I have a pet skink. He shares my office here at Lights Out in Ruckersville. He, or a member of his clan, has been with me with four years. I see him every summer. He sneaks under a small crack below my front door. He stopped by for a visit last week and scooted across the carpet. He was casing the joint, looking for a mid-afternoon snack, maybe an ant or spider. A cricket would qualify as a … [Read more...]
Bye Bye, Catbirds
Pack up all my cares and woe. Here I go, singing low Bye, bye catbird This shows how old I am, that I would remember some of the Jerome H. Lemrick’s lyrics to Bye Bye Blackbird. It also speaks to the annual departure of one of my favorite backyard birds – the catbird. They came as scheduled this April, two catbirds, and they hung around constantly in my yard, visiting … [Read more...]
Cage Free Squirrels
I have planted my last garden. Unless, there is a cage around and over it. By this fall, that will happen. A backyard gardener faces many obstacles. A deer can level a garden, decimate it. Likewise a single groundhog. I have had both and no longer have that problem, but I do have squirrels and they can be disruptive and extremely destructive to a garden. This summer, they have picked off my … [Read more...]
Late Nesters
This has been a strange year for bluebirds. My bluebirds started very early. They were on their first nest in late March. They pulled off a successful hatch, though, they had three young ones and all survived. All three have stayed in my yard since then. But almost immediately, the hen was back on the nest, then left. Later, she was back on again, and I saw one bird that fledged, then I … [Read more...]
Mockingbird Visits
We’ve lived in our house over 45 years and there has always been one mockingbird that visits. Usually, they have nested in thick bushes in our neighbor’s yard and stop by our place only for a sip of water or when the blueberries and blackberries ripen. I feed all my other birds, but I’ve never been able to draw the local mockingbirds to my feeders, until a few weeks ago. I wrote recently about … [Read more...]
That’s a Big Hummer
A hummingbird showed up at our feeder a few weeks ago, and it’s the biggest hummer I’ve ever seen. It has an enormous wingspan, maybe five or six inches. Naturally, the hummingbird has staked out our feeder and woe be to any rival that tries to sneak in for a sweet sip of nectar. Most every hummingbird I have ever seen has been sweet, tiny and delicate. This hummer is a stud. I think he’s been … [Read more...]
Damned Deer
My long-time friend Wayne Ferguson lives in Charlottesville’s Dunlora subdivision and has been plagued by deer since the ink was dry on his real estate contract. Wayne, like me, is an amateur vegetable gardener and loves flowers in his yard, but so do the deer and there are a ton of them in Dunlora. But this year, Wayne decided to stop the thieving whitetails and built a nifty cage … [Read more...]
Peanut Logs for Birds
Among the friendliest birds in my yard, or perhaps I should say the least-spookiest, are my catbirds. I can approach within a few feet and they pay me little mind. For years, I have had a pair, one single pair of catbirds. They have nested behind my house in the hedges, raised their young, then took off around September. This year has been different. For starters, three catbirds showed up this … [Read more...]
Squirrel Plantings
Each spring, we are always surprised to see things growing in our yard and gardens that shouldn’t be there. They are our “squirrel plantings”. One year, a very strange looking plant popped up in Nancy’s flower garden. It didn’t look like a weed, so we let it grow. It grew and grew, blossomed, then died. I finally pulled it up and found a cluster of peanuts. An enterprising squirrel had … [Read more...]
A Snow White Blackbird
“Come see this bird,” Nancy yelled from the kitchen. The last time I put down my paper and coffee to get up and see an alleged bird, it was a leaf, so I was not hopeful. But dutifully, I went to the window and saw a snow white bird among a big flock of grackles. I went outside to investigate. When the grackle flock flew, the white bird went along. It was the same size and had the same … [Read more...]
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