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On The Wild Side

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Christine Maccabee  

Many years ago, I found a holly tree that was half-dead in a pot at a nursery. They were closing up for the winter, so were only too happy to sell the holly to me at half the price. Thrilled, I brought it home and planted it with great care on one side of my house. Over the years, it grew nearly as high as the roof.

Several years ago, my holly got a disease and was obviously dying, so with great sorrow, I decided to have it cut down. However, I noticed a shoot coming up one side of the stump and decided to give it a chance. Now I have a lovely young tree, about ten feet tall. As you can see, I do not give up easily on living things.

Just last month, while sitting at my computer,  I heard a commotion outside my window. It was a fluttering of wings, but mostly some loud screeching or calling. Looking out, I saw two blue jays, one of which was a juvenile. The older, larger adult was broadcasting a message out to the rest of his clan, I suppose, saying “No berries on this holly.” I have learned that birds have specific calls or songs for specific purposes, the truth of which reveals their amazing innate intelligence (which some call instinct). Indeed, sadly, even though those two blue jay scouts had found a holly tree, there were no berries on it because it is a male.

Some people do not like blue jays, especially not when they come to feast at their bird feeders. Jays have gained an unfair reputation as bullies, even bandits, due to the mask patterns around their eyes and an occasional nest robbery. In fact, blue jays are related to crows and ravens, which are known to be carnivorous, but rarely eating the eggs of other birds. J.J. Audubon called his drawing of blue jays “Crested Crows,” which is a translation from the Latin. They will even eat your cat’s food and pluck out the eyes of dead animals. Some people call them “winged vagabonds.” Call them what you like; I think they are beautiful.

According to naturalist Calvin Simonds, the blue jay’s reputation as a nest robber is “much overstated,” as they prefer nuts, acorns, seeds, and small fruits.1 In fact, the blue jay is actually a tropical bird, which has expanded its range through North America, as far north as Maine. Talk about adaptation of a species! I admire the blue jay for its pluck. As for the “bully at the bird feeder” accusation, I believe smaller birds are simply intimidated by the blue jay’s large size. I have never seen a blue jay bully my smaller birds, although some animals—as well as some human beings—seem to exhibit inbred, bullying tendencies.

After the disappointment expressed by my two jays in the holly tree, I decided I need more hollies, female ones this time, to get berries for all my birds. I already have dogwoods on my land, but not nearly enough native elder, cherry, crab apple, or holly. Red cedar is a good tree for wild fruit, but is known to create disease in your orchard trees if it is within one mile of them. However, on Cape Cod, a birder counted 20,000 migrating robins in a cedar tree grove, eating their fill until finally leaving to go further south, so cedar is a great habitat in the right places.

But, I digress…now back to the holly. I emailed a naturalist friend, who has a stand of female holly trees. Before winter is out, I will be rooting as many cuttings from his hollies as I am able, so, in time, I will have plenty of wild fruit to help my frugivore-feathered friends through the winter. So, what’s a frugivore, you ask?

In my research, I learned that some birds are frugivores, or fruit lovers. Besides blue jays, other frugivores are robins, bluebirds, thrush, mockingbirds, catbirds, and cedar waxwings, along with others, I am sure. Developing habitat for wild birds and bees and insects of all sorts requires appropriate and diverse vegetation. So, I must thank my blue jays on the holly outside my window for spurring me on to a better wildlife management plan. Seeds in my feeder and suet are not the only ways I can help my kin.

I do not care as much about the ornamental qualities of hollies and dogwoods, but more about their usefulness for wildlife. After all, what would this world be like without the voices of the birds, the buzzing of the bees (all wild fruiting trees get flowers first), the astounding colors of flowers, and the voice of the wind through the trees, even my poor little male holly tree; perhaps it will be thrilled to have a few females around!

 

mountain talk

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by Chris O’Connor

Wild Turkeys, Our Native American Birds

The wild turkey, a large game bird native to North America, suffered severely depleted numbers due to habitat loss and unfettered hunting in America over a span of hundreds of years.

Thanks to decades of efforts by wildlife conservation groups, natural resources folks, and creative solutions to their management, wild turkeys have rebounded and now number over seven million.

A significant tool utilized to revive the wild turkey numbers, while they had all but disappeared, is the net cannon. Simply put, the net cannon is a wide net spread on the ground, chow is scattered, turkeys arrive to chow down. The cannon is triggered, and the net draws up around the birds. The birds are then shipped to locales where the birds are scarce or non-existent.

Turkeys possess excellent hearing and eyesight, are omnivores and opportunistic feeders, so on the face of it, they probably enjoy an easier life than many other wild animals.

They will consume whatever they can find, having adapted to follow a seasonal diet that follows the maturation of different plants and availability: whatever they can forage on—forest floor or farm field, including seeds, insects, berries, invertebrates such as snails, worms, and small amphibians and snakes. They are reported to have over six hundred food sources.

Male turkeys are called toms  or gobblers, for their famous vocalization that can be heard over a mile away. They’ll range over several square miles, sometimes joining a flock with hens, or traveling individually, though the species is considered a social one.

Mating season arrives early spring.  Toms will enter a clearing or fly up to a tree branch where they cackle away with their species-specific siren song: the famous gobble, which makes all their head parts—such as the wattles under the beak and the fleshy long protuberance hanging over the beak—wiggle as part of the display.

They are often depicted displaying their magnificent mating plumage with tails fanned out, feathers puffed up, and wings dropped and dragging the ground. They will strut around the hens so as to best display their red, green, copper, and gold iridescent feathers. As a member of a polygamous species, toms will court multiple hens.

Wild turkey hens are on their own after breeding and left to fashion their own nests, albeit minimalistic ones. Turkey hens’ nests aren’t built as many birds are, birds that typically have mates who help them search for materials and painstakingly construct them.

A turkey hen finds a suitable location at the base of a tree, within the cover of shrubby growth or tall grasses containing a shallow depression, with little more than existing leaf litter or other dry material, and begins to lay her eggs.

The hen may lay up to around fifteen or more eggs at the rate of one per day. She doesn’t begin incubation until the last one is laid. When the young hatch after approximately twenty-eight days, the young—or “poults” as her young are called—are “precocial,” meaning they are active and require little care.

The active chicks enjoy yolk reserves for a few days and scratch for insects with mother hen to fuel their rapid growth, which in part enables the poults to fly for short distances within a couple of weeks.

Hens will continue to brood the poults at night for some weeks, while they remain especially susceptible to hypothermia due to spring rains and chilly nights.

Eggs, hen, and poult predation are responsible for extreme losses to future generations of wild turkeys.  The mother hen has limited means to protect her live young, especially in the first two weeks of life.

During the day, the mother hen may sound an alarm call that signals poults to remain still. She will feign a broken wing injury and hobble away to lure a predator away from her very defenseless young. The poults have nothing more than their downy camouflage to remain indistinguishable from their surroundings.

Nest predators include the usual suspects, including skunks, opossums, snakes, foxes, and other egg-eating creatures. Domestic dogs can be a threat as well.

Mature turkeys and poults are hunted by coyotes, raptors, bobcats, cougars…and, of course, humans.  Some protection is provided tom turkeys with rather substantial spurs on their feet that can grow one to two inches long.  It is said that while the tom is more apt to run up to twenty-five miles per hour to escape attack, females are more likely to take to the wing.

Both genders share extremely acute hearing and eyesight, arguably their most effective survival assets.  They also roost in trees at night which offers some protection from terrestrial threats, though it is hard to imagine a twenty-five pound tom accomplishing such a feat.

Deep winter snowfall is a passive threat, a time when the birds may be unable to reach the ground to scavenge fallen nuts such as acorns and other foodstuffs crucial to restoration of fat and protein necessary to their survival until spring.

If there are no seeds, berries or other sustenance available, turkeys can survive a fast for approximately two weeks.

When spring arrives and life begins anew, one may witness tom turkeys with their red, white, and blue caruncle-covered featherless heads, long snood and wiggling red wattles in courtship regalia strutting around one or more female wild turkeys in a clearing.

Just as quickly as one sees them, blink and they disappear as if they were merely an apparition now camouflaged in the shade and light, drifting away in plain sight.