Late Summer and Early Fall at the House, Part 1: Mammals and Birds

I live in a wonderful place. When I last reported on the goings-on at our new home, it was the end of July, and I had just experienced the height of summer for the first time here. Since then, late summer and early fall have happened, bringing all sorts of new creatures and natural sights. And I love that I get to settle into this environment while the seasons change.

In mid-August, everything was full and green, and have I mentioned that I love this place?

I just learned, by the way, that the big forested ridge behind our house in this picture (which is across the street from our property) was recently purchased by a local land trust with the goal of conserving the land and eventually transferring ownership to the state to become part of a state forest. I couldn't be happier about the knowledge that this lovely mature forest -- which was the source of singing Veeries and Winter Wrens all summer -- will be protected for the foreseeable future.

By mid-September, the colors were starting to change. The huge Virginia Creeper vines at the edge of our woods (growing mostly on tall Black Cherry trees) changed to a dramatic deep red, making the trees look like they were wearing red leggings:
 

The Virginia Creepers' color was especially intense from underneath, with sunlight shining through:

Also in September, my sister visited and helped us widen a deer path to make a trail through our small patch of woods. It's a short trail, but it's ours, and it lets us see things like light through the red creeper leaves.

And now, we're deep into fall, with shorter days and colder weather, and we even had our first big frost this past Tuesday morning (making me so very curious to see what this place will look like with snow):

But what about the animals in the past two and a half months, you ask? Well! Allow me to give an update. I have too many things to share for one post, so two posts it will be!

Mammals

The variety of mammals we've seen on the property has remained rather limited, but there's still a lot of mammalian activity out there. Eastern Chipmunks are all over the place. I had a few glimpses of Gray Squirrels and Red Squirrels on the edges of our property in late summer -- it's so strange to live in a place where squirrels are a rare sighting. In the past month, though, Red Squirrels have become much more active around the house:
 

And I think I know why.... Someone's been stockpiling Black Walnuts inside the hollowed-out trunk of our driveway apple tree:
 

(This, by the way, has turned out to be the best of the various old apple trees on the property, with crisp fruit that's great for both eating fresh and baking. What a treat!)

A few times in September, we heard Coyotes howling and yipping way off in the woods. And at least twice so far (once in August, and once in September), a lovely bat has roosted during the day under an eave just outside one of our windows; I'm pretty sure this is a Big Brown Bat, but I could be wrong; either way, I love this little face:

White-tailed Deer have continued to be common visitors in our yard and meadow, although they tend to come and go in waves. For a few days at the beginning of September, the deer were coming to eat fallen apples from the tree right next to the house. (And they're more than welcome to these apples; the tree itself is lovely, but the apples were just not good.) First, a dappled fawn showed up by himself and munched on apples for a good hour or so one afternoon, giving me some great close-up views of this lovely creature:
 

Look at that super fuzzy tail:
 

What a handsome baby:
 

A few days later, more deer showed up to enjoy the apple feast, including this velvet-antlered buck:
 

His strategy involved working a whole apple in his mouth until it split into smaller pieces:
 

And he made some pretty funny faces in the process:
 

Now, these deer are dressed in their sleek and stark winter outfits. (No more velvet for the buck, no more spots for the fawn.) Here's one of the local does in the meadow this past Thursday morning:
 

Birds

Just about as soon as August hit, the bird population on the property started shifting around, first with new birds showing up who likely bred nearby, and then with southbound migrants passing through on their way from their northern breeding groups. Walks in our woods in mid-August let me see a Hooded Warbler (and this looks like just the right kind of shrubby woods where Hooded Warblers might breed):
 

At the same time, a beleaguered Magnolia Warbler parent was rushing around to feed a constantly-begging fledgling:
 

Wild Turkeys have wandered through the yard several times (and the best sight, so far, has been watching them take off from the yard and glide low, down across the meadow and away from the house). I heard a Barred Owl calling in the distance on a couple of nights in September. A Pileated Woodpecker has made some impressive holes in a stump in our yard.

Blue Jays were certainly around in the summer -- I heard them, anyway -- but they've been making an increasingly strong presence in the yard in recent weeks, joining the ranks of the other especially common birds in our yard: House Finches, Gold Finches, Black-capped Chickadees, American Robins, American Crows.

A young, reddening House Finch made a pretty sight in late August among reddening apples:

The White Spruce trees in our yard are packed with cones, and when they started opening at the end of August, the local American Goldfinches swarmed all over them. Here are a couple of goldfinches enjoying the seeds in mid-September:

Nearby, a Chipping Sparrow parent looked like it was doing its best to ignore its begging child (which I had just watched it feed):

The sparrow influx started in late September, with lots of Dark-eyed Juncos especially coming through, and also my first ever Lincoln's Sparrow:

In October, flocks of Eastern Bluebirds started showing up in the meadow. When they first blew in, I watched them thoroughly check out the old Purple Martin house. I guess all the holes made this a very interesting spot!
 

This morning might have set the record for the most birds in the meadow and yard at once so far. Several juncos were grabbing goldenrod seeds, robins were all over the Pokeweed plants, bluebirds were flying from trees to meadow and back (and snatching some Pokeweed berries, too), and a flock of Pine Siskins showed up, joining the regular finches. Add in a couple of Golden-crowned and Ruby-crowned Kinglets, a Downy Woodpecker, a few Blue Jays, White-throated Sparrows, a Carolina Wren, and a Yellow-rumped Warbler, and it was quite the crowd.

With all the new faces and activity in the past two and a half months, the overall list of birds seen or heard on the property so far is up to 68 species. That's a pretty great number as far as I'm concerned! And I love that this place is already able to attract so many birds. Looking ahead, I've got a few additions in mind that will hopefully make our property an even better place for birds to live and visit and thrive. :)

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The rest of this report -- amphibians, reptiles, insects, etc. -- is coming soon!

Summer Warblers and More at the Roy H. Park Preserve

The area around Ithaca is so amazingly full of public green spaces -- between state parks and forests, Nature Conservancy land, Cornell land, and more -- it's hard to know where to even start! Yesterday morning, I decided to explore a small local nature preserve managed by the Finger Lakes Land Trust: the Roy H. Park Preserve. The preserve itself is only a couple hundred acres in size, but it borders much larger state forests and Cornell-protected land, so it's basically a slice in a rather huge expanse of natural area.

Before I even left for the preserve, I got to hang out with two Cedar Waxwings perched in a tree near my driveway; what a great start to the day!
 

When I arrived at the preserve, the parking area was serving as a concert hall for a Gray Catbird. I've missed these funny/loud birds!
 

The preserve itself turned out to be really wonderful. I saw no other people the whole time I was there, and there were so, so many animals around. The trail took me through fields and woods, including a lovely Quaking Aspen grove:
 

And a dark forest of conifers:

At one point, I stopped to watch an Indigo Bunting family -- I don't think I've ever seen baby buntings before! The female was dashing around feeding her rather large but still very demanding fledglings; the male kept flashing past, but I didn't see him contribute much to the proceedings. Here's one of the babies, posing for a quiet moment in between its cries for food:
 

And then while I was watching the buntings, warblers started showing up. I'd already heard Prairie Warblers calling somewhere out of sight, and Common Yellowthroats had been popping up at various points along the trail, but those are warblers I've met as summer breeders before, during my years exploring southern Connecticut, so they weren't totally unexpected. Now, though, warblers I think of as exclusively spring migrants came practically streaming in. A female Blackburnian Warbler! A female Chestnut-sided Warbler!

(Pardon the poor pictures, but I feel like I need something to prove that this weird summer warbler parade actually happened!)

A male Black-throated Green Warbler zoomed in out of nowhere (and I heard two males calling in the forest later on):
 

And then a male Magnolia Warbler!

So basically, this is a magical fairy-tale land where many of the beautiful little birds I think of as passing visitors (and therefore special/lucky encounters) actually come to live. And now I live here, too! Why yes, I'll take my May avian sights all summer long, thank you!

Later in the morning as I passed again through the same area, the bird activity had mostly calmed down, except that now the male Indigo Bunting was singing from the very highest perch possible. Tiny blue bird and big blue sky:
 

Butterflies and dragonflies were now flying all over the place, and I watched a bulky -- and very pink -- orb weaver spider manipulate a recent catch (I think this is a female Shamrock Orbweaver, Araneus trifolium):
 

Mmm, bugs:
 

Another spider (a male of the same species, if my ID is correct) crept around on a neighboring stem; I've never noticed spiders quite like this before, but they seem to have a thriving population in these fields:
 

What a wonderful morning walk. Have I mentioned that I really like it here? :D

A May Bird Bouquet

I went back to the Bent of the River Audubon sanctuary this morning to check up on May's progress. The trees have really started to leaf out over the past few days, and the explosion of diversity is only getting more intense!

A slew of warblers were flitting around in the woods and among blooming apple trees, many of them different from the cast of characters who lit up these woods last week. A gorgeous male Magnolia Warbler came close enough for a few pictures:

He mostly hung around just over my head, but I was happy to admire his fancy costume from below:

This fellow was exhibiting some excellent hunting skills, peering under leaves and around branches for tasty bugs:

And every few seconds he came up with a morsel, often a small caterpillar:

A few whacks against a branch, and then the caterpillar was gone (yum), and it was on to the next meal:

A male Common Yellowthroat (aptly named) was hunting in these trees as well:

Blue-winged Warblers foraged in a flowering tree in the fields (this bird even has bands on its legs):

And I was happy to come across a female Black-throated Blue Warbler as she worked her way through the undergrowth:

An American Restart (yet another warbler) was fluttering around in the woods:

With all that gray and yellow, I assumed at first that this was a female redstart, but those black splotches on the face and chest make this (I believe) a second-year (i.e., one year old) male. He won't get his adult black and orange breeding costume until the fall, but apparently he might still find a mate and breed this year. Well, good luck, splotchy bird!

There were plenty of other creatures besides warblers, of course. I was surprised to see a few White-throated Sparrows still around, since I expected these birds to have left for their northern breeding territories by now:

A pair of Black-capped Chickadees were busy excavating a nest cavity in an old log, and I watched them come in and out with beaks (and faces) full of sawdust:

Digging through wood is a messy job!

One of my favorite discoveries this spring is that Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are super common at Bent of the River (whereas I see them only rarely everywhere else). This female grosbeak was selecting twigs for a nest this morning:

And I came across a male grosbeak as he puffed and preened after a late morning bath. I had no idea that Rose-breasted Grosbeaks also have rose-colored armpits, but there you go!

Shake it out, gorgeous bird!

Most of the early spring flowers have now faded in the woods, but new flowers like this Jack in the Pulpit are taking their place:

And this Black Rat Snake (so identified by its black and white checkered belly) found a cool resting spot in this nest box several feet up a tree. Could it have found a meal inside the box as well?

How exciting that -- with the Northern Black Racer of a couple weeks ago -- I've now seen Connecticut's two large black snakes in this same place. And the array of birds (especially warblers) continues to astound.

Hooray for diversity!