Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 05:56:41 -0400 Reply-To: bott@erols.com Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Bonnie Ott Subject: Yard delights(long) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The pleasures of the summer season are in full swing. Things have been bustling in the yard. Babies everywhere! The feeders are grand central with all the young learning how to use them. The HAIRY WOODPECKERS have fledged their young. I saw a young one at the feeder for the first time yesterday. She hung there and studied the seeds quite closely and I could see the little wheels clicking in her head as to how to get them out. A few tenative pecks and voila! success and she quickly got down to buisness. The DOWNEY babies are old hats at the suet by now. They quickly got past the being fed stage into the gobbling on their own a few weeks ago. The PILEATED are calling out in the woods and I am guessing they have fledged their young. Although they don't come up to the feeding area I see them along the tree line. The busiest feeder of all is the mealworm feeder. The BLUEBIRDS have five new eggs and the four young they fledged are hanging around the wood edge. The adults have stopped feeding their young worms and the fledglings haven't been inclined to eat the worms on their own. The TUFTED TITMICE are frantic with keeping up the demnds from their babies. They are in the feeder every few seconds and then back to the locust tree to pacify their noisy young. The titmice babies make the loudest racket I have ever heard! The Titmice never have managed more than 3 worms per visit at once so that makes for ALOT of trips. The poor CHICKADEES can only carry one at a time but their babies seem much better mannered. The birdbath (I have two heights with a dripper that drips into the top one and then from that one down into the ground one) gets as much if not more activity than the food. Yesterday the local breeding INDIGO stopped down for a visit. Other years it has attracted BTG and Common yellowthroats to name a few. One of the HOT days last week a box turtle was swimming around in the lower one. I think my birdbaths are the only water around so they attract quite a bit of activity. Some nice extras in the last few days, a male KESTREL buzzed through and perched atop a snag. A COOPERS HAWK scattered everything from the feeders (yikes the fledglings are easy targets) and a YELLOW BILLED CUCKOO calling in the rain. Next year I may be able to share my yard with everyone via OUTDOORS MARYLAND. They are doing a segment on birdy backyards, feeding, improving habitat, ponds and more. They want a variety of sizes of yards. The largest is a 17 acre property and they will work their way down to mine (a tiny postage stamp townhouse yard), hopefully illustrating that you can do alot in a small space to attract birds. The producer came by yesterday and we talked about ideas how to film my feeders. They are going to film from now until November and it will air next spring/summer. We'll see what makes it past the cutting room floor. Bonnie Ott Ellicott city ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================