Bird Sightings – Page 72 – The Hermits' Rest

Guest Observations from California

burrow3 After my post about the squirrels last week, my friend Matt Hickner began telling me about his own wildlife experiences at his relatively new home in Bakersfield, California. They don’t have tree squirrels there (not really any trees, as its a desert). But they do have ground squirrels and friends.

Since Matt’s house was recently constructed in a new neighborhood, there are quite a few empty lots nearby, featuring lots of dry grasses and dirt, which give him prime critter viewing opportunities.

A couple of days ago, he posted this on Facebook:

In the vacant lot across from my house are burrows that the local ground squirrels dug. These burrows were also a great temptation for the endangered Western Burrowing Owls to occupy. I can see all of this activity from my home office so I clicked a few pictures of them this morning.

Yes, burrowing owls! I’ve always been fond of those, since they were the mascot of the school my brother and my friend Anita went to (Florida Atlantic University, all the way across the US from Matt).

I checked with my friends at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and sure enough, both those places are year-round burrowing owl habitat. Apparently the eastern burrowing owls have more white spots than the western ones, but they are the same species.

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More Dewberries

Dewberry sauce with many, many spices and seasonings. It went perfectly with the roast venison.

I hadn’t intended to write up two dewberry posts, but other than a couple of fun bird sightings (dickcissels and Eastern kingbirds!), the dewberries were the nature highlight of the weekend for me.

This week there were way more of them than last week. I picked three quarts in just a five-yard stretch along our arroyo. Some of them were as big as fancy blackberries. They must have liked the rainy winter a lot.

From those berries, I made yet another cobbler, and also a really interesting sauce, from a recipe by Jess Pryles for blackberry sauce. There are many interesting ingredients in that there sauce (star anise, whole cloves). I served it with delicious venison backstrap roast, and both my sister and spouse declared it a gourmet triumph. I’m glad the neighor recommended this recipe, because just the salt/pepper/nutmeg rub on the beef made it worth checking out. Her new cookbook, Hard Core Carnivore is available now, so check it out (she’s also been on lots of book tours lately).

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Who’s Singing?

Last week I showed you the urban hawk nest near my Austin workplace (they are doing well, by the way). Today I went to sit in the courtyard behind our building, just to get some air, so I’ll tell you about the birds there.

The lansdcaping team did a great job on this spot. They planted many great native plants, including turk’s cap and other plants the hummingbirds love, plus a variety of textured and colored plants. It’s a pleasure to walk through or have a nice lunch there under the escarpment live oaks and cedar elms. And of course, the plants attract all kinds of birds.

The highlights of today were a large group of wrens, Carolina wrens, I believe. Every time I see one I think, “Wow, wrens are small!” They are also just about the cutest birds to watch, with their bobbing tails, chirps, angry wren sounds, and nice songs, when they are happy. They aren’t very shy, either, so you can easily watch them in trees, on the ground or in nests built in odd spots (like our old gas grill).

While I was watching the wrens and listening to them chirp and peep, a glorious song rang out. I was entranced. It was just beautiful, and there were two different songs, obviously from the same bird. “What is it?” I wondered. “I hope I can see this magnificent creature!”

I could tell it moved to the other side of me, so I peered into the tree. Then I laughed. The magnificent creature was a male American robin. This is a bird I listened to all the time when I lived in Illinois. Here in Texas, I don’t see them very often (Merlin Bird ID lists them as uncommon both here in Austin and at the Hermits’ Rest), so I guess I forgot what they sounded like.

What a wonderful memory to resurrect!

A Walk around the Pasture

Texas_thistle — Texas thistle next to the old burial plot fence.

Some new flowers are blooming around our property, and since we have a new puppy, I figured today would be a good day to walk around and check out the area. It brings such joy to walk with the dogs, since they jump in the pond and swim, run around in the tall grass and find dead things, and of course, roll in hog poop.

nature_dogs — Alfred the Anatolian shepherd dog, and Carlton the white mutt explore their wild kingdom, also known as a hay meadow.

My mission was to take some pictures to upload to iNaturalist (I am sunasak there) to get some volunteer hours, and add to my collection of plants and animals here at the Hermits’ Rest. I was able to get photos of a great egret and barn swallows, which was good, since I still don’t have a camera with a birding lens.

As for plants, I got some nice shots of Indian blanket (gaillardia), Texas thistle, wild garlic, white clover, hedge parsley (ugh), and the pretty curly dock we have with the bright pink seed heads. Sure, these aren’t real exciting, but I do want to record all, not just the showy ones. (There is lots of grass, but I need to get better at grass identification.)

I do love walking around here, but I equally love just sitting on the front or back porch and watching the wildlife, dogs, and weather. Spring is pretty awesome at the Hermits’ Rest.

PS: Don’t forget these blog posts always appear on the Hermits’ Rest Facebook page, along with more photos and goofy things. Please “like” us there, too!

Urban Hawks

hawk3 — Thanks to Kate for this great image of both parent hawks and the nest on the fourth floor of the VISA building.

Those of you who don’t know me in any other context may not realize that I spend half my time in Austin, where I work as a Senior Instructional Experience Strategist (what??) at a software company. I like where I work, because there’s a lovely xeriscaped courtyard full of mostly native plants, nice areas to walk around, and big windows to look out of.

Recently, my boss and I noticed that a hawk, probably a Cooper’s hawk, kept flying around, swooping past the windows on the other side of the building, and disappearing. Now, we often see hawks around here (sometimes in the winter, it seems like every tall lightpost along the big highway has a hawk on it), so seeing it wasn’t a surprise. The repeated flight path was.

Yesterday around 3 pm, a coworker and I decided to walk around the buildings to bring us some energy for a project we were working on. We stepped out of the building, and I said, “Look, Kate, there’s that hawk again.” Then I said, “LOOK, Kate!”

There, in the building next to ours, on top of some railings that look cool to an architect, was a big nest. That’s where the hawk was going! We quickly realized that the reason we saw a hawk so often was that there were two, AND babies.

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Foraging Fun

It’s Friday the 13th, but I’m not worried! The first thing I saw when I stepped out of my house this morning was a pair of bluebirds, which did indeed bring happiness. Way to go, nature!

I got to our business office in Cameron to receive another surprise, the amaryllis bulbs Mrs. Trubee had planted were all blooming. The big ole wind that’s been blowing since last night had broken one, so it’s sitting on my desk as I type.

But, what about foraging?

Last night was the April Master Naturalist chapter meeting, and the speaker was a really interesting young man named Sean Wall, who has self-published a book on foraging for food in Texas. He’d already sold all the books he’d brought by the time I talked to him, but I’ll be picking up a copy on April 21 at the Rockdale Earth Day event.*

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Getting Started

The young redbud tree near the cabin on the Wild Hermits property.

Hey! Today I made a few pages for this site, including one for Sightings, which is on the main menu, and some sub-pages on birds and mammals I’ve seen since I’ve been coming out to the Hermits’ Rest. That’s been since 2011, the year of the Big Drought.

I thought I’d also practice writing down what I saw and did each week (you see, I’m there half time; the other half of each week I’m in Austin, leaving my spouse to guard the place).

Bird Sightings, April 6-8

The big excitement of the week was multiple flocks of snow geese going overhead. They flew low enough to easily identify their black wing tips. They also weren’t making all the noise the cranes make, and were lower than cranes tend to be.