Extension News: August 2007 Archives

Invasive plants and invasive insects: purple loosestrife, lily leaf Asian lily beetle. You could probably name far too many of these pests, but the ones that really torment me in the summer are the Japanese beetles. Yes, some people might say they’re attractive, but since I usually find them on a skeletonized leaf, I don’t find them attractive at all.

Around our place, this beetle has many favorite foods. It particularly likes and nearly defoliates one wild shrub that grows around here, as well as pussywillow, streamco willow and my curlicue willow. Every evening, I may find four or five beetles per leaf. Into the jar of soapy water they go.

They like the ferns growing wild in the circle of the driveway and they are very, very fond of our raspberries. Strangely, they don’t seem to enjoy the roses quite as much as they do the malva, hibiscus, hollyhocks, amalanchier, corn and string beans.

From the above list, you can see that our yard is a real beetle attractor. I go out every day during July and August. I carry around a large jar about one-third filled with soapy water. On top of the jar I’ve taped the top portion of a gallon milk jug with the bottom portion cut out, forming a funnel to channel the beetles into the water below. My norm is about 500 beetles a day.

Often on my forays around the yard, I’ve asked myself what possible good these beetles serve. I’ve never seen a bird take one. One spring day I was looking at a large nest of tent caterpillars, up quite high in a tree. I was wondering how I was going to cut the branch down so I could get rid of the leaf devouring critters. Suddenly, a flash of orange and black! A male northern Baltimore oriole had arrived. It feasted for several minutes on the tent caterpillars. After that, I left the tent caterpillars alone. If an oriole will eat them, then they have a purpose in my yard.

But those Japanese beetles. What good are they? I stare at my poor pussy willow and wonder if it will survive the attack. Every leaf is filled with holes and many are nothing but rapidly browning shreds. And look at the string beans! Every upper leaf is so chewed that a fat string bean could fit through it. The hollyhocks haven’t flowered in weeks the beetles have eaten every bud.

Suddenly, a movement on the ground, just where I was about to put my foot so that I could reach up higher to get another beetle. Oh, a garter snake! A big one. Look at those lovely colors. I never would have seen it if I hadn’t been out on beetle patrol. Its tongue flicks out rapidly. Look at those eyes! I wonder what it’s been finding to eat down here under the ferns. Could it catch a beetle? Hmmm.

The snake moves on and so do I. There are still another hundred beetles to get tonight. What’s this on the leaf? Oh, it’s one of those lovely little silvery brown frogs. This one is no bigger than the nail on my little finger. It sits so still on its leaf. It’s at least four feet off the ground. How ever does it get up this high? Its little eyes blink once, but otherwise it never moves. A real beauty of nature hiding here on the leaf of a shrub.

One night on beetle patrol, I saw not one, but a pair of these tiny frogs. They sat facing each other, one moving its head just a fraction of an inch as they stared. What conversation were they having? Was mating the topic? I watched for several minutes but they made no other move. The next night, I found one of the frogs in the same location. Perhaps the leaf is his territory and the other had intruded.

When I think about the little frogs I’ve encountered, the snakes sliding silently along the ground and the hummingbird darting past me on its way to the monarda that grows across the path from the amalanchier, I wonder if perhaps the beetles do have some purpose in my yard.

Because I’m out hunting them down, I’m in the right place at the right time to see these miracles of nature. I’ll have to think more kindly of those shiny imported pests. But I’ll still keep the soapy water close at hand.

By Susan M. Poirier, Master Gardener

We're not official bird watchers. “Wildlife appreciation generalists” fits us more accurately. We enjoy seeing all kinds of wildlife around us.

When my husband and I started developing our nine acres of abandoned hayfield into a Christmas tree farm, we intentionally left one side of the property in open field “weeds” to some people. We only cut that section once a year to keep the forest at bay. Mowing takes place after the bobolinks have gone on their way and after the monarchs have finished with the milkweed. Bobolinks like to build their nests in fields, but their appearances here have been sporadic. Wild turkeys are continual visitors, using the tall grass for cover if threatened.

Our driveway edges the field for a few hundred feet. It’s so enjoyable to see a monarch flitting among the milkweed plants while walking to get the newspaper and mail. There used to be a gazillion monarchs, but this year I was excited to see one. The winter temperatures haven’t been very kind to them as they migrate between here and warmer climes. The weather hasn’t deterred some other kinds of butterflies, though. Dozens of orangey ones, and also bees and hummingbirds, love the Echinacea and other perennials in the yard.

One of the best things we’ve done for ourselves and the wildlife has been to put in a small recirculating pond in our front yard. Almost before it was finished, the frogs moved in. How did they know that water was suddenly going to appear? We spend the warm summer evenings sitting at the shaded edge of this water feature watching the birds, fish and frogs. The birds are getting more and more used to us being there and will hop into the little stream and bathe with reckless abandon while we wish we could be so uninhibited. The frogs climb onto the lily pads and dream froggy thoughts.

Once while we were sitting there, a very large frog tried to swallow a very large bird. The bird was dead, having been swallowed head first, but its wings were spread wide. It was hard to tell, but I think it was an immature robin. We watched this spectacle for a long time. The grandchildren were entranced. Cell phone pictures were taken to prove this occurrence. Finally, after the frog had tried everything including wetting the feathers, it still couldn't finish swallowing this huge mass. He gave up.

The water has drawn more species of birds than we’ve ever seen here before. Some cute little brown bird was out there tonight. Last week we saw a lovely yellow bird that wasn't the usual goldfinch. A yellow warbler? The cedar waxwings have been staying around. Usually, they were only here for the mountain ash berries, but they found and really like the blueberry bushes we planted for ourselves (originally). The waxwings have to share the berry bushes and our fruit trees with the fat robins. We have never harvested a cherry!

This brings up chipmunks. Cute, but a friend dubbed them “woods rats,” which kind of fits. They gather food right along with the birds, running back and forth with their little cheeks stuffed full of fruit. I have found some of their treasures hidden in the soft soil of my garden.

Aside from letting the field go wild, we have been landscaping the yard with flowers and bushes known as good food and cover sources for birds and other wildlife. Each year I buy way too many plants from the Strafford County Conservation District plant sale. They do an excellent job of choosing native plants that are particularly interesting to wildlife. Some of the bare little sticks I bought a few years ago are now 12 feet high and their fruits last all through the winter. I planted nannyberry and buttonbush species I hadn’t heard of before along with winterberry, bayberry and hollies.

The birds love to nest in our fir, spruce and pine trees. The branches are so lush they provide excellent cover for the young. At mid-winter tree harvest time, the families get so excited to find a bird's nest in their Christmas tree. Thankfully, folklore claims that this means good luck.

The latest trend seems to be to reduce your carbon footprint (a measure of the impact your activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases you produce). One of the ways being touted is letting part of the lawn go natural, saving on gas and oil for the mowers.

It's nice to know that we're ahead of the curve for a change. We find a peaceful calm at the end of the day getting in tune with the wildlife using the habitat we've created.

By Carolyn Enz Page, Community Tree Steward

Midsummer visitors to our home often look about in confusion when they hear the sound of chattering baby birds coming from the closed off fireplace in our living room. Having kept this home warm for many years, the fireplace finally fell into disuse for heating 20 years ago due to damage to brick and mortar after one chimney fire too many. But the chimney swifts, who have nested there for many summers, continued using it even after we stopped.

This year, the chattering began in mid July. According to online sources, it takes the chicks about a month to fledge. Good parents, chimney swifts spend all their waking hours gobbling flying insects in mid air to feed to their young. In and out they glide, with grace and agility, regurgitating a stored up ball or bolus of digested insects.

The same is true when they build their nest; they never land, but grab onto small twigs while in active flight, bring them back and attach them to the chimney wall with glue made from their own saliva. They eventually produce a semicircular nest of twigs attached by spit, which seems incredible, but that actually holds extremely well attached to reasonably clean firebrick and mortar.

In a chimney coated with glassy, baked on creosote, the nest may break off and fall to the bottom, which makes the sound of twittering even louder. Our birds always seem to make it out eventually, but by then we have become inured to the sounds. (Could you turn the sound up? I can’t hear the TV.)

 Despite the volume of noisy chattering, a single chimney or other hollow structure will contain

only one active chimney-swift nest, although non breeding birds may come in to roost at night. Sometimes referred to as “flying cigars,” chimney swifts may be mistaken for bats because of their flight pattern. About five inches long, with graceful swept back wings, their dark coloration makes them difficult to observe since they only land when inside their protective chimney. Claw like feet and tiny spurs at the end of their tail feathers allow them to cling to rough surfaces.

In the late summer or early fall, swifts begin to gather in suitable locations to roost by the hundreds before they return to warmer climes, in their case, the Amazon Basin of Peru, which makes for an annual round-trip migration of about 6000 miles. Vincejo de chimnea flies in the skies south of the equator while snow flies in New Hampshire.

Watching these creatures all summer long, I begin to feel proprietary towards them. They live in our chimney for six or more weeks, after all. But, knowing of their other home reminds me these tiny creatures are not anyone’s property but important beings in the global web of life.

Before European settlers arrived, chimney swifts lived in hollow trees. Audubon called them American Swifts. As pioneers headed west, clearings and settlements became more common to North America, hollow trees became harder to find, and the swifts turned more and more to man made chimneys. As the Industrial Revolution spawned factories, mills with chimneys began serving as attractive nesting structures for swifts. Soon people began to refer to them as chimney swifts, a name that stuck. Their adaptation to chimneys actually increased their numbers in the first part of the twentieth century. Today, their numbers have begun waning again due to the lack of masonry chimneys. Wildlife groups around the country are working to build new nesting towers for these voracious insectivores that glide through our skies in search of food for their nestlings and themselves.

The summer begins with little fluttering sounds as the nesting pair explores and prepares their nest. My husband and I just roll our eyes and hope that this summer’s nest will stay on the wall of the chimney and that the babies will fledge quickly. Inevitably though, and this year has been no exception, the nest eventually winds up in the bottom, with four to six twittering babies waiting impatiently for Mum and Dad to bring the chow. Removing the baby birds from the chimney would spell a sure death for them; their parents won’t feed them outside of the nesting site. (Disturbing an active chimney swift nest is also illegal under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.)

So the chattering continues, and soon we don’t even notice. As the tiny birds grow stronger, they leave the nest to cling to the walls of the chimney and practice beating their tiny wings until they pant with exhaustion. One day, they will actually fly or crawl to the top and practice flying in circles around the house and chimney.

By mid-August, the chattering ceases, the TV volume decreases, and we breathe a sigh, not of relief, but of satisfaction. Another summer, another brood off to Peru.

By Helen Downing, Master Gardener