More cool birds

I must be getting old. My brother reminded me this past weekend that I'd given him a hard time last year about sitting out back of his new house, drinking coffee and watching the birds.

"You're getting to be just like Dad," I said.

Seems like we're both getting to be just like Dad.

Papa lives in Longview, and from his back porch he watches several varieties of woodpeckers, mockingbirds and thrashers, jays and cardinals, doves and I'm-not-sure-what-else. He is engaged in a running battle with the squirrels. They have their own feeders in the yard, but still try to get to the bird food. His latest ploy is to smear the bird feeder poles with axle grease.

Pineywoods humor, I guess.

Our backyard bird count is up to ... 14 species, now, not counting the vultures that wheel overhead. With the arrival of the first real cold front of the year, I'm looking forward to seeing more northern species push through on their seasonal journey south.

A recent repeat visitor to the yard is a single golden-fronted woodpecker. It's quickly become my favorite, with its bright orange nape patch and finely detailed black-and-white back. It's the only bird in the yard that will take on the thuggish white-winged doves.

The other day, the woodpecker left the suet feeder and flew right at a dove parked on a nearby branch. There was a feathery explosion, the dove departed post-haste, and the woodpecker returned to the feeder.

I quietly applauded.

I often hear the golden-fronted woodpecker before I see him, a soft "churrrr-kek-kek-kek," or sometimes the knocking of his bill as he tests various oak limbs for soft spots and insects.

He's recently discovered the peanut butter I left smeared into the crevices of an oak tree. It was gone after three visits.

TPWD ornithologist Cliff Shackelford recently helped me identify another "new" bird to our backyard -- a pair of Lesser goldfinches. There are lots of small yellow birds in Texas -- finches, warblers, vireos -- and it's going to take me a while to sort them all out, I'm afraid.

Home for lunch one day last week, I counted 10 species of birds in the backyard at the same time. That was not only fun to watch, but pleasant to listen to as well; it was a riot of birdsong.

Another work colleague, Bruce, who produces TPWD's PBS show, suggested a neat trick using the call of the Eastern Screech Owl. Twice I've been able to call one of the resident owls in to the back porch by playing the "A" song (see "The Owl Pages" link in the column to the right).

Bruce suggested playing it during the day, beneath a low-hanging limb.

Songbirds of all types seem to be powerfully motivated to harass a raptor should they come across one, and owls are frequent targets of this mobbing behavior.

Sure 'nuff, by playing a loop of the owl song on my laptop (strategically placed underneath a low-lying bush), I soon had a dozen birds of half a dozen species lined-up in the vicinity. Pretty cool.

[Top to bottom: Golden-fronted woodpecker, Carolina chickadee, House finch, Lesser goldfhinches (with a female house finch), Carolina wren]

Wildscaping

Shortly after moving in to our Abilene Trail digs, Tamara and I decided that we would "wildscape" the backyard.

Two programs in Texas provide guidance for wildscaping: the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's "Texas Wildscapes" program, and the National Wildlife Federations "Certified Wildlife Habitat" program.

The programs are similar, in that they seek to promote the use of native and well-adapted plants to provide food and cover for wildlife, and provide guidance on the creation of water sources and space that birds and other animals need.

Or, as the TPWD site says:

Texas Wildscapes provide the essential ingredients for a variety of wildlife – food, water, shelter, and space. This is done by planting and maintaining native vegetation, installing birdbaths and ponds and creating structure. Feeders can supplement native vegetation, but can never replace it. The goal is to provide places for birds, small mammals, and other wildlife to feed and drink, escape from predators and raise their young.

It's possible to get certification from both organizations through the "Best of Texas Backyard Habitat" program. The standards are a bit higher -- requiring evidence of active conservation and environmental protection measures -- but well within reach of just about anyone.

We turned-in our application at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Expo in early October.

The first step was to inventory what we already had. I was surprised to discover that nature had already done most of the work for us. For instance, as I looked more closely at the understory in our live oak groves, I discovered that it consisted mostly of yaupon, netleaf hackberry and Mexican (or Texas) persimmon -- all excellent food sources for birds and mammals.

Trees, Shrubs and Vines of the Texas Hill Country, by Jan Wrede, was a big help in identifying some of the understory. It is hands-down the most informative and useful field guide we've added to our library yet. Not only is it useful for identifying plants, it also goes into great detail about what animals use the plants for food and shelter.

I was able to identify the kind of scary-looking climbing vine with the spikey seed pods as pearl milkweed, a larval food source for the milkweed tiger moth and the monarch butterfly. Good to know. It's the alkaloids in milkweeds that make monarchs unpalatable to birds, by the way, and one reason so many butterflies mimic the monarch's colors and pattern.

For the Best of Texas designation, it's not enough to luck into undisturbed native vegetation that is good for wildlife; the NWF also wants to see some active management.

To that end, and also because our backyard is important to two-legged mammals (people) as well, I cleared the spreading branches of one of our ashe junipers to head-height. That made some room for Patrick's swing (before, he ran the risk of impaling himself on a branch) and gave us space to plant some perennials we like.

The cut branches -- some of them, anyhow -- went into brush piles around the backyad that will provide cover for all sorts of critters.

We opted for Dwarf firebush (a favorite food source for Zebra longwing butterflies), Turk's cap (a native beloved of hummingbirds and butterflies alike) and American beautyberry, a great natural bird feeder.

Along the fence, we planted several varieties of passionflower vine. Within weeks, tiny orange-and-black Gulf fritillary caterpillars appeared on the leaves. The caterpillars are voracious, but the vines seem to keep up.

How to provide water was the first real challenge we faced. Our long-range plan is to build a rock pool with a small waterfall -- providing still and moving water at various depths. In the meantime, we picked-up an extra-large plastic planter dish and nestled it in a jumble of native limestone beneath a Chinese variegated privet that the birds seem to love.

The water dish has been a big hit, and we see more birds in the backyard -- and a greater variety -- than before it was installed. A possum has made the water dish a regular stop on his nocturnal rounds of the yard, and squirrels follow a branch bridge from the neighbor's yard every morning to drink.

Together with a commitment to abstain from the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in our yard, a growing compost bin along the back fence and a few other measures, the few improvements we've made appear to qualify us for the "Best of Texas" designation.

The payoff, though, is not the certificates we expect in the mail any day now, nor even the satisfaction of knowing we're being good environmental stewards. It comes every morning as we sip coffee on the back porch and watch the birds, and each evening as we tip back cold beers and reflect on our good fortune in finding a little bit of the country in the city.