Spring Begins To Slip Away

Songs of second and third courtships bring the last days of June to a close. After spring's first frenzied courtships and nestings, the feathered world quietens down for a few weeks. The chores of incubation and the feeding of young take their toll from the adult bird's free-spirited life. But now the males are belting out their courting songs from dawn to dusk, anxious to get on with the busy life of a second family.

After this recurrence of activity, the birds usually cease singing until the next spring. About mid to late July most summer visitors go into molt and cease their singing. During this time summer visitors and permanent residents become almost totally silent.

The scrappy little Carolina wren belts out a song occasionally, singing more often than any other bird of this season. (Silence must be pure torture to him . . . he is such a vocal ball of feathers.) The blue jay might squall a few notes and doves continue to coo, the pewee continues his plaintive, sad song, and the wood thrush gives fewer evening concerts. The lessening of song is a sure sign the days of spring are slipping away into summer.

The brown thrasher is singing lustily and I see why. The female is sneaking twigs into a dense photinia shrub. Looking like sleek ballerinas in gray tutus, two mockingbirds gracefully soft-toe it down the driveway. But now scientists tell us it is two males bidding for territory. Evidently thinking of another nest and four more mouths to feed this summer.

Towhees are singing in the late June performance. They nest as many as three times in one season. They are with us year round. I have just seen a pair pack a brood off on their own. Now they are busy on another nest. Several years ago, a pair nested in the photinia hedge in September.

I hear the robin's cheery song each day now that he's building next door in a dogwood tree. Soon his bubbling song will cease for the season. Chasing blue jays burn green leaves with blue fire. After the chase, I watch the male feed the female. This is a courtship gesture used by many birds. He's probably courting her for the second nest and the last of the season.

Whistling loud and clear, the cardinal, no doubt, has another family in mind and before long I should find the nest in some thorny shrub or rose vine.

Soon after the active days of June are over, summer visitors hide in the wooded lot and dense borders of our yard and change into their traveling duds. Now about all we'll hear from these guys is a half-hearted short song, but usually we hear only chips and chirps.

Though summer is but a few days away, already preparations for another season have begun.

Mocker Turns Into Migrant

For a number of years a mockingbird has built a nest in a Jessamine vine at the corner of our yard. The vine crawls up a wild cherry tree, kept trimmed to keep the vine fairly low and thick-leaved. This spring we were disappointed . . . no nest in the Jessamine vine.

We began a search for the new location of the nest, for the birds were still in the yard and singing from high perches, especially the chimney. We found the nest in a dense sasanqua bush about twenty feet away from its old nesting site. There were four tawny-spotted, greenish-blue eggs in the nest. Later, all four eggs hatched.

The fledglings left the nest in mid-May. One of the adults, we assume the female, and two youngsters were observed bathing in the pool. The slender, but dowdy-looking, mother was cleaning her gray and white frock while the brownish-gray youngsters stood in the shallow water unsure of their new environment. We didn't see papa and the other two youngsters. Perhaps the "boys" were out learning other lessons.

The mockingbird, until recently, has been considered a southern bird and year-round resident of the area. To mention the mockingbird would bring memories of the moonlight and roses and these birds singing all night. They are synonymous with lovely brick-walled gardens and magnolias and scented flowers. Never would one think of a mockingbird in the snow-clad pines and hemlocks of New England or the towering spruces of Michigan or the red cedars of Iowa, bent low with snow and ice.

But no more can we think of the mocker as strictly a southern bird. He has jubilantly traveled the sky ways as far north as Maine and Illinois, Michigan and Iowa. The mocker has been considered a non-migrant, but now perhaps his travels north and west will move him to come South again each winter with the human snowbirds. By changing his range, he'll be considered a migrant within the United States.

Regardless of where he might hang out, the mocker is known as the best singer (not the most musical) of the avian clan. He loves to sing on moonlit nights. He usually repeats a phrase five times before he grabs another phrase from his pocket to repeat it five times, then another phrase, and so on. This goes on for days while he's courting and nest building. Although he is a good husband and helps with the cozy nest, he spends more time singing than working.

Fluttering from his chimney perch to a dead pine branch, to a swaying branch of a river birch, to a telephone line, and then bounding into the air again, leaving a trail of golden notes behind as he dips and turns in flight appearing to have everlasting energy, always in motion.

Even with all these wonderful attributes, sometimes a resident mocker is a bully. He takes over berried bushes in winter and chases all other birds away. He's a bully at feeding stations too, perching nearby all day so that he does not miss one bird that tries to feed.

By mid-August all is quiet on the mockingbird's high perches, his song not to be heard again until October when he comes out of hiding wearing a newly pressed gray and white suit. After two or three weeks of vigorous singing, he again ceases song until spring.

He sings a few notes in February, increases his medley in March. By April he once more is on the chimney tossing into the perfumed spring air his repetitive refrain. By May he will again be nesting in the thick-leaved sasanqua bush.

Insect Control? Look To Natural Predator

Have a need for insect control? Why not try a natural predator, himself a blood-thirsty insect. In different sections of the country he is known as prophet, mule-killer, soothsayer and devil's rear horse.

Measuring from two to five inches in length, this grayish-green fellow has two sets of slim grasshopper-like back legs and prizefighter-looking front legs. These strong, muscular-filled arms have wicked hooks underneath to hold its victim while it actually eats it alive.

The praying mantis is also a cannibal. He has no love for his own kind. If he's hungry, he'll eat his brother.

His color and shape resemble the plants on which he spend the day to escape notice.

Like a pair of binoculars, his black eyes protrude from a heart-shaped face. His body is slender, the wings short and broad.

The praying mantis is a pretender. As soon as dark begins to fall, he crawls from his hideout onto foliage or bark, a perfect camouflage for his twig-colored and twig-looking body. Kneeling in a pious position, he lifts his huge front paws as if in prayer, but really he's getting in position to attack unsuspecting prey. He remains in this pious position until an unfortunate insect ventures near. Then he snatches him, pinning down the victim with his vicious claws and eats it alive.

A birder once snapped a mantis at dusk devouring a ruby-throated hummingbird at a nectar feeder.

The female, larger than the male, has even stronger cannibalistic traits. She takes advantage of this and after mating will turn on her husband, kill him, or make a meal out of him while he is still alive. Her weakling mate, resigned to his fate, lifts not a hooked claw to save his life.

In the fall the mantis cycle begins anew when the female lays an oval mass of eggs on the stem of a plant and covers it with mucus that hardens in an eye-catching, creamy-tan case, assuring the next summer's supply of praying mantises.

This beguiling insect with ravenous appetite is considered beneficial, especially to gardeners. It is a glutton and feeds on nothing but insects (with the exception of a small bird or two) and can be called nature's garden vacuum cleaner.

A single mantis eggcase, hardly an inch in diameter, holds scores of hungry nymphs. Pushing out of the eggcase, they, like butterflies and moths, need only to hang upside down for a few minutes until their bodies and legs harden in the cool air.

Within minutes after hatching, these young cannibals are snatching and devouring destructive insects in your garden. Mantises are also fond of some beneficial insects such as honeybees and ladybugs, but they do away with harmful insects in greater numbers.

The easiest way to stock a garden with mantises is to buy eggcases (available at some nurseries) and tie them to bushes or low trees during late fall, winter or early spring. The nymphs stay secure in the snug eggcases throughout the winter months.

Then when the spring sun is warming in the sky and the air is fine and sweet with the fragrances of roses and the first insects are hatching and humming, the little nymphs crawl out of their cozy bedroom, hang themselves up to dry and charge!

How To Pick The Right Bird House

Rare Kinglet Visit Always Pleasant

The budding trees of May in the far north call the ruby-crowned kinglets to come home. The sun is climbing higher in the sky each day and it has that spring warmth that fattens buds and brings a glow to spring flowers.

After wintering in the sunny South, they hear the call and heed it. We have not seen one of these vivacious little jewels now for three weeks. We won't see them around again until they replace our hummingbirds in September when they come bouncing in to fill the void.

We know they are busy and happy for now they are in their breeding grounds. The male must win a mate, help build the dainty little nests, usually lined with rabbit fur and feathers, and all the while keep up his exuberant, almost tumultuous chorus in song. Into this cozy nest of moss, lichens and grasses, the female lays nine teeny, pale buffy eggs with tiny dots of henna-brown. With nine hungry mouths to feed, who has time for singing.

Discarding pansies and planting impatiens one day in mid-May several years ago, I was startled with a loud burst of tumultuous birdsong I had never heard before. I dropped my trowel and sprang to my feet, hoping I could find the author of such a gay melody.

To my surprise there he was, a small midget in feathers. How could such a loud melody come from such a small buffy throat? There, on a limb of a water oak, sat a tiny olive-gray bird, his crown patch glowing . . . a ruby-crowned kinglet!

"Why", I asked him, "are you still here?"

I feel the most fortunate of birders to have heard this boisterous song for I might never be in his far northern breeding range when he is in full, rich song.

Kinglets are wee, plump little birds clad in olive and buffy gray plumage. The bright red crown patch of the male is a positive field mark but it is often covered by the head feathers. Other good field marks are the white eye ring, making the small black eyes appear pop eyed, and the two white wing bars.

The ruby-crowned kinglet is a common winter visitor in the Central Savannah River Area. They move about through the naked trees and luxuriant growth of evergreen trees and shrubs in search for food. Not being noisy or flocking birds, though they are abundant in our area, one would scarcely notice.

During the winter they stay busy just hunting food. Then by early May a wee voice tells them the trees are budding in the northern states and they zoom away on a silvery, moonlit night.

Why was this perky little fellow still at my place in mid-May when he should be helping a mate trim their cozy home with green moss?

We'll never know but from his exuberant bursts of song in the water oak on that May day, wild wisdom sent him a message and courting, mating and nesting were on his mind. Why else would he explode with such melody?