Category Archives: Nature

Nature lessons

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This week, I learned to identify opossum scat. This happened one morning when I took my dog out to the back yard and discovered that some unidentified creature had been hanging out on the lower portion of my deck long enough to poop. And poop quite a lot, actually.

So of course I grabbed my handy internet device and did a quick search on “opossum scat.” This was a good guess on my part, as it turns out. Opossum scat, in fact, it was.

Communing with Mother Nature

False potato beetle

This was just one aspect of my natural history education and experience this week. For me, it’s one of the advantages of sheltering at home. I spend a lot more time in my own yard then ever before—and I’m a person who has always liked my yard. In addition to my close encounter with opossum scat, I also met a new-to-me insect and, I believe, two new-to-me birds.

  • Insect: False potato beetle
  • Bird: Black-and-white warbler
  • Bird: Common yellowthroat

The name common yellowthroat is for me either misleading or a slap in the face. I’ve lived in Illinois my whole life, a good portion of that in rural Illinois, and never to my knowledge seen one before. Common? Pfui!

Life in the front room

I think one reason I’m seeing birds I’ve not noticed before is that I’m spending a lot more time on my front porch. I’ve always been a back yard person, but I think I’m craving public space, and the front porch is as close as I can get. So I’ve set up Adirondack chairs, plants, and even a metal shelving unit, and my front porch has transformed into my new “front room.”

This is especially handy for me when it’s raining, as I love watching a storm and breathing storm-fresh air. Getting wet is usually a deterrent, but now I can do it with a roof over my head.

When it’s not raining (and I’m not working), I sit in my new “front room” with a book, and read and watch the world carry on. I’ve learned that a different collection of birds frequent my front and back yards. In back, we have lots of robins, cardinals, goldfinches, house finches, and sparrows. The side yard is preferred by the mourning doves, and occasionally we get a Cooper’s hawk looking for a meal.

In front, though, I have all of the common back yard birds plus more. So far, in just the last couple of weeks, these have included a pair of wrens, an occasional nuthatch, the two birds mentioned above, one grey specimen with white belly that I’ve yet to identify, and my first hummingbird of the season. I also have a catbird.

The catbird seat

Let’s talk about catbirds a bit—because this is my very favorite front yard visitor to date. That might seem odd, because catbirds aren’t particularly uncommon. But they’re very friendly. I would even say sociable. Also, they tend to return to the same breeding ground year after year, so a catbird friend is a kind of friend for life.

I really became familiar with catbirds a few years ago when one befriended me in my back yard. I would sit on my back deck reading for hours on end during the weekend, and this catbird started hanging out with me. He’d perch less than 6 feet away and chip at me for such a long time that I would just stop what I was doing and talk to him. Far from being frightened, he’d just chatter back. I didn’t see him the next year, so it’s quite possible that he didn’t survive the winter. This is the first year I’ve had another catbird since then, and I’m hoping to make another fast friend. Already he perches with 10 feet of me and chirps. And it’s only May; we have the whole summer ahead of us.

Whoring on Mother’s Day

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I call this tulip a whore every year. It grows up tall and elegant in the garden, willowy and waving gently in a breeze. Then I bring one inside, and eventually it splays itself wide open for all the world to see what it’s got.

I love this tulip.

I don’t recall its name, but every year it adds graceful beauty to my outdoor garden and then puts on a garish, boastful display indoors. That’s this year’s picture above. Here’s last year’s:

I’m pretty sure if I looked back further in my photo archive I’d find something similar for the past 10 years, or for however long it has been since I ordered these bulbs and put them in the ground.

These guys are nearing the end of their bloom time this year, and the lilacs are chasing close behind them. Come to think of it, lilacs are equally boastful in their own way, bathing themselves in a perfume you can smell down the block. Nothing subtle, but ecstasy to inhale.

Today on Mother’s Day, I celebrate the whores of my garden.

The industrious wren

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I started my Sunday with a wren warbling and dancing in the forsythia outside my living room window. It was my second wren sighting of the spring, and I’m pleased to know they’re in the neighborhood. They’re not uncommon here, but I don’t see them every year. I’ve set out wren houses more than once, and I once scored a nest, but it wasn’t the nest momma ultimately picked for her brood, so we didn’t get any tenants.

I wondered what symbolism attaches to the wren, and it seems to depend whom you ask. One Native American totem website associates it with confidence, energy, and gusto for life. Another tells me it doesn’t have much meaning in most Native American cultures but is, in some, a bird of war and believed to boost courage. The Celts apparently associated it with the old year coming to an end, and for that reason, more than one website (including the Smithsonian magazine’s) says the Irish traditionally hunted it on the day after Christmas.

Well, I don’t want to kill wrens. So I chose to associate them with industriousness and gusto, and took my wren sighting as a sign that I should get something done during the day. Amazingly, that’s what I did. By day’s end, my garden and yard were all tidied up for spring: birdbaths in place, fountains spouting, patio swept, yard debris collected, a second round of spring seeds planted, and seedlings starting to think about sprouting in my portable greenhouse. We exhausted the dogs by spending the day outside and giving them a walk. And I finally did the craft project I’ve been planning for two years, which has haunted me since the start of sheltering in place.

We sat outside for a lovely video call with the faraway son, and I saw my wren again, along with a woodpecker and other critters both winged and earthbound. I’m not sure what symbolic meaning attaches to woodpeckers—maybe industrious or mischievous? Leaving now to go look that up.

P.S.

I still haven’t looked up the woodpecker symbolism, but I did challenge myself to draw my sweet little wren, which is why this post is delayed. Here he is in black and white also.