The garden as a bird feeder

In general, our garden is our bird feeder- we planted native plants and created habitat to suit birds' primary food- insects.  And it has worked well, though it is not your traditional "birder's garden".  I feel like I have written this post before (and probably better), but it is a good reminder this time of the year.  For several years I have had mixed feelings for bird feeders, and I have stopped using bird feeders through summer, spring and fall.  I have stopped using seed feeders altogether, and occasionally and seasonally use different forms of suet feeders (see below), including native plant suet we prepare ourselves (click here).

Our goal is to make our garden our feeder by planting native plants and providing habitat and this sustains a variety of birds, insects and other wildlife. This has been our goal, and even in a small, city lot, you can have success.

Our giant ant hill in our front yard is a Northern flicker's favorite.   Through the winter, flickers dig this up for tasty grubs (and defenseless slow moving adults in the cold).

In winter, we add some feeders for birds, but not the typical ones people are used to seeing, though non-traditional feeders, yet they are more natural. for example, my favorite, carcasses.
These parts and pieces are left overs from butchering our game meat during hunting season.

Although the aesthetic might not be for everyone, carcasses (from winterkill, and predator kills) are the original suet feeder (click here for more information). 

Even a little scapula can be an enticing feeder for chickadees, nuthatches, flickers, and downy woodpeckers.

In addition to providing housing for native solitary nesting bees, mason bee boxes, aka "larvae feeders" provide food for nuthatches, downy woodpeckers and chickadees that pick the overwintering larvae out. Here a chickadee uses its wings for improved leverage to get one out

But perhaps more important in our garden are the natural and original nest boxes- snags.

Birds are a source of food too. With a lot of birds around, come things that eat them.
Here a sharp-shinned hawk eats a cedar waxwing in our garden.

All that it left was the beak

So this winter, consider your feeders, and perhaps shift to some natural or unconventional feeders.  Feeding birds is a lot more than seed feeders, and it is a lot more effective with non-traditional means.

Flicker fledging has begun!

Here are just a couple of pictures and a short video of the fledging progress. Once they fledge, I'll post some more information and pictures, as well as some videos, including some time lapse videos of the fledging. Above is a young male contemplating fledging and below is a female doing the same.

Although we have flickers, nuthatches and chickadees nest in our yard almost every year, the interesting thing this year was the addition of nest box cameras (see photo below).

Click here to watch the nestlings inside of the nest box, if they have already fledged, you can still watch videos of the whole process on Ustream. I captured videos almost every day to document the process.

And here is a not very good quality video I took from inside my house but it shows what is happening outside the box for those that have been watching the flickers online from inside.

Stay tuned for more.

My new favorite garden tool- a time lapse camera

My wife recently surprised me with an early birthday present- a time-lapse, outdoor, waterproof camera for the garden (Brinno Gardenwatch Camera). If you recall, last year she got me another garden camera- a couple of nest box cams. Those have been so much fun and educational, and by the end of this week, our flickers will be fledging so check out the nest camera.

I am totally captivated by this new camera, though. And astounded by all the applications. Suddenly I have so many uses for this one camera that I will have to buy more. I was originally going to write about what garden tools I like and why (I’ve gotten a few questions about that), and I will get to a post about that shortly, but right now, I have to write about this time lapse camera.

This time lapse camera is very easy to use and seems really durable. Right out of the box, it is easy to set up and start taking videos.

At this point, I must digress and reveal that I am in no way benefiting from this review- it is not a paid endorsement, nor did I receive one of these for free to demo or anything- though I do wish someone would contact me about demos, tool reviews or tool trials or something that my other blogging peers seem to get!

Anyway it is really easy to use and I look forward to lots of applications like watching evening primroses, bitterroots (Lewisii rediviva ) flowering, to large long-term changes in our garden, to watching animal heads decompose, to planting and building projects in the garden. I would love to set up one to watch the entire backyard (we have a small yard) for an entire year. The possibilities are endless.

It is easily adjustable and simple to program the camera to take pictures on set intervals from 1 minute on up, and you can even set custom time intervals. You can zoom in to focus in on a single flower or zoom out to look at a landscape. The camera takes remarkably good pictures and has a forgiving depth of field. The camera and housing seem really well built, durable and waterproof, so I suspect I will get many years of use from one. It comes with a 2 GB USB flash drive and I suspect you could plug a much larger one in for huge files or very long term videos. The camera records the videos on the flash drive and you can easily load it to your computer for viewing (without any special software) and editing (with the software provided).

My only complaint or suggestion is that the camera has a photo sensitive shut off so it does not take pictures in the dark, but that is a time I’d like to see what is going on, especially with the evening primroses (see below). It would be great if it came with an infrared camera or option to capture nighttime viewing, like the nest box cameras I have.

At the beginning of the post is a short clip of a white evening primrose (Oenothera cespitosa) (my first video). I recently wrote a post about its cousin and a neighbor in our garden the yellow evening primrose (O. flava). The video would have been better but a neighboring horsemint (Mondara fistulosa) hogged the camera! Nevertheless you can still see the primrose flower's bloom, and the flowers fade, and all that happens with a plant over the course of a couple of days as it tracks the sun across the sky.




Above was my next video, a test, aimed at the flicker nest box (see below for how I mounted it on the side of our house aimed at the flicker box). After I recorded this video I readjusted the camera, zoomed in and changed the record interval from 5 min- 1 minute. When the flickers fledge, I will upload a video with all the action. Now that it is adjusted, it is capturing images of their impending fledging (fledging is scheduled for around July 10).


So exciting. I’ll need to get some more.

Updated July 10:

Here is a better (and shorter) time lapse video of the nest box:

Nesting, nestling and fledging update

There is a lot going on with nesting birds in our garden. We have northern flickers, black-capped chickadee, and red-breastered nuthatches in various stages of nesting and fledging in nest boxes in our small backyard. Here is a breif run down on the actvity....

Black- capped chickadees

The chickadees should fledge any time now- they are ready to go but have probably been delayed by this rain. By the way, thank goodness for the rain!

If you haven't done so already check out the inside of the nest box with our streaming nest camera. But you'd better hurry because they are about to fledge. Click here to go inside the nest box.

At the beginning of this posts is a short video my wife took of the outside of the box and one of the adults feeding the young. For those that only know the chickadees from the inside of the nest box, this view might be interesting.

One thing I am really excited about is that we will be able to capture the mysterious second clutch this year on camera. every year, the chickadees have a second clutch, even after a typically very fruitful first clutch. The second clutch is usually smaller, and takes less time to fledge. It has aways appeared that the young from the first clutch help in raising (or at least with the feeding), the second clutch. Hopefully, though we'll be able to learn a little more of what is going on. It is not really common that chickadees have two clutches, so I am excited to learn more.

Red-breasted nuthatches

These little fellas have been a bit overlooked this year, I am sad to say. Not that they care, but theirs is the only box in which we did not install a nest cam. As a result, we have been so focused on the chickadees and the flicker business, that these little guys have been almost ignored (not really, but relatively). Anyway, they should be fledging any day now, too, but without all the fanfare. One interesting thing to note with these nuthatches, is that there are nuthatches nesting in the nest box I installed at the 8th Street Pocket Park, which is just a block away. Every so often these two nuthatch factions defend their little territories, which is kind of neat.

Northern flickers

Wow, they have had an eventful spring. Here is a little story of their spring...

• They excavated out nest box
• They also excavated a cavity in a silver maple in front of my neighbors house
• They laid eggs in the cavity in the maple
• European starlings evicted them from their nest
• The starlings are nesting in the tree
• The flickers left the area
• Last weekend the flickers returned to the nest box, and as of yesterday (June 3)have laid at least 2 eggs (in the photo below- kind of poor qualiy but it is a video capture).

I hope they can raise a clutch- it is getting late for them.

Once the chickadees fledge we will switch to the flickercam for nest box viewing. Exciting.

The flickers are not nesting in the garden...

The flickers are not nesting in the garden...and I couldn't be happier. A puzzling statement to be sure, so let me explain...

We began about 10 years ago with nest box for northern flickers. These common, primary cavity nesters are facing many problems from loss of nesting habitat to pressures from invasive species (see here). In order to address the first issue we set up a nest box. This was very successful and effective, and based on how quickly they found the box and occupied it, it is obvious they are looking for, and are limited by, places to nest.

In front of my neighbor's house are decadent silver maples (see above), that you'd think would offer great nesting habitat for flickers, and they do, but unfortunately the cavities get occupied by squirrels instead, and have been for the 10 years we've lived beside them.

But it appears that this year the flickers will finally be nesting in one of these decadent trees and I couldn't be happier.

They did excavate our nest box (see photo at the top of the post), and I thought they were going to nest in it. But at the same time, they also excavated a cavity about 30' up one of the silver maples (photo above, arrow acknowledgement: Bike Garden), perhaps our nest box was a back-up for what inevitably happened when flickers tried to nest in the maples- squirrels would occupy the cavity. But maybe not this year.

Unfortunately wildlife gardening in an urban- or sub-urban setting is not just about planting the right plants and putting up nest boxes, unfortunately it is really about introduced pest management. The primary exotic pests here are starlings, house sparrow and squirrels. Controlling pests is not the most glamorous part of having a wildlife garden, but it is perhaps the most important.

In order to combat these invasive species, we have done several things- making the garden less hospitable for them is the first step , but then there is also control, or killing (click here for more information). As far as making the garden less hospitable, that starts with feeders and nest boxes (click here for information about lessening bird feeders), and native plant landscaping (see virtually any post on my blog for this thought!). Both feeders and nest boxes need to be designed for native birds, so no perches, only food they eat, and really very few feeders, and only seasonal ones (click here and here for more information).

Since we stopped feeding with sunflower seeds, we have seen the number of pests decline dramatically in the garden - including US native, but not Montana native, house finches, which essentially disappeared from the yard. In the summer, spring and fall, there is so much natural food, much of which we have planted, feeding is not important and mainly attracts unwanted, or invasive birds and animals, and it also causes unnatural high congregations of birds, that make them susceptible to other pests, like cats (click here for my thoughts on this).

Secondly we only use nest boxes that are appropriate for native species that we are likely to attract, not bluebird boxes for example (read more here).

Third there is control or killing squirrels. In our garden we have a trap set up, and any squirrel I trap, I kill. This started several years ago, and I went from over 200 squirrels/ year down to fewer than 20 last year and this year will be even fewer. As a result, we have seen birds use the garden much more often and differently than when squirrels patrolled the grounds. And most importantly, birds like northern flickers might just nest in natural places now. Like I said, this is the first year that I am thrilled the flickers will not nest in our garden- perhaps the greatest accomplishment in our wildlife garden so far.

Nesting and bloom update

Wow. Things have changed in the garden. I was out of town for week and when I got back I was amazed how quickly things change this time of the year. Suddenly I feel like there is so much to do in the garden, and suddenly I am so far behind. Here is a brief update of the goings on...

It appears that everything has leaves, buds or flowers on it now; below I list what is in bloom.

Nesting Update

• the chickadees are bringing nesting material into their box (click here for my favorite nesting material combo- squirrel and moss).
• The flickers evidently completed the excavation of their box all while we were gone.
• The mystery this year was what was happening in the nuthatch box? The nuthatches "claimed" this box early on, but then some chickadees began excavating it, and pretty regularly. And there was no sign of the pair of nuthatches. Were these the same chickadees that were also going to nest in the normal chickadee box? And who's ever heard of 2 pairs of chickadees nesting the same yard? Craziness- they need a couple of acres because of competition for food. But now, all has been revealed- the nuthatches have returned and they are now nearly completely done excavating their box.

Once they finish excavating they will probably continue their tiny onslaught of my bent willow furniture- shredding off the bark into fine nesting material for their little, freshly excavated cavity. Then they will carefully line to opening of the box with sap- lest I try to get back said components of my bent willow furniture. Order has been restored.
Bloom Update:

Flowering now- arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata ), golden current (Ribes aureum), blue bells (Mertensia oblongifolia ), larkspur (Delphinium bicolor ), Jacobs ladder (Polemonium pulcherrimum), biscuitroot (Lomatium triternatum and L. dissectum), violets (Viola canadensis ) pasque flower (Pulsatilla patens), cutleaf daisy (Erigeron compositus, pictured above), blue virginsbower (Clematis occidentalis, see photo at beginning of the post of the virginsbower on my clothesline), prairie smoke (Geum triflorum), blue eyed mary (Collinsia parviflora, see below- this is one of my favorites, and it makes a nice groundcover), sivery lupine (Lupinus argenteus ), kittentails (Synthyris missurica ), Oregon grape (Mahonia repens ), and many more species flowering every day that it is hard to keep up.

So much to do. Last weekend I removed a little remnant lawn patch that I have had my eye on to turn from lawn to what I call a mowable prairie. In the lawn's place I planted natives that can be mown and maintained- like a lawn was originally intended- a meadow that could be mown to a height that would allow for paths and play areas. Instead of a lawn or a water hungry meadow, I planted this with drought tolerant, trample resistant natives like yarrow (Achillea millefolium ), hairy golden aster (Heterotheca villosa), mixed aster and erigeron species. After planting starts and transplants in the mowable prairie area, I covered the whole thing with mulch, but not just any mulch, gentle reader, a special mulch... this mulch is made from seed heads and flower parts I cut off last fall and kept in a bag out side all winter (cold stratification). Then I carefully (read: not at all) applied it to the surface of the fresh bed. I've found that with hairy golden aster, and my bag of assorted asters (by assorted I mean I can't really tell the difference between most asters and erigerons in my garden), they do great germinating when laid down in a mulch. I have been waiting for rain to do this, and by golly the rain has finally come (hopefully it will continue for a little while).

I did have a chance to also plant my potatoes, beets, peas, and other things I am probably forgetting and I finally built a new raised bed- for onions (see below, with cat guard installed), I moved the hill that was in its place and potted up all the asters and such that were on the hill. Maybe this weekend, I'll plant those potted up plants into the front yard or fill in other places in the yard.

Now I am well on my way to completing my 2010 garden project list (click here for this list). According to the list, the only thing left is making a new composter, but in reality, the list has really grown...

Lots going on suddenly, more updates with pictures to follow, oh and, a new arrival to the garden yesterday, a golden crowned kinglet.

Spring cleaning for the nest boxes

Spring is nearly here, though the calendar does not say it, and the groundhog evidently begs to differ. Nevertheless, some of the first signs of spring are apparent; black-capped chickadees are singing their lovey-dovey "cheeseburger"song, the smell of road-killed skunk (ahhh, spring), and a mourning dove in our yard today. Soon robins will be back, and spring will be here in earnest. Or not- it is February in Montana after all, but I digress. Anyway, I'll return to thoughts of spring...


February is an important time to think about birdhouses. The following post contains some information about nest boxes I wrote in a post about the same time last year "Bird house basics". February is when birds begin courting and looking for nesting places. Having a bird nest and raise its chicks in your yard is very gratifying for wildlife gardeners.

Since I like to keep the nest boxes empty in the winter so many birds will use them as roosts in our yard as a way to escape the cold (see here). Now is the time to clean and refill the nest boxes and it is a fun annual rite of spring (that along with connecting my rain barrels to our downspoutsm,, but that will have to wait, a while). This year the added bonus are tiny cameras I am going to install and hopefully post pictures or streaming video to this blog. This also is the first item on my 2010 to do list I can cross off, and an exciting one.

Although it is fun to see birds nest in your yard, there are many things to consider before hanging a birdhouse. Know what species of bird you want to attract and have reasonable expectations (click here for more information). In our yard, red-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees, and northern flickers are the ones we are most likely to attract. Since they are cavity nesters (that is, they nest in hollow spaces in dead trees), they require box-like houses that simulate tree cavities. The reason I encourage people to cater toward cavity nesters is that these birds are having a tough time, from habitat loss, loss of snags (nesting sites), to competition from invasive birds (typically secondary cavity nesters). Although chickadees, nuthatches, and northern flickers will nest in an empty box, they prefer to excavate the cavity themselves, because this assures a clean home free of pests and predators.

Red-breasted nuthatches are the first to begin excavating their selected box- they begin excavating in early to mid February (between February 5 and 21 at my house) and they are usually complete by the first week of April (April 1-9) when they begin to fill their boxes with nesting material. Yesterday (Feb 15), I watched as a pair started excavating.

Black-capped chickadees start excavating about a month after nuthatches, with peak excavating around first week of April (from March 25- April 4), until middle April when they bring in nesting material (April 11-15). But they investigate and start defending nest sites in February.

Northern flickers are on a similar schedule as chickadees and they begin excavating in late March – early April (March 24-April 8), but they search for nesting locations in February and may do some exploratory excavating as early as the beginning of February.

As far as cleaning the boxes and refilling, below are some pictures from a chickadee box and flicker box. In the photo below, the lid on the nest box is opened to reveal the excavated cavity. Here you can see how they removed a lot of material, but still left many packed wood chips. This is why it is important to tightly compact the chips.

Here I removed the nest, and the portion of wood chips that covered the top of the nest, you can see they excavated about 1/2 of the box.Here is the nest removed form the box. Chickadees and nuthatches will add material for their nests. Whereas chickadees use animal hair, fur, and moss (this as I have mentioned is the best use for introduced squirrels), nuthatches will shred up bark into various layers of increasingly soft bedding, and they also smear sap on the outside of the hole to discourage insects and parasites from bothering the nestlings. It is really fun to watch them do this. You can help chickadees by providing fur ( for more information click here), animal hair or sphagnum moss in your yard for them. The nest is in two parts, a round egg area, and the base.Below are pictures of tree nests from past years, each are unique, based on the availability of nesting material, the age and experience of the builders, etc... They are all soft and adorable, though. You can even see a couple of eggs in one of the nests- this was from a the second clutch one year that evidently had poor germination (a little something for you gardeners).Here is the box cleaned out. This is a good time to inspect for any damage and do repairs. If there is any water penetrating into the box, fix the cause and let the box dry out before repacking. Although I build nest boxes from western red cedar, a naturally decay- and insect-resistant wood, which needs no protection from the weather, I fill my boxes with Douglas fir (typically chips from my thickness planer or jointer- see below), but you can use any species except cedar, teak, or mahogany. These species contain oils that prevent rot and insect damage but the dust can irritate nestlings. It is important to compact the chips, and I just use a piece of wood to pound it into submission. By compacting the sawdust, the birds can excavate a cavity without the rest of the filling collapsing on them.Normally that is it, but this year, I got a birthday present from my wife...mini cameras! These are the Hawkeye nature cameras (this is not a paid product endorsement, unfortunately). I removed camera shield, to take up less space, I hope this is not a fatal flaw. In adding these cameras, I did not pack the wood chips to fill the box completely as you'll see. The first step is to mount the little bracket, and my only tip here is to mount it, so it is loose enough to be able to swivel the bracket to screw the camera to the bracket. Here is the camera installed in the chickadee nest box, notice the grove cut into the side for the wire to pass.
Below is my northern flicker nest bow, and one thing to notice is that flickers just about completely remove all the wood chips for the box and they do not require any nesting material. although they may use an empty box, one benefit to having he house filled, is that is discourages use by non-target birds like house sparrows and starlings, which will not excavate. However, once the flickers excavate their nest box, often European starlings will follow. It is crucial to remove the starlings, their nests (they bring in nesting material), or otherwise dissuade them from taking the flicker’s nest box. Click here for more information about flickers and starlings.

Below, the camera installed in the flicker box. Plenty of roomHere is the completed, freshly refilled nest box with a camera, waiting to be excavated. If you look closely, you will see one of my own inventions on entrance hole- a Nesting Indicator Bar, also known as a "twig". I place these "twigs" in the entrance hole of all my nest boxes to monitor if birds are investigating the boxes. Kind of low-tech compared to the mini cameras.

Spring is near.

winter in the wildlife garden

It is cold and getting colder. Temps are predicted to be around -20 degrees F (not including wind) and highs are forecasted to be in the low single digits for the next few days. And, on top of that, there is the wind. It is below zero now, and it is only getting colder. This is an important time to think about wildlife in the garden.

While working in my woodworking shop yesterday (where it was very warm, by the way), I spent a lot of time watching birds and what they were up to in the garden. It was a lot of fun and gratifying to see the wildlife garden in action. I even braved the cold and -20 degree wind-chill to take some pictures (maybe “brave” is too strong of a word).

Winter roosts
The northern flicker in the photo above has been spending the night in the nest box to escape the cold. This is the same male that excavated the nest box this past spring and raised a clutch in our yard (he has a distinguishable nape crest). Although it is important to clean and fill nest boxes annually, especially ones that you fill with nesting material (see here for information), it is important to leave these boxes empty for the winter and not refill them until February.

Brush piles, bird nesting boxes, snags and rock piles are such important features for a variety of wildlife species in the garden. These elements allow birds and other animals to escape conditions that would otherwise be inhospitable and unavailable in a "clean" yard- that is a yard with only a manicured lawn and some nicely pruned specimen trees.

Feeding
We don't feed very much, even in the winter by most standards (click here for more information). Our primary feeder is our garden- the seeds, berries, insects and others results of our garden design. For example, downy woodpeckers are spending a lot of time drilling our aspens looking for borers (click here for the fascinating, never ending borer story), and flickers are emboldened by the cold to excavate our anthill in search of cold weary (and defenseless) ant. These are the most reliable and most diverse feeders we have.

Pictured above is a song sparrow sitting on one of our fallen snags eating seeds from an aster. We do feed suet in the winter (click here for directions to build an easy one), and black sunflower seeds though not the latter for some time. Just having suet available for winter birds, seems to attract the fewest pest species.

Knowing what species are likely to visit your feeders is important in determining what to set out as food. Generic “bird food” usually end s up unused or wasted, or attracted non-native or pest species (like eastern squirrel species, European starling, house sparrows or house finches). In our yard, the primary winter birds include black capped chickadees, red breasted nuthatches, northern flickers, dark eyed juncos, downy woodpeckers, and others.

One unconventional feeder that is really effective is a natural suet feeder. Though this might look a little odd to some, a deer, elk or antelope carcass is just what lots of birds love, including chickadees, nuthatches and magpies. This is what store-bought, conventional suet feeders try to imitate. After butchering game, I will usually hang a ribcage in the backyard for birds to peck at and feed on. Yesterday as I watched, the chickadees and nuthatches never went to a typical suet feeder, but rather spent all their time feeding on the deer ribcage. Consider hanging your ribcage for the birds, or if you don’t hunt, and you are interested in adding a conversation piece/ feeder to your yard, stop by a wild game butcher, I am sure they will give you a ribcage.

Four flicker fledglings feasting...

...on service berries, chokecherries, dogwood berries, and, of course, ants. All the fledgelings have been traveling as a group and feeding together. It is a riot to watch them. They spend a lot of time eating service berries in our yard with a robin (I think it is the same robin, but I have no idea really).

In other fledgling news, as I tweeted the other day, the chickadees fledged while I was at work. This seems to be how the year is going, between the flickers fledging, the first clutch of chickadees fledging, the bitterroots flowering and now the second clutch of chickadees all fledging when I am at work.

To outsmart the little chickadees, I recently got a mini wildlife camera and I hoped to get it running before they fledged, but I didn't. The main reason for the nest cams is to mount them inside nest boxes and I'll do that this winter- one in the flicker box and one in one of the chickadee/ nuthatch boxes. I will have a link on the blog for streaming video. More on this in the winter...

As I predicted, the second clutch fledged much quicker than the first. The second clutch only took 17 days from hatching to fledging. Normally the first clutch fledges about 20-22 days after hatching.

Flicker fledging forthcoming: forecasted for Friday

Actually, they will probably fledge sooner, maybe even Monday, but where is the alliteration in "Monday"? They began hatching on June 1, and they usually start fledging after 23 days.

Above and below are two of the female nestlings, there are at least three nestlings, two females and one male. There might be as many as five nestlings, though.
At the top of the post is another picture of the male you have seen photographed on this blog several times- a yellow-shafted x red-shafted hybrid (you can see his red neck crest here). The female, as not been around in the last 7-10 days and he has been doing all the feeding. The nestlings will be all right, but I am sure it is a lot of work for him.

In other nesting news, the chickadees have begun incubating their second clutch- a whopping, and previously unprecedented (in our yard), six fledglings resulted from their first clutch.

Nesting update: flickers hatched, chickadees close to fledging

The northern flickers have finally begun hatching. I think their first clutch of eggs failed. As far as I can tell one hatched yesterday (June 1) and another hatched today (June 2). If anyone has ever had flickers nest in their yard, you will know that until the eggs hatch, the flickers are every easily disturbed and very easily irritated. Watching the two flickers sit on their eggs for the last month, without anything hatching, has been stressful to me, and I am sure both the adults, too.

The black-capped chickadees, on the other hand, are right on schedule- I think there are five nestlings now, which is about typical for their first clutch. Based on the nestlings' plumage (similar to adults now) and their tiny voices (starting to sound like chickadees), they are pretty close to fledging.

In our yard chickadees will often have two clutches, not common in chickadees, but not really rare. The neat thing is that the young from the first clutch will often help with the second clutch. Since it has been a cool spring and various things are delayed (flowering, fruiting, bird arrivals, etc...), it will be interesting to see if they have a second clutch.

Northern flickers and European starlings

There have been three flickers in the yard everyday now for about a week or so, one female and two males. They seem to be fighting for her attention, and for the cold ants in our anthill . By Saturday morning it looked like one had the upper hand in the battle for her affection and the nest box (see the handsome gentleman above). The disconcerting, yet predictable part about flickers is there relationship with European starlings. Saturday morning also marked the first day of the year where I saw a European starling in my yard. This is not good, but I knew it would happen as soon as excavation started on the nest box.

Few are aware of the relationship between European starlings and flickers. A really unfortunate trend in the expansion of European starlings is the colonization and parasitism of flicker nesting cavities. Northern flickers are an incredibly vital component to forested ecosystems across the country. They are abundant primary excavators and so many species (secondary excavators) rely on them to hollow out nest sites in standing snags. The large cavities they create are used by other birds (including screech-owls, and American kestrels), and animals, after lfickers abandon them in the summer. Northern flickers are ground feeding woodpeckers that mainly eat ants. Because of their abundance, northern flickers can control populations of ants including wood-boring species.

As secondary excavators, European starlings, rerly on flickers to excavte a cavity and an entrance hole of roughly the same size as a northern flicker. The starlings let the flickers do the work of finding a suitable site, excavating a cavity and then the starlings move in to over take the flickers and seize the nesting cavity.

Northern flicker status: population declines
Recently there has been a lot of concern over status and population trends of northern flickers. Although they are still abundant, they have declined over the past 20 years. This decline is from a combination of factors, including habitat loss, nesting site loss, competition with European starlings, and even from lawn insecticides. These declines, coupled with the loss of habitat and ever-encroaching invasive species can have serious, deleterious effects on many bird species and other wildlife.

What you can do
Providing a nest box is a start, since snags are often removed, reducing the availability of nest sites for flickers and other cavity nesting species. But just providing a nesting place is not enough. It is a huge responsibility of nest box stewards to protect the nest box from invasion by European starlings.

If European starlings begin to use your nest box, do not just add more nest boxes to attract flickers - this will only get you more starlings. Do what you can to dissuade starlings from nesting, and this usually means lethal control, similar to squirrel management. However, begin first by plugging up any entrance holes where they may be nesting, remove their nesting material. Or remove their eggs.

Unlike woodpeckers, European starlings bring in nesting material to their cavities. This is likely an adaptation that most secondary cavity nesters employ. Since they do not excavate a clean, parasite-free area for their nestlings, they will line their nests with green, fragrant herbs as an insecticide.

Some think that northern flickers are adapting to European starlings nesting later, after European starlings have fledged. This is more than likely a nice little wish. With climate change and other factors, if nothing else, northern flicker (and other species) nesting dates might be getting earlier, rather than later. Nest timing is critical and centers on resource availability. If northern flickers are indeed nesting later, it is probably to their detriment.

European starlings in North America
European starlings have a very interesting and storied history in our country. The first two attempts to introduce the European starlings into North America failed; unfortunately the third attempt did not. There are now an estimated 200 million European starlings in North America, one-third of all the European starlings in the world. All the European starlings in North America descended from 100 that were released in New York’s Central Park by Eugene Schieffelin in 1890 (60 birds) and 1891 (40 birds).

Although many believe Schieffelin was trying to introduce every bird species mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to North America, there is little evidence to support this. It is more likely he was merely trying to control pests, and probably the same pests that he tried to get rid of when he introduced the house sparrow 30 years prior. Although the house sparrow, and European starling introductions were quite successful, fortunately his attempts to introduce bullfinches, chaffinches, nightingales, and skylarks were not. Busy guy.

Although ecologically devastating, biologically it is actually really interesting that European starlings survived and flourished, despite being descended from such a small source. Evidently, this genetic bottleneck has not adversely affected the persistence of European starlings in this country.

European starlings are generalists in the food they eat and habitats they use. Furthermore, European starlings tolerate human-modified landscapes, and proximity to humans- habitats that many native species are driven from. European starlings are aggressive and gregarious and easily compete with native birds for resources. They form huge flocks (up to a few thousand birds), to feed and roost, and they have a high tolerance to nesting in close proximity to one another.

European starlings tolerate suburbs and urban areas and flourish with conventions like lawns. They do really well foraging in lawns, much better than native birds like American robins that people commonly see feeding in lawns (one of the few native birds to do so). One of the main reasons European starlings do so well in lawns, is that they excel at excavating worms and insects out of the tightly woven turf grass. Their jaws have remarkable strength for opening (as oppesed to closing), and this makes them adept at opening a hole large enough in turf to remove worms and insects. By providing a lawn, this is one of the few species that will benefit.

Because they are so abundant, and good insectivores, there is the misconception that European starlings are great “biological control” agents and can be used to control insect pests in agricultural settings. But because they are such generalist feeders, they will not just eat "pests" but also important agricultural crops like grapes, olives, and tomatoes. In Australia, where they were introduced for pest control, European starlings now threaten the country's economy and biodiversity.

Ant hills and flickers

Wildlife gardening is not just about birds and butterflies, but about other insects that are often ignored or thought of as “pests.” Today I watched a couple of northern flickers excavate one of our ant hills apart looking for ants (see photo above of excavated ant hill). In the late winter, flickers dig up the nests and eat the cold ants . When it is cold the ants move slowly and offer little resistance against predators.

In our yard we have a couple of ant hills that are home to a unique species: the thatching ant. They are common in the forests and grasslands around Missoula but few people know how interesting they are. Thatching ant hills get up to almost 3 feet tall and may be used for many years. Ants build their hills under trees or shrubs like sage on the prairies, where they are protected from weather.

On hot days, you will see the colony busy with many ventilation holes open. This allows hot air to escape so the hill stays cool inside- just like people do to cool off their houses in the summer. This keeps the larvae and the queen from getting too hot.