature on the cool side, and that means that the fish are still in relatively shallow waters. These good looking lake trout were caught by the Olson Family, and they reported having an excellent time fishing. We heard that the bass are biting also. The mosquitoes are biting, too, and I'm told that means that the walleyes will be hungry. I haven't seen many of those since the week after the ice went out. Hopefully reports for those will start rolling in any day now.

Something else rolled in today instead....a big grey cloud of smoke. Greg and I first noticed it mid-morning, while we were out in a boat. This was my first boat ride of the season, and we went to check out the progress of the cabin-building on the lake. I smelled the smoke before I really noticed it. The wind was coming from the northwest, and the far western end of the lake was looking quite hazy. I asked Greg if he thought that maybe he was going to be called upon to go help fight a fire, but he didn't think so. He said that if this was a fire that was nearby and just starting, we would see a plume of smoke, not a blanket. He said that this was probably someone else's fire. Sure enough, when we got home, we learned that it was actually smoke that had blown down from fires in Manitoba and Ontario. We just happened to be in the path that the wind was blowing. It's been so wet this spring, it would have surprised us if the fire had been close to us.

What I found most interesting, though, was how the scent of that smoke in the wind immediately flooded me with memories of a year ago. I was changing beds in Tamarack cabin, and found myself thinking about doing that same task last year, and I could remember for whom I was getting the cabin ready: On Sunday night, it was for our friend Mark, evacuated from the end of the trail. On Tuesday night, it was another friend named Mark, and his son Nathan, coming up from Duluth to help us set up sprinkler heads. Other cabins were in stages of use for Forest Service personnel, the early waves of people working the fire before all of the staging area was in place. I could remember vivid details of the moments in those days. Maybe my memory isn't failing me as badly as I sometimes think it is! I know that the sense of smell is a powerful reminder, and today reinforced that for me.

As I was sitting this evening and knitting on my current sock project, we noticed how pretty the colors were in the sky. They just happened to coordinate with the colors in my yarn. This is another result of the smoke in the air--it often brings beautiful sunsets.

The Rest of the Wolf Story

Back on May 4th, I had the stroke of good fortune to be able to see and photograph a wolf in our yard. The wolf had taken down a deer right behind Greg's workshop, and for the next couple of hours, I watched from a perch just several feet away. You can read my blog post and see some of the photos here.

I re-read it today, and saw that I had not yet followed up with the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say. We kept a fairly close watch on the carcass that evening (when, incidentally, it snowed again). There was no activity, and I was afraid that I had frightened the wolf enough so that he might not come back at all. The biggest nuisance of that possibility would be that we would be left with a bit of a stinky mess to clean up. The next morning, we still saw no indication of the wolf's return, but we did see many ravens and crows, both for real and by their tracks. At least someone was making a meal out of the remains. Interestingly, though, by Tuesday morning, it was ALL gone. Sometime in the night, the wolf finally must have returned and dragged away what remained of the whole deer. All that was left behind were a few tufts of hair.

In the days since, I've had many opportunities to share my story and photos with friends and family. In the process, I've gone over the photos, and have a few more to share with you.

This was taken while I was still in the truck. The wolf had dragged the deer into the driveway from the north edge where he had taken it down.

It wasn't until I had this image on the computer and zoomed in that I realized what had happened. It turns out that the doe was pregnant, and the wolf took the fawn. This was the second photo that I took, and later on I could tell that the wolf was carying off another fawn, so the doe actually would have had twins. On my computer, I can zoom in enough to see that the little one had hair, and was fully formed. It had long, dangly legs. She was probably just a few weeks away from giving birth.

Last weekend, I was sharing the pictures and videos with our friend, Caleb, and his family. He is much more computer savvy then I am, and he offered to put one of the videos on YouTube. (Thank you, Caleb!) Here is a link, so you can see the last couple of moments when I was watching and filming the wolf:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xAercsPcD0

The Feeder is the Place to Be

One of the most "happening" places at Heston's lately is our bird feeder. For many years, we have put out a bird feeder for the winter, and we enjoy seeing our little flying friends eat up the sunflower seeds. This year, with the long cold stretch that we have been having, I've left the feeder up, so that the birds can have another source of food. Mostly the spring birds that we have seen are the purple finches, rose-breasted nuthatches, and occasionally a few goldfinches will fly in. Some blue jays also come along, as did a red-winged blackbird, and they seem quite large compared to the finches. The smallest birds have returned, too. A hummingbird showed up on Saturday, May 17th.

I've written before about Greg's bird rescue service. When we re-roofed the lodge a few years ago, we dismantled the entrance to our screen porch. It still isn' t a fully screened-in porch, as we need to frame out a doorway, add a door, and the screening. Sometimes birds exiting the feeder will fly north, and find themselves in the screen porch instead of the outdoor air. Even with an escape route at the far end of the porch (i.e. a ripped out screen), some birds need a little help finding their way out. Most recently, Greg was able to add a flicker to the list of numerous birds that he has assisted.

These are such colorful birds when I see them at a distance--it was great to see one close-up.

If you look closely at my bird feeder above, you may notice that it is bent up a bit. Normally, the feeder hangs from a cup hook on the end of the rafter. That way, the shells fall to the ground below, rather than on the porch. On recent mornings, the feeder hasn't been on the hook. I checked the ground, expecting it to have fallen straight down. Oddly, though, it was on the porch each time. I didn't think that a bear could manage that feat. Those are typically the pests that we need to be aware of when it comes to sunflower seeds. Someone suggested to me that perhaps the pine marten was to blame. Sure enough, one day I caught him in the act. I think that I may have outsmarted him though. When it is hanging on this large hook, right over the porch, he isn't able to get it unhooked. I have to say, I am very impressed by his acrobatics as he attempts to get his booty. Alas, despite my good intentions of continuing to feed the birds through this cold spring, I have had other interruptions. These were of the black and furry kind. But that's a story for another day!

Getting a Little Wild Around Here

While sitting quietly and enjoying my morning tea yesterday, I noticed a lot of bird activity out the windows. I got up to see the action, and a hawk was pursuing a raven. It was easy to tell by the flight pattern that he was mad. I am guessing that the neighborhood hawks that I mentioned a week or so ago might have eggs in a nest, and that the pesky raven thought about helping himself to some. No go, not with this hawk around.

Greg came in to the room, glanced out the same window, and said "Moose! Moose!" in a very loud whisper. I took a quick peek and then ran for my camera. The pair were right between the lodge and Tamarack, heading towards the parking area. I made my way to the backdoor and opened it before they got there. But they must have seen enough movement through the glass, as they started to move faster up the road. We watched as they strode up the hill, and then took a left towards the donkey pasture. Moose encounters in the past for the donkeys have resulted in indifference on Moses' part, and extreme concern from Jethro. While the moose never actually made it up there, we did see that Jethro was definitely on the job in regards to these intruders.

It looks like we have guard donkeys. Greg says that he could let them out at night, to keep an eye on the place. The only problem, and it's a big one, is that they would cause more trouble than protection. They love to eat the porch railings. And now with growing season upon us, they'll look for all sorts of green and edible treats. We won't be letting them roam free anytime soon.