Also we have another round of house wrens in the bird house I made in clay class
I had a ridiculously stressful dream last night in which grauwulf decided we were moving to some place in western Maryland with a house on a small lake that he was trying to convince me was better because it was twice as big, despite the neighbors having paved over their entire lakefront edge. And just as I was sort of getting resigned to the idea (or at least doing some research to figure out what the local amenities were) he up and said, no, we had to move to Detroit for work. (In real life, his company is in Baltimore.) And there we were looking at this weird rectangular tower building that was kind of like a small apartment complex, only supposedly a single family home, and I was desperately trying to think if I knew *anyone* even remotely close to Detroit when I woke up. I have been trying to convince myself all day that actually, nobody I know has any desire to move to Detroit.
---
It was a glorious day yesterday, and we were out in the yard for a bit after naptime when the robins started chirping their little heads off around the quince-I-think bush where there's a nest. I went over to see what the fuss was about, and discovered a black rat snake with its head in the nest, eating eggs. I saw the lump of at least one going down its throat.
This is the essential problem of wildlife gardening: at some point, you'll be called upon to pick whose side you're on.
In this case, this or some other batch of robins had already lost one nest-full (which they *may* have made in the gutter, based on the fact that one of the two splatted egg w/ most of a nestlings we found was on the back porch) and the snake had definitely already gotten at least one of the eggs. Also, I am prone to meddling. So I pulled the snake's head out of the nest, and peeked in to confirm that there was at least one egg left. The snake, tail still coiled firmly in the bush, stared at me for a bit and then headed off into the azaleas. (At this point the Megatherium had climbed up the steps to the porch and wanted me to go let her inside, so I wasn't inclined to further snake wrangling.)
Four or five robins, a mockingbird, a house sparrow, and possibly another bird or two danced about on the fence & bush tops yelling for several minutes thereafter, presumably until the snake departed. Then one of the robins began chasing off the mockingbird, so presumably that was the end of the excitement, and Ms Robin returned to her nest.
The moral of this story is that if we ever find someone who will return our calls so we can pay them to build a larger back deck, I will be putting up nesting shelters suitable for robins & mourning doves. They'll continue to ignore them and nest where the snakes can get them, but at least I'll have tried. (I like snakes. I want them to eat rodents & decrease the tick population, not go after birds' eggs. So picky.)
Xposty from dreamwidth.
---
It was a glorious day yesterday, and we were out in the yard for a bit after naptime when the robins started chirping their little heads off around the quince-I-think bush where there's a nest. I went over to see what the fuss was about, and discovered a black rat snake with its head in the nest, eating eggs. I saw the lump of at least one going down its throat.
This is the essential problem of wildlife gardening: at some point, you'll be called upon to pick whose side you're on.
In this case, this or some other batch of robins had already lost one nest-full (which they *may* have made in the gutter, based on the fact that one of the two splatted egg w/ most of a nestlings we found was on the back porch) and the snake had definitely already gotten at least one of the eggs. Also, I am prone to meddling. So I pulled the snake's head out of the nest, and peeked in to confirm that there was at least one egg left. The snake, tail still coiled firmly in the bush, stared at me for a bit and then headed off into the azaleas. (At this point the Megatherium had climbed up the steps to the porch and wanted me to go let her inside, so I wasn't inclined to further snake wrangling.)
Four or five robins, a mockingbird, a house sparrow, and possibly another bird or two danced about on the fence & bush tops yelling for several minutes thereafter, presumably until the snake departed. Then one of the robins began chasing off the mockingbird, so presumably that was the end of the excitement, and Ms Robin returned to her nest.
The moral of this story is that if we ever find someone who will return our calls so we can pay them to build a larger back deck, I will be putting up nesting shelters suitable for robins & mourning doves. They'll continue to ignore them and nest where the snakes can get them, but at least I'll have tried. (I like snakes. I want them to eat rodents & decrease the tick population, not go after birds' eggs. So picky.)
Xposty from dreamwidth.