Naturally

I listened to a delightful sparrow duet — song and vesper — as I watched a brown creeper creep brownly up trees. A yellow-rumped warbler fed on suet as a team of juncos raked the ground. The birding life is good.

I welcomed female red-winged blackbirds to the yard. The males arrive on their breeding grounds a few days to a few weeks before the females return. Females look like large sparrows, so often go unnoticed.

Meadow voles may breed throughout the year, but most commonly in spring and summer. Typically, they have two to five litters per year with a gestation period of 20-23 days. Litter sizes average 3 to 6. Due to high mortality, an average of only 2.6 offspring are successfully weaned. Young are weaned by the time they are 21 days old, and females are sexually mature in 35 to 40 days. Voles have short lifespans that generally range from 2 to 16 months. Voles are the potato chips of the prairie. If it weren't for all the predators eating them, we'd be overrun by voles.

I saw a red-headed woodpecker on a utility pole. Redheads were once so common that orchard owners paid bounties on them. Audubon reported that 100 were shot from a single cherry tree in one day in 1840. This bird has experienced a 70% decline in population from 1966 to 2014. A big factor in this drop is a lack of dead trees in open-forest habitats and urban areas. Adults have bright-red heads, white underparts and black backs with large white patches in the wings.

I saw a great horned owl at high noon, rousted from its roost by enraged crows. It’s a nocturnal hunter, but is also crepuscular, meaning it prefers to hunt at dusk and dawn. But it isn't opposed to grabbing a meal at any time of the day. What appears to be its ears are tufts of feathers called plumicorns. Great horned owls regularly eat skunks. Owls don't have a sense of smell keen enough to be offended by a skunk's smell. All they know is that a skunk is delicious. I took a great-horned owl to the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota that had been hit by a car on the road. It had been skunk hunting and was successful in that regard. It was a real stinker. The trip to the Raptor Center in the company of a skunk owl was a long one.

Q&A

"When are fawns born?" Most fawns are born in May into early June after a gestation period of 190 to 210 days. A first-time mother usually has one fawn. Twins are common and triplets fairly common with experienced mothers. The weight of a fawn is 5 to 8 pounds at birth. For the first few weeks of their lives, fawns lie motionless on the ground when they're not nursing. I've heard all my life that fawns lack a scent. That's not completely true. It's not an overpowering odor. Predators sometimes stumble over a fawn, but they often find fawns by the smell of the baby deer. The spotted coats of fawns help hide them from predators. Fawns are precocial, meaning they are able to walk within hours after birth. Rainfall can be hard on fawns. If you find a fawn, its mother is usually nearby, even if you don’t see her.

"How long do deer live?" Most white-tailed deer live 2 to 3 years. The average lifespan for a wild white-tailed deer is 4.5 years (Lopez et al 2003). A tooth analysis on a doe shot by a hunter in Vermont in 2018 indicated it was 20.5 years old.

"How many litters does a rabbit have?" The eastern cottontail is prolific and has two to four litters of four to six young. A mother digs a shallow saucer-shaped nest in the ground and lines it with grass and fur from her belly. Baby cottontails leave the nest after three weeks. Only about 1% of rabbits make it to two years of age. A mother rabbit isn't a helicopter parent. To reduce predation, the mother rests and feeds nearby during the day, and returns to the nest at dawn and dusk to nurse her young.

Don Anderson of Albert Lea asked how to tell if thistle seed had gone bad. Nyjer seed has something wrong with it if the birds won’t eat it. The problem is mold or mildew if it smells musty. It's bad seed if it's clumped or slimy. Birds don’t eat the entire seed. They eat only the meat inside.

Thanks for stopping by

"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." — Eden Phillpotts (often incorrectly credited to Yeats) "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." — Alexander Pope Do good.

This Indigo Bunting arrived early this year.

The White-throated Sparrow whistles while I work. I’m appreciative of his efforts.

He’s brown and he thrashes leaves. He’s a Brown Thrasher.