Backyard Sounds

As I sit on the back deck, I listen to the myriad sounds in the backyard.  Bird, insect, and mammal visitors make daily forays among our many plants.  We have bird feeders and fresh water available each morning. 

Many backyard visitors including robins, chipmunks, cedar waxwings, and sparrows have been keeping close watch on the Amelanchier tree.  Small green fruits appeared a few weeks ago, and ripened to a bright, cheery red after ten days.  However, the birds did not wait that long to test the taste.  Dozens of fruits ripen daily, but most are gone by the next day.  Amelanchier, also called serviceberry, is a sub-family of the Rosaceae family.  There are 28 species native to the United States.  Small, deciduous, multi or single stemmed trees, they bear pome, a fleshy fruit with several seed chambers, that is a favorite for many species. 

A cardinal has perched on the back fence next to our shade garden to “kip kip” at me about the lack of food.  I feed the birds every year, providing thistle in a hanging net feeder, suet in a cage, and woodpecker mix in an open tray.  Cardinals eat both early morning and late evening from the tray, but with the widespread reports of avian bird flu in May, we stopped feeding for several weeks.  I am sure my friend has read the calendar and thinks the time is right for resuming putting his treats out!

Next to the cardinal, the foliage on an elderberry in the back of the shade garden looks green and lush.  This plant is a favorite food for sawfly larvae, which consumes the foliage leaving only the leaf ribs behind.  A sawfly larva appears as a short, fat, white worm, and can be picked off by hand and thrown into a bucket of water to dispose of them.  Be careful not to simply knock them off onto the ground, for they will quickly find their way back up the stems and into the foliage once again.

A natural pond surrounded by native forbs and grasses is at our yard’s back edge.  Red-winged blackbirds are everywhere along the edges.  This year we are watching two nests hidden deep in the foliage directly behind our house.  Known for being aggressive birds during breeding season, they are being chased away by the cardinals.  Cardinals are considered non-aggressive, but can be more than a match for the red-wing blackbirds when breeding territories between the two species overlap. 

Another bird bothersome to the blackbird is the great blue heron that come to the pond for the small fish.  Every time one shows up, the red-winged blackbird harasses it by flying directly at it and banging into it with a claw or beak.  Male redwings rarely show signs of tiring while performing guard duties, and the herons may put up with this for several minutes, but eventually leave the pond.

A house sparrow family, living in one of the shade garden birdhouses, is making a racket to drive away a fox squirrel that has gotten too close to their nest.  House sparrows are monogamous and mate for life.  In the central U.S., two batches of four to five eggs are typically laid during the summer.  In our birdhouse, the first batch of eggs hatched about a week ago.  The young birds will remain in the nest for two to three weeks.  During that time, the male and female share feeding and guard duty. 

I also hear bullfrogs calling, sounding a deep bass ‘jug-a-rum’ at any hour to attract a mate.  There are several males in our pond, and as the summer heats up, and we have less rain, the pond gets a little crowded.  Adults are solitary and a great splashing noise signals the meeting of two males, each aggressively defending their part of the pond.  After mating, females lay 10,000 to 20,000 eggs in a gelatinous mass on the pond’s surface.  Tadpoles hatch in four to five days, and those that survive will overwinter in the pond for one to two years before metamorphosizing into adults.