Hawk in the prairie

Stuck in the house today, I spent a large amount of time watching the birds at the feeders.
Aside from the juncos, white-throated sparrows, cardinals, chickadees and titmice, it's always a treat to see a bird of prey swoop in and scare the pants off everyone else.

This red-shouldered hawk flew in, neatly bounced off the fence and headed for the back yard.
(And in the process, caused all the songbirds to scatter to the four winds)
RSHA aren't above snatching a small bird, but it's rodents they are after. The songbirds don't take any chances, though.



I always look for bands, since the RSHA families down the street are outfitted with jewelry every year, but this one was too fluffed out for me to see its legs.
{Click here to hear how Red-shouldered hawks are called in for visual verification.}

It sat near our property value-decreasing prairie and looked for all the world like an orange lollipop.


Red-shouldered hawks make me catch my breath every time they decide to enter our yard. That orange chest, those red shoulders, the bold black and white banded tail. Delicious.
Aside from the wee American Kestrel, they are the most colorful of Ohio's raptors.
If they ever decided to nest here in our yard, I would be in raptor heaven. We definitely have the food supply.
Go out in your yard and find a place to start a prairie. Doesn't have to be big. You just have to NOT MOW IT, and fill it with native grasses and wildflowers. It will give you immense pleasure and the wildlife will throng to it.

Later on, I laughed out loud when a Cooper's hawk barreled into a tree near the feeders and caused all of the songbirds to violently poop in unison.
I do love my yard.

The Torso

While it sounds like a good, juicy, gory murder novel, let me explain...

About three weeks ago, we had a rip-snorter of a storm, and yards all over the neighborhood were full of downed tree limbs. We only had the "flags" of cicada damage blowing around (when the female cicada lays her eggs, she cuts into the skin of small tree limbs, and after the larvae have dropped out, the limbs die and fall off during the next storm).
Our neighbors lost one third of a multi-trunk maple, and we shamelessly asked for some of it to toss into the prairie to add some habitat.




This is the piece they gave us.....named "The Torso":

Kinda looks like a pair of pants, doesn't it?
(Mike, our neighbor, named this arty piece. It's nice to have a neighbor with a sense of humor. We like Mike.)

*Those who have noticed that I haven't been the Blogging-Dynamo lately, rest assured that all is well....we are just busy preparing for our Big Trip*

Native!

My absolute favorite nursery had a going-out-of-business sale this weekend. They liquidated their entire stock. Everything was half off...That equals paradise.

My prairie had these plants:
Cosmos
Black-eyed Susans
Swamp milkweed
Cup Plant
False Indigo

Today I added:
Two Pawpaw trees: (Asimina)


There's another one back farther in the grass. I chose Pawpaw for one reason: Isabelle. She is bonkers for caterpillars and butterflies, and the Pawpaw is the sole host plant for zebra swallowtail caterpillars. I hear the fruit is pretty good, but I don't see us eating a whole lot of them.

Queen of the Prairie: (Filipendula rubra) Huh. A member of the rose family???

Queen of the Prairie is a strikingly beautiful plant. It can reach heights of 6 or 7 feet, and the hot pink flower panicles can be 8 inches across. As a native plant, it has nearly NO problems other than foliar disease (a few spots on the leaves). The panicles resemble pink foam. By far, my favorite native plant. I planted three, and under moist conditions, it can form colonies. My prairie can be quite soggy in spots, so I am hopeful for lots more! Can you imagine a whole field of this stuff???


Big Blue Stem. (Andropogon gerardii Vitman)

This was the chief grass of the tallgrass prairie, is very nutritious for cattle, and is being investigated for a forage/commercial hay product. This gorgeous grass can get 3 to 10 feet tall! The two specimens I have are about 4 feet tall now. I can't help but think of all of Julie's prairie posts when I look at this beautiful thing.
The stalks form seed heads in three spikes, giving us the common name of "turkey foot". Birds love the seeds and the stems turn blueish purple as it matures. I tried little blue stem in the front of the house last year and I already have volunteers popping up in areas that birds have dropped the seeds. Oh! In the fall, the stems are a orange/yellow hue and rustle in the wind.


(Macro of the Queen of the Prairie)




Hello, sweet little black swallowtail! (And little wasp!)
Another good plant to put in your yard....simple butterfly bush. It smells great and the butterflies can't resist it.

Now that my native plant supplier will be gone forever I need to find another. What am I going to do? (If you have some cool plants native to the Eastern US, please send me cuttings!)

When you're stuck on what to post about, just walk outside

News: Sharon and Lynne are okay. Thank goodness.
*******
I was wondering what to post about tonight, and thought about just skipping it.
But I wanted to walk the yard, so I grabbed my camera:

The prairie is giving us lots and lots of flowers to cut and bring in the house. I just wish Nellie would stop walking through the grasses. Her big ass feet are smooshing all of it down!

Shannon had told me about the "Hooper Gritties", but I hadn't seen them until today. When Nellie does it, we call it the "Hyena Run", when she tucks her tail under and runs around like, well, a hyena. (Kind of like bunny binkies, just bigger)
Shannon also told me that Hooper gets the Gritties for about 30 seconds and that's it. And she was right. Nellie and Hooper act like they grew up together. It's wonderful to watch and I am so glad we brought him here. He's a joy to have around.

I am also glad that I let a bunch of sunflowers seeds grow into nice, tall plants. The goldfinches and house finches are eating me out of house and home with the thistle, so all the sunflower seeds to be had makes it easier for me to feed them. They have gone through a 5 lb. bag of Nyjer seed in a week.

I'm also glad that I checked the milkweed. I have seen monarchs flying through the yard in the
past few days, and I was hoping they would find the milkweed. And they did:

This was thrilling enough, but I looked under some more leaves...

...and found tiny, perfect caterpillars.

I rounded up everyone I could find (two cats and three eggs) and put them in the butterfly habitat. Our pipevine swallowtail cats didn't do so good, and that was my fault. The leaves I kept putting in there were drying up too fast, and I didn't think I could put them in water (afraid the cats would fall in, I guess) but I saw on Birdchick's blog that she was putting hers in water, so I did the same.

Now I am off to research how long all this birthing, pupating and emerging takes!

And if you ever wondering why it's called MILKweed...
When this stuff dries, it's like plastic, or glue.

See what happens when you plant NATIVE PLANTS ??? No milkweed, no monarch butterflies.
Everyone say it with me...Native, Native, Native, Native, Native.....

A very colorful Friday the Thirteenth

Lots of color today...I would really like to see some cool birds, though.

I saw purple:

(Skippers on bee balm, Lake Isabella)

(Bachelor's Button at home)

(Inchworm on chickory)



Pink:

Did you know that before she is a Queen, Anne blushes?



Orange, brown and green...with a touch of more pink:

(Clearwing moth on bee balm, Lake Isabella)

(Sycamore tussock moth, Lake Isabella)


(Look how Lorelei is trying to keep her dress out of the water...like it's anywhere near it!)

(Monarch)



Silver:




Gold:





And touches of yellow:

(Remains of a swallowtail)

(Our sunflowers in the back yard...see that window? That's our second story bathroom.
We don't consider the sunflowers a success unless we can see them out of that window)

I've discovered the Meaning of Life

But before I divulge it, here are some photos.

In addition to the outdoor plants I got yesterday, I also got a streptocarpus (also called Cape Primrose). Just because it's purple. From what I have read, it takes an idiot to kill one.
On the right is a poinsettia that I have not killed. That is a first. I bought it this past Christmas, and usually they are dead by New Year's. But this one is actually growing.
I also caught Trixie in mid-meow.

Good grief. This male house finch has one serious eye problem. Looks like avian conjunctivitis strikes again. His other eye is healthy and he seems quite healthy otherwise (he was bathing and flying around just fine) but I hate to see it. As I have posted before, the best thing, according to the experts, is to not treat birds with conjunctivitis. Even though antibiotics may work, there is the worry that resistant strains may develop.

I put some plants in the ground this evening, finally. The prairie consists of an area 15 feet by 30 feet of grass, cosmos, bayberry, black-eyed Susans and a variety of weeds. I placed wood planks from the Red Barn about 5 feet from the grass and planted all of my native stuff in between the planks. The plan is to have multiple layers of different things that either bear seeds for the birds or flowers for the butterflies and bees.
It looks a lot better than what you can see here. I will be sure to post pictures when they are bigger.

Isabelle was suitably impressed.
And now, some more TRES porn!

Isabelle wanted to know what the TRES were doing
(the birds weren't exactly locking the door and keeping it on the down-low).
So I took a deep breath and told her that they were mating, and that's how they make eggs. I waited for her to ask for more detail, but she was satisfied with that answer. Thank goodness.

Female tree swallow: "Hey, don't point that THING at ME!"
***

Oh, yeah. I was going to explain the meaning of life.

Well, on the way back from Lake Erie, I was behind a beat-up station wagon driven by a true, red-blooded hippie. Along with various political stickers (Democrats) and earthy stickers (Tread Gently, that sort of thing) he also had this sticker:
( I didn't get a picture...was too busy reading street signs trying not to get lost)
"Life is too short.
Don't be a dick."
Now, can anyone argue with that?