by Winding Pathways | Apr 27, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Birds, Nature
Sometimes we feel sorry for Lonely Louie, so sorry that we toss him a scoop of corn.
Flocks of wild turkeys have been visiting our yard almost daily for years. Most often we see gobbler groups. They are adult males with long beards and spurs. Once in a while a group of hens stops by to glean seeds under our bird feeders. They are sleeker than males and lack a beard. And, rarely, hens appear with a clutch of poults. An exciting event indeed!
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A dozen or so males routinely visited the yard.
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Rarely we would see hens with young.
About two years ago a threesome of males began visiting every day. Sometimes two or three times a day. We called them Huey, Duey and Louie. They seemed inseparable, and we never saw them alone. Late evenings we sometimes watched them flap up to tall tree branches to roost for the night.
Huey and Louie
Then, only two visited. Huey and Louie. We never learned what happened to Duey. Maybe a predator enjoyed him for a meal. Or, he may have had an accident. It is a mystery, but we continued enjoying visits by the other two.
Lonely Louie looks for corn
One day Louie showed up alone. We haven’t seen his companion since. Lonely Louie is now trully a loner. If he’s in the yard and a flock of turkeys appears Louie stays away. He seems shunned by the others. Maybe he’s just shy.
He seems to miss his two friends. So do we, but we enjoy seeing Lonely Louie and know he appreciates the scoop of corn we toss out when he arrives.
by Winding Pathways | Apr 20, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard
People make a “to-do” about moles. They might be the most disliked animal in suburbia. We have them at Winding Pathways and are sharing tips on what we do about them.
Human Created Problems
Suburban and urban soil has a common problem. It is too often compacted. Construction companies often scrape topsoil off a yard before building a house. Then, they drive vehicles in the yard. When a family moves in, they soon create a dog run, drive their cars on the grass, and play on the lawn. Too many footsteps by pooches or people compact the ground.
Nature Has Solutions
Lawn plants struggle to thrive in tight soil, but nature has a remedy. Fossorial animals live in the soil and include moles, gophers, shrews, ants, worms, and others. Their burrowing constantly mixes and softens the dirt they live in, making it easier for plants to live.
Moles or Gophers?
People often confuse moles with gophers, but it’s easy to tell them apart. Moles prefer living in moist shady places and are at home in suburbia. They eat grubs and worms. Gophers, in contrast, are more likely to live in rural sunny pastures with dry soil and mostly eat roots. Mole hills are symmetrical, like mini volcano cones. Gophers, in contrast, make elliptical hills.
What Do You Really Value?
Ironically, most people who trap or poison moles profess to love a rich, green, “healthy” lawn, ignoring that nature loves diversity, not monocultures. Moles help make healthy lawns happen. Granted their hills of dirt and heaped linear tunnels can be unsightly and catch lawn mower blades.
Here is what we do at Winding Pathways:
- Thank our moles for helping make the soil soft and fertile.
- Rake out their hills before mowing.
- Stomp down their raised tunnels so our lawn mower does not catch on them.
- Enjoy the diversity of life in our yard.
Moles are as fascinating and beneficial as the butterflies that pollinate blooms or the cardinals who pluck seeds from feeders. They deserve respect for their valuable work.
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Moles bring rich dirt from below to the surface as they tunnel along hunting for earthworms and grubs.
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Moles sometimes push up excess dirt.
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Moles’ feet are made for clearing dirt away.
by Winding Pathways | Apr 6, 2023 | Birds, Nature
Yellow-bellied sapsuckers are precise timers. Every late March we look for this gorgeous, yet sometimes hard-to-spot, migrating bird. They visit our woods in April on their way to northern breeding areas.
Weather Conditions
Late March and April nights are often below freezing, followed by warm days. That temperature fluctuation stimulates maples to send sap upward. At the same time, the warmer days awaken hungry insects seeking sweet meals. Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers arrive from the south at sap time and make their familiar wells, or small rows of holes, through maple bark. Sap oozes out and attracts protein-rich insects. Hungry migrating sapsuckers dine on both sweet sap and tasty insects.
Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are Precise Timers
Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers time their migration precisely. They arrive exactly when conditions are perfect. Within a few weeks the weather warms, maples stop bleeding sap, insects disperse, and the birds are north of us getting ready to nest.
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Insects are attracted to the sap weeping from maple trees.
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sapsuckers time their arrival well.
by Winding Pathways | Mar 30, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Travel/Columns
We Bring Along Backpacker Meals*
We don’t do wilderness backpacking anymore but we are never far from backpacker meals at home and when we travel.
Last May we drove to Casper, Wyoming, with plans to set our tent up at Nebraska’s Smith Falls State Park the first night and the Forest Service’s Toadstool Campground the next. Normally, we’re camping softies. After setting our tent up we choose to go to a nearby town and enjoy a restaurant meal. That didn’t work in Nebraska.
Try some tasty meals.
After arriving at Smith Falls Park, we set up camp and walked to the surprisingly tall waterfall. Gorgeous! Worth a visit. Then, it was dinner time and we were hungry. But no town or restaurant was within miles and we’d already spent too much time in the car that day. So, we pulled our GoodTo-Go backpacker meal bin out of the car.
Our small bin contains these things:
- A few backpacker dehydrated meals that keep well. We also use Right On Trek.
- A tiny backpacker stove and fuel bottle – and matches!
- A bottle of water and a small pot.
- Utensils and bowls.
Within minutes we had our Pocket Rocket stove beneath a pot of boiling water. Soon our dehydrated meal was ready to eat. It hit the spot, cleanup was easy, and we had enough time before darkness for a birding walk.
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A small bin holds all we need.
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Items on display
Dehydrated Meals
Many types of dehydrated meals came on the market decades ago. They were OK and fine for hungry, backwoods backpackers but hardly delicious. That’s changed. Today several companies make meals that are easy to prepare with simple camp equipment and are nutritious and quite delicious. Although marketed for backpackers they are perfect for keeping in the car in case there’s no cafe nearby. They’re also outstanding to keep in a basement emergency bin in case a storm knocks out power.
Camp Stoves
Note the size difference in equipment
Like dehydrated meals, camp stoves have evolved from heavy cumbersome pump-up models of years ago to lightweight compact, and effective backpacking stoves. Ours is called a Pocked Rocket made by MSR. It takes up only a tiny space in our bin and boils water quickly. A fuel bottle lasts for several meals. No pumping is required. Remember matches if the stove lacks an igniter.
Other Things
During COVID-19 we ended up with many disposable knife/fork/spoon sets wrapped in paper napkins packed along with carryout meals. We put unused utensil kits in our meal bin along with a couple of bowls.
When we travel, even to visit friends or relatives knowing we will stay with them, we always stow our backpacker meal bin in the car. Usually, we don’t need it. We eat with friends or a cafe is close to the campground. However, like what happened at Smith Falls, having simple-to-cook meals and a micro stove makes the difference between enjoying a pleasant meal or going to bed hungry.
* Winding Pathways remarks are our own. We make non-paid, independent evaluations unless otherwise noted.
by Winding Pathways | Mar 16, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Birds, Nature
Tree Sparrows. Two species. What could be more confusing? Well, there’s more. Both look like common House Sparrows (formerly known as English Sparrows.
Meet the American Tree Sparrows
Marion glanced at our feeders recently and noticed what looked like a Chipping Sparrow in the midst of a flock of House Sparrows. But it wasn’t. It was an AMERICAN TREE SPARROW. This bird nests in far northern Canada and is almost always spotted in winter. Why it doesn’t keep flying south and winter somewhere warmer than Iowa is a mystery to us. The bird does look like a Chipping Sparrow, but it’s bigger and “chippers” left long ago to winter where it’s warmer. We won’t see one again for a few months. So, a rusty capped sparrow in winter stands a good chance of being an AMERICAN TREE SPARROW.
Meet the New Tree Sparrows
Rich looked out the window a few days later and spotted an odd bird. It was near House Sparrows but looked slightly different. A dark spot on its cheek revealed it as a EURASIAN TREE SPARROW. What was it doing in our Iowa yard?
Back in 1870 a box of wild birds arrived in St. Louis from Germany. Inside were 12 Eurasian Tree Sparrows that were released. They slowly spread outward.
According to the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology’s ebird the bird spread north slowly and took about 150 years to reach our yard. It’s been widely spotted across the United States, but mostly along the Mississippi River.
Differences in Habitat Preferences
It looks like a House Sparrow at a quick glance. House Sparrows are at home in urban areas while the European Tree Swallow is more a denizen of brushy areas outside town. Sometimes they mingle. See a flock of House Sparrows. Take a close look. One may be a European Tree Sparrow.
European and American species share one trait. Both prefer feeding on the ground. Why they’re called tree sparrows beats us.
Learn More!
For accurate information on birds check out the Lab of Ornithology’s website.
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Chipping Sparrow
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House Sparrow
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Can you find the sparrows?
