The centerline of the main drag in Hartland melts away every June.
Naturally
I heard a bird singing merrily on high. It was a crow.
It was 30 years ago. I still played basketball. After a hard-fought battle on the hardwood, I stopped at a supermarket to make my shopping list happy. There was a stack of heated dog dishes by the door. They were not big sellers as they'd been reduced to $2. I bought one as any big spender would have. I should have bought the entire stack, as I used it as a bird waterer until it became dog-tired. It worked well and didn't spin the electric meter. A birdbath with a built-in heater draws birds to a backyard. Birdbaths can sit on the ground as my dog dish did or be mounted on a pole or deck railing. There are heaters that can be added to a birdbath to keep the water open all winter. I have a new dog dish. It cost way more than $2. It's popular because the birds think it's a bird dish.
I saw a red fox on the road. A red fox has a white-tipped tail and is seen in forests and fields, often in the open. Gray foxes have black-tipped tails and are found in forests and forest edges, not likely seen in open areas. Gray foxes can climb trees. Because they prey upon small mammals, a healthy population of foxes tends to lower the incidence of Lyme disease.
A bird feeder and a state park sticker are splendid gifts. They keep on giving. The blue jays in the yard appreciated the gift of peanuts in the shell. It was fun making them happy. The Christmas chipmunk made its appearance. Chipmunks aren't true hibernators. Instead, they enter a torpid state, in which their body temperature and heartbeat decrease, but they wake every few days to feed on stockpiled food and to defecate. A chipmunk's burrow system has an entrance hole about 2 inches in diameter and goes down around 2 feet before paralleling the surface for up to 10 feet. Chambers for sleeping, storing food, defecating and giving birth are excavated to the side of the tunnel. Chipmunks love tomato juice — when tomatoes ripen, chipmunks eat holes in the bottoms to get the juice. Despite the propensity to attack my tomatoes, I gave the Christmas chipmunk some peanuts. It made the chipmunk happy. And me, too. Merry Christmas.
Q&A
"How long do bald eagles feed their young?" Eaglets are nestlings for 10 to 12 weeks and are fully grown at 9 weeks. They are fed raw meat directly one to eight times a day, receiving no regurgitated food as some other birds do. The male provides most of the food for the first two weeks. After 3 or 4 weeks the female provides as much food as the male and by the late nesting period, the female is providing most of the food. The parents will continue to provide food for some time after fledging as the newly flighted birds hone their hunting and flying skills. It takes 4-12 weeks on average for young eagles to hunt successfully. Fully refined, specialized hunting skills probably take years to develop.
"Are flying eagles courting when they interlock talons?" They could be, but talon-grappling and tumbling have been observed behaviors in all combinations of eagles. Four possible reasons for such actions are pair-bonding, aggression, learning and play.
"What are two porcupines called?" A prickly pair.
Marian Bahl of Faribault wrote, "Where are the finches? Nothing is eating at my thistle seed feeder!" I’ll send some goldfinches your way. It might take a couple of days, what with it being near Christmas and all. The pine siskins blew through some yards. Their winter movements are erratic and depend partly on the state of cone crops in northern North America. The weather has been kind to finches and they are finding plenty of natural foods to eat. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, they’ll be back.
"I raise chickens. I watched roosters preening before a fight. What's going on there?" Displacement behavior occurs when an animal performs an act that's irrelevant to the behavioral context. It includes self-grooming, touching or scratching displayed when an animal has a conflict between two motivations, such as the desire to fight another while being afraid of that opponent.
"Do robins reuse nests?" Not typically. Old nests crumble during winter, parasite eggs or larvae may overwinter in a nest and attack nestlings, and female robins have a powerful impulse to build a new nest each year.
Thanks for stopping by
"Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it 'white.'" — Bing Crosby
"A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together." — Garrison Keillor
Do good.
©Al Batt 2020
What do you call a goldfinch on a boomerang that won’t come back? A goldfinch on a stick. Photo by Al Batt
There is nothing like a little suet on a snowy day.