Birds….Nature Continues
No matter what happens or where you go – the sun rises and the sun sets and life continues.
I no longer live in a big house with a big area to make into a garden.
I now live in town in a small condo with what I would term a “patch of land” but nature is still with me.
I live a block (facing east) west of the downtown main street. Still I was blessed to have a pair of robins to nest on my open front porch.
I’d brought my two French bread stands from the “tea garden” on the farm to sit on the porch and mother robin made a nest on the north one and raised a brood of robins.
We also have a mother rabbit who raised at least two broods that ran through our garden.
But it was early October when my south neighbor and I witnessed a phenomenon.
From out of the east, over the town itself, on a medium windy day came a wave of buzzards floating up and down on the air currents heading west.
AT first we set there amazed at what we were witnessing. Then we started counting. They came in waves as one wave passed overhead to the west, another came out of the east. There were at least five waves of twenty or more birds in each one. All sizes like entire families migrating.
Why they were coming from the east and going west over the town we will never know. I’ve racked my brain since then trying to figure out where they might be headed in such a large flock. I never heard of buzzards flying at night and this was late afternoon.
If you don’t have room for a small fruiting tree you can surely manage a small fruiting shrub.
When it comes to fruiting varieties especially in fall fruiting shrubs think of the birds and go for the best. Birds need high fat, high carbs, to survive winter or migration so plant black raspberry, elderberry, chokeberry, chock-cherry or rough leaf dogwood. Their berries contain 30 to 50 percent fat.
For early feeding, the Juneberry/Serviceberry is one of the best. It is also a 3-time tree flowers, fruit and good fall color.
Mother robin raised at least one brood on Serviceberry fruit. In 2016-17 the Baltimore Orioles found the fruiting tree and it was a scramble to see who would eat the most fruit. Needless to say, the tree was stripped bare in a short time with no lingering fruit.
Patty Hancock, Bird Chairmen
