The Outdoor Scene

There are secret, sexy things happening in my backyard. And voyeur that I am, I don’t want to miss a minute of my eastern screech-owls pairing off and raising a family.

The rites of courtship usually kick off in March. One day, I look up from my computer and there he or she is, sitting at the entrance of the owl box that hangs 12 feet up in a loblolly pine tree.

For the next few weeks, I’ll see screech at all hours of the day. Then at last light, he or she takes off, in search of a meal of songbirds, insects, rodents and other yummy critters. However, by late March or early April, I won’t see so much as a feather. The first year this happened, I was convinced we had done something to offend screech’s sensibilities. However, several weeks later we were treated to our first look at young screech owls. Fluffy and gray, they bobbled in front of the nest box entrance like sock puppets on tequila. Their jerky, uncertain maiden flight occurred about a week later, with both parents offering encouragement from nearby trees.

The same thing has happened for the last five or six years, culminating with the young making their grand entrance Mother’s Day weekend (early May). This year, however, the adult owls threw me a ringer. In addition to seeing an owl in the usual nest box, I now also see another, smaller owl in a bluebird box that features a gaping entrance gnawed by gangs of demonic squirrels. Most evenings this March, they have each sat in their respective nest boxes, not paying one another the slightest bit of attention. And like a Hollywood gossip reporter, I just had to know what was going on. Are they friends, enemies or Frenemies? Are they courting or completely clueless of each other’s existence?

So, I called Laura Erickson, a science editor from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and author of “The Bird Watching Answer Book.” It turns out, Laura is not only an expert by training, she is licensed to possess a screech owl for educational purposes (though it’s not recommended the average birder undertake this responsibility). Her experience with a screech owl named Archimedes made her the ideal person for me to cross examine.

Screech owls, which are only about 6 ½ to 10 inches in length, come in two color phases: gray and red (mine are a handsome cinnamon color). Male birds are smaller, and Laura suggested the smaller bird I’m seeing in the bird box renovated by squirrels is a male, while the female is occupying the larger owl box. The male and female typically don’t roost together except during winter they occasionally will share a nest box or cavity.

Screech owls mate for life, though Laura said about six percent of pairs divorce and find another mate even if the original one hasn’t died. If one owl does breathe its last, the other often takes a new mate. Laura said screech owls differ from hawks in that they are more “touchy feely” and will preen each other’s faces. Singing is another part of the male’s romantic repertoire. He trills to court the female, and whinnies to defend his territory.

Then the work begins. The female incubates the eggs and broods the young. She sits on her two to six eggs for about a month. After they hatch, the male is in charge of hunting. For the next month, he hands his catch over to the female who tears it up and feeds the young. Males will hunt even during the daytime to keep nestlings fat and happy. Screech owls are respectable hunters, catching about 50 percent of the mice and birds they go after and 83 percent of the insects they pursue.

After the young fledge, the parents have another 8 to 10 weeks of hard labor, teaching the little owls how and what to hunt and making sure they recognize danger and then what to do about it.

Laura said screech owls are common backyard nesters and will use the same nest site year after year. Because they are shy and quiet, they often go unnoticed by their human neighbors (unless you hear their spooky, quavery calls), though I can tell you from experience the local songbirds are abundantly aware of this pint-sized owl’s presence. During the day, screech will sit at the entrance of her nest box, catching some rays (and vitamin D) until a mob of titmice or bluebirds start flapping around. Screech, whose eyes appear closed, is actually monitoring potential threats and pops inside the box when the avian bullies get too close. The songbirds have a right to be scared, though, as I have watched screech pick off a female cardinal from the feeder.

Many thanks to Laura for helping me lift the shroud of mystery surrounding the life of eastern screech-owls.

You can learn more about the birds that interest you at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Web site. Their “All About Birds” is one of my favorite places to loiter on the internet. It contains great photos, maps, life history descriptions and even audio files of bird songs.

Interested in becoming a citizen scientist by monitoring bird nests? You can contribute to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s data base of nest records through Project NestWatch.

Through eBird, you can also support a real-time, online checklist program by reporting bird sightings so scientists can spot trends in distribution and abundance.

As a tourist destination, Florida can seem cliché to the untrained traveler. Each year, more than 75 million people troop to the Sunshine State visiting the usual places - Disney’s Magic Kingdom, Sea World and the Kennedy Space Center. But it also offers plenty of entertainment for those who shun commercial holiday havens in favor of turkey hunting for Osceolas (found only in Florida), fishing for snook or snorkeling.

I recently found something new to love about Florida. While traveling to the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association (SEOPA) conference in Punta Gorda, I stopped to visit my sister-in-law, who lives on the charming, eclectic barrier island, Siesta Key. If your feet love the feel of sand that’s the consistency and color of powdered sugar, stop what you’re doing and go right now. It’s that awesome. Watching the sun set while wiggling your toes in that sand is a happy place for your mind to visit no matter how crappy your day is.

Another memory-worthy moment was seeing my first roseate spoonbills while sightseeing at a nearby island. I immediately knew what they were, having recently visited the Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art museum in Wausau, Wis. where these pink beauties were all the rage on canvas.

More birding was in store as I kayaked for the first time. As a guest of Grande Tours in Placida, Fla., I paddled the waters of the Charlotte Harbor Aquatic Preserve. White ibises, great egrets and several members of the heron family stood wing to wing on sandbars and in the shallows while pelicans, gulls and osprey were also part of the scenery.

Guide Chris Warren introduced us to a few groovy gastropods, too, such as Florida’s state shell, the horse conch, and the belligerent, yet beautiful banded tulip. These shell-dwelling marine critters do the locomotion using a big, flat foot situated alarmingly close to the mouth. Living among the sand and weeds, these species are easily overlooked but well worth discovering.

The grass flats we paddled across were alive with mullet leaping out of the water. Chris said nobody really knows why these vegetarians go airborne, but he did offer four possible theories : 1) sea lice under their scales gives them the willies, 2) they’re escaping toothy, underwater predators, 3) it fires up their gizzard and aids digestion, or 4), they were jumping for joy at seeing us. Whatever, the reason, Gasparilla Sound is a productive fishery with tarpon, grouper and about 200 other species.

The best part of the eco-tour was gliding through the spooky cool mangrove tunnels. No wider than a dirt road with a thick canopy overhead, it makes you feel a zillion miles away from civilization. We kayaked through a portion of Woolverton Trail, which has been groomed for the last 30 years by Ed woolverton. When he took this chore upon himself back in the ‘60s, he did so without a permit. However, the state discovered it was healthy for the mangrove forest and granted him permission to continue. Now 93 years old, he still travels the tunnels in a poke boat armed with a pair of hand loppers trimming the red mangroves’ prop roots.

On our way back to the outfitter’s home base, a couple of bottlenose dolphins surfaced and a bald eagle did a flyover. While I wasn’t ready for the trip to be over, I have to admit it was a picture perfect ending.

If you dream of exploring paradise from a kayak, visit http://www.grandetours.com/

I’d like to thank Jennifer Huber of the Charlotte Harbor Visitor & Convention Bureau for coordinating the trip and Chris Warren of Grande Tours for his expertise throughout this 2-hour complimentary tour.

With turkey season ending with a bang last week, I was ready to retire to the peace and quiet of my own backyard.

But, alas, there is no such thing. In fact, my yard is more soap opera than sanctuary. All kinds of tiny dramas unfold every day. And some of what happens is just plain trashy - a female goldfinch consorting with not one but two males at the feeder. I also saw a pair of mourning doves shamelessly bird-dogging each other in the treetops.

Like any good melodrama, there are sentimental moments, too. I could almost hear the music swell when a male cardinal went beak to beak with his mate to feed her a sunflower seed. Watching a bluebird pair working together to feed their quartet of hungry mouths was sweet theater, too.

There’s also plenty of aggression on this show. For example, the blue jays are total bullies. They’ve been known to mimic a hawk to scare off the feeder crowd so they can swoop in and chow down. However, their hostility also can be a big help to the rest of the gang. A red-tailed hawk soared across the yard the other day and the jays went bonkers. It’s possible their racket alerted birds several counties away, causing the hawk to give up and glide off.

It’s not all daytime drama, though. Some of the murder and mayhem occurs when Nielson ratings are lowest – midnight to 6 a.m. when the audience is sleeping. 

I was delighted when a titmouse pair decided to nest in a box just outside my office window. I got a kick out of watching them time and again literally drop out of the sky into the box.

One morning, though, I saw nest material hanging out of the bird house, unusual since they were such a tidy couple. I had a bad feeling about it. Wes investigated the matter and found raccoon fur on the box, confirmation that in the middle of the night one of the masked bandits had made a grab. Egg shells and nest scraps littered the ground.

However, with avian theater, there’s always another scene. One of the most entertaining acts are the screech owls that raise young every year in a nest box that resembles a miniature outhouse, complete with half moons carved on the side.

We know the cycle well. The adult owl first shows up in the fall, sitting at the entrance of the box. And throughout winter and early spring, it makes brief, regular appearances in the morning and evening. Then in early March the show goes on hiatus, and we don’t see the owl again until April. When it does reappear, it (or they?) hangs out at the entrance on and off throughout the day. And then, like clockwork, we see the owlets on Mother’s Day weekend.

This spring, there were at least three young perched in the front and side “half moon” holes, bobbling around like Sesame Street puppets. Per usual, we saw the whole family regularly for about a week. Then, we got a new glimpse into their life on Friday evening when we saw an owlet fledge. We’d been hearing the adults quietly whinnying in the evening, possibly encouraging the young to take their maiden voyage.

The owlet wasn’t a flying ace right out of the gate, though. There was a great amount of flapping and hopping around at first. After awhile, the novice pilot seemed to get the hang of it, though.

Now the nest box is empty again and I can’t help but glance at it every time I walk past the window. I miss watching the goings on during sweeps week. But, I’ll have to wait until next season for original programming. Until then, I’ll just change the channel and watch Birds of Our Lives.

If you get the chance, stop by and say hi to me on Facebook and Twitter @TammyDianeSapp

Bluebirds: Harbingers of Happiness or Avian Wackos?

There was a time when I believed that having bluebirds raise their young in the nest boxes we put up would be the pinnacle of backyard birding. Who wouldn’t yearn for a daily glimpse of these feathered jewels? I wasn’t just seduced by their dazzling blue color, though; I also loved their rags to riches story. Bluebird populations declined in the 1960s and ‘70s due in part to bad-guy birds, namely house sparrows and European starlings, outcompeting them for nesting cavities. However, coordinated efforts to provide nest boxes have these beauties on the increase in North America. Conservationist that I am, I wanted to do my part, too. So, my husband, Wes, found bluebird nest box plans online and made several houses, which he put up in our backyard and the land we hunt in Georgia.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when we saw a courting pair during a weekend turkey hunt at our Peach State hang out. It was a textbook sighting, too.  The male performed the “nest demonstration display” that I had read about. He made a big show of bringing nest material to the hole, going in and out of the box and fluttering his wings while perched above. It worked, too, because we saw a female shortly thereafter, who apparently didn’t know that was pretty much going to be his only contribution to nest building. She set about with the heavy lifting associated with avian housekeeping, and he kept her company with his melodious warbling. The best part, I was witnessing this bluebird miracle about 20 yards from our camper.

After a morning turkey hunt, I sat outside the camper and watched the bluebirds. A day or two after I first saw them, I noticed the male bluebird acting weird. He was perched on the bumper of Wes’s truck and pecking furiously at it. At first, I figured he was issuing last rights to some unlucky grasshopper he was preparing to eat. But then, I saw him attack the truck’s windows and mirrors. When he had a tiny “accident” that showed up as a splatter on the window, I admit to snickering a little, imagining Wes’s reaction to this bird fouling his pride and joy.

As I was fixing a snack in the camper that afternoon, I heard a tapping on the window and turned around to see the male bluebird clinging to the window’s edge. “Well, that’s neat, I thought. Now I can get an up close and personal look at him.” And I did just that, drinking in every moment of watching this nut alternate between catching insects and thumping the windows with his beak and wings. When I woke up to this racket the next morning, though, I had to admit the novelty was starting to wear off. By the following weekend, the incessant drumming was like woodpeckers gone wild, and Wes and I were both getting tired of it.

So I consulted the all knowing “Google” for answers and found this question posted on a birding forum:

Q:  “I have a bluebird that has been relentlessly pecking at our windows for days! We can’t get it to stop. Please help!”

I was relieved at the prospect of finding a solution. However, like most wildlife issues, this one wasn’t easily solved. The expert explained that bluebirds are very territorial and the male aggressively defends his territory while the female tends to the nest. When bluebirds beat on the windows, they are reacting to what they perceive to be a rival bird. The only way to deal with this problem is eliminate the reflection. I can tell you right now, forget about closing the blinds. Doesn’t work. What we ended up doing was covering the outside of the windows with tarps, which ruined our view of the pond. The good news, according to the experts, was the behavior usually ceases once the female stops laying eggs. Still, I was hoping the bluebird boxes in our yard wouldn’t pass muster because I couldn’t imagine living in cave-like conditions while a nesting pair raised two or three broods throughout the summer. Luckily, my wishes were answered, and the only backyard residents were titmice, chickadees and a peace loving flying squirrel.

Once fall arrived, Wes and I trekked back down to our hunt camp in Georgia for deer season. We were immediately greeted by the charming mumbling song of the male bluebird and I was actually happy to hear it, now that nesting season was long past. However, by the next day, the male bluebird was back at it, banging on the windows like a madman.  

Back home, bluebirds started showing up in our backyard as well, not to nest, but to drive the other birds stark raving bonkers. We have an owl box that is occupied several months out of the year by the cutest of all owls, the screech owl. And for whatever reason, two or three pairs of bluebirds will fly all around its nest box and rudely poke their heads into the entrance. I am astonished they have the guts to do this, because I have seen the screech owl, in a madcap swoop, snatch a cardinal for his/her evening meal. Frankly, I don’t think this owl cares if dinner comes packaged in red or blue.

Like Hollywood’s handsome bad boy movie stars, male bluebirds just cannot behave themselves. And like paparazzi, I can’t help stalking them to admire their beauty and be shocked by their behavior.  So the answer to my original question is “yes.”  Bluebirds are harbingers of happiness and most assuredly, avian wackos.