I had a few minutes before it was time to leave for lunch. I searched a bed of pine needles for lizards and almost immediately saw a female five-lined skink, a type of lizard. She was about four inches long and beautiful, with alternating chocolate and beige lines running from nose to the base of her tail and a sky-blue tail.
We were visiting relatives in a wooded suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina for a few days in the middle of August. Their lawn of trees and shrubbery is backed by a small patch of woods. They also have a bird bath, bird feeder and hummingbird feeder near their back porch, all of which, with the vegetative shelter, attracted several birds of various kinds. Their lawn and that whole neighborhood is lovely, peaceful and full of wildlife.
Add day, several kinds of birds visited the grain bird feeder to eat seeds, including the usual northern Cardinals, blue jays, mourning doves, house finches, Carolina chickadees, tufted titmice, downy woodpeckers and red-bellied woodpeckers. But there were other species of birds at the feeder that surprised me for various reasons.
A pair each of post-breeding brown thrashers and rufous-sided towhees fed on grain on the ground. These birds are imprinted on dense thickets of shrubs and vines, in hedgerows between fields and along woodland edges. But this neighborhood had bushes and the woodlot in back, which, apparently, was enough to attract these adaptable bird species.
A big surprise was to see three eastern bluebirds at a bird feeder in summer. Normally at that time they are feeding on a variety of invertebrates. And I didn't think bluebirds had bills strong enough to handle seeds. But when I was told there are bits of fruit in that grain feeder, the mystery was solved. The bluebirds were eating the fruit, as they do in winter.
I was thrilled to see a few brown-headed nuthatches among the needles of the red juniper tree to get invertebrates and their eggs, and at the feeder to eat grain. Brown-heads are birds of southern pine woods. We don't see them in the mid-Atlantic States, except in southern Delaware.
A couple of ruby-throated hummingbirds visited the hummingbird feeder and flowers in our relatives' yard, including those on the crepe myrtles. As usual those hummers flew at each other spitefully, each one trying to claim all the food in the yard for itself. They certainly helped to keep the yard lively.
Only two kinds of birds were still singing while we visited our relatives- Carolina wrens and mourning doves. That species of wren is a permanent resident wherever it lives and so the males sing to proclaim territory the year around. The doves are still nesting, therefore the males still coo to advertise their presence on breeding territories.
I saw two kinds of woodland birds in the yard- blue-gray gnatcatchers and great crested flycatchers. They probably nested in the woodlot in back. But now, both species, as their names imply, were catching flying insects above the lawn.
Two types of small lizards live in the Charlotte neighborhood. They are green anoles and five-lined skinks. Anoles mostly live in the trees where they snap up a variety of invertebrates. Courting male anoles puff out out their red throats to attract females of their kind to mate. Skinks generally live among fallen leaves on the ground where they, too, eat invertebrates. Since these two types of lizards inhabit different niches, competition for food is lessened between them.
Gray squirrels and eastern chipmunks came to the grain feeder to eat grain from the ground. They need to be careful because there are hawks in the area.
In fact, I saw an adult red-shouldered hawk attempt to catch a brown thrasher on the ground below the feeder. I saw the thrasher repeatedly raise its wings in alarm and as I puzzled over that the red shoulder swooped down to grab it. But the thrasher got away, not by flying away before the hawk, setting itself up for capture, but by flying under the hawk in the direction from which that raptor came. The hawk overshot the thrasher and missed it.
Evenings and into the dark of night also had their share of wildlife. Each evening we heard the stridulations of male true katydids and a few kinds of tree crickets. Their wild, seemingly unending chanting or trilling is caused by the insects' rubbing wings or wings and legs together, depending on the species. Usually we saw a bat or two swooping and diving before the darkening sky after flying insects. One evening we heard a barred owl hooting a few times, adding more mystery and intrigue to the neighborhood at night. Sometimes we see a cottontail rabbit or two on the lawn and a couple of times we saw a few white-tailed deer come to the bird bath to drink.
Our relatives talked about the nocturnal raids of opossums and raccoons in the trash barrels. During the morning we left to go home, it was announced that a young raccoon was trapped in the barrel. When we went to the barrel to release the raccoon, a doe and her fawn ran across a neighbor's yard. The lid was taken off the barrel, that container was kicked over and the young raccoon raced for safety and home.
A few minutes later I was sitting in our car waiting to leave when I saw a young skink emerge from a cavity in an apple tree at eye level right by the car. It laid in the sunlight for a few minutes to get warmer, then off it zipped, disappearing down the trunk.
We all had a nice visit with fine company, stimulating chats and good meals. And I, personally, had a good field trip from our relatives' back porch.
No comments:
Post a Comment