Naturally Al Batt

Do house sparrows smoke cigarettes?

Naturally

 When the wildflowers have gone to seed, monarchs and hummingbirds book flights south. On Oct. 4, I completed my hummingbird chores for 2024. I thanked the feeders for their fine service and put them away.
 At the rear of the warbler parade in my yard are palms, orange-crowns and butterbutts. No horses. Juncos, and white-throated, Lincoln’s and song sparrows fill any empty spaces.
 It’s difficult to keep an opinionated blue jay a secret. Blue jays have an impressive vocal repertoire and they’re not afraid to use it. Jays are excellent mimics that impersonate red-tailed, red-shouldered and broad-winged hawk calls. I heard one doing a broad-winged. Why? The jay may have been trying to warn other birds of a hawk’s presence, or was trying to trick other birds into thinking that a hawk was nearby, which allowed the jay access to a feeder that lacked a crowd. Or maybe it did the call just because it could.
 Great horned owl fledglings scream in the darkness. That’s not dipping into a reservoir of charm. They aren’t screaming for ice cream, but they are screaming for food. They want their parents to feed them. Mortality is high for the immature owls endeavoring to find their place on the planet.
 Orb web spiders regularly take down and eat their webs to recycle the silk proteins. As I admired a web’s engineering, a dried raspberry cane snagged my pantleg and held on for dear life. “The Giving Tree“ is a lovely book by Shel Silverstein that teaches generosity and unselfishness. It’s a story of a tree willing to do anything for the boy it loved. Maybe I’d encountered “The Giving Raspberry Cane.” Later, I ran into “The Giving Burdock,” which generously endowed me with its Velcro-like burs.
 Oak, maple, basswood, poplar, aspen, birch, ironwood and willow leaves turn yellow.

Q&A

 “How do mourning cloak butterflies survive the winter?” Adults fly early in the spring while there’s still snow on the ground. They hibernate through the winter as adults, under bark or in other small crevices.
 “Do grasshoppers have ears on their legs?” Grasshoppers have short antennae, auditory organs (tympanal organs) on their abdomens and call (stridulate) by rubbing their hind legs against their forewings. Crickets and katydids have long antennae, auditory organs on their forelegs and stridulate by rubbing their forewings together.
 “Is a vulture a raptor?” Certain physical traits are common to raptors: keen vision, curved beaks and sharp talons. The word raptor refers to a broad group of birds of prey–eagles, falcons, hawks, kites and owls. Raptors can capture and rip prey apart with their powerful talons. Vultures cannot do this. So, by that standard, vultures aren’t raptors.
 “What’s it called when a possum plays dead?” Thanatosis is nature’s ultimate bluff used as a survival strategy. In response to danger, some animals enter a state of immobility, mimicking death to evade predators that prefer live prey. This behavior is also called apparent death or playing possum. Opossums aren’t thespians. They have no conscious control.
 “Who is the Cooper’s hawk named for?” William Cooper was a naturalist in the early 19th century, one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and known for his study of mollusks.
 “Where can I see monk parakeets in the US?” Monk parakeets, noisy and colorful, are native to South America, but can be found in New York City, Chicago, Portland (Oregon), San Antonio, San Diego, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, Austin and Miami, where escapees or releases of this popular caged bird have started feral populations. Also known as Quaker parrots, these blue-jay-sized birds are named for their gray forehead, face and breast, evoking a monk's hood or the colonial-era clothing of Quakers. They nest in trees, building a stick nest that resembles a small beaver dam.
 “I found a cigarette butt in a house sparrow nest. Why would a bird put it there?” They aren’t smokers, but some birds don’t care what they use for nest materials, but research suggests birds might incorporate cigarette butts into their nests as an aid in repelling insects and parasites. Nicotine is the tobacco plant’s defense against herbivores. A study found house sparrow and house finch nests containing filters from smoked cigarettes had fewer parasites than those without. The study didn’t investigate whether the chemicals in the filters negatively affected the health of chicks in the nest.

Thanks for stopping by

 “You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.”—Kurt Vonnegut.
 “A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”—Jimmy Carter.
 Do good.

©Al Batt 2024

Snowy tree crickets make sleigh bell-like sounds, a quintessential background music heard on a late summer evening. It’s likely to be found along woodland edges and is sometimes called the “temperature cricket” because the warmer the night, the faster it chirps. You can approximate the temperature in Fahrenheit by adding 40 to the number of snowy tree cricket chirps heard in 13 seconds. Photo by Al Batt.

A natural bird feeder.

I think young opossums are cute. My father used to read the Pogo comics to me when I was a small boy.

I paused here and heard house finches and American robins. It was a good deal.

Virginia creeper creeping along in Wisconsin. Virginia creeper has five leaves, and poison ivy has three. “Leaves of three, let it be. Leaves of five, let it thrive.”