Last Updated: Friday, August 11, 2006 2:40 PM CDT
Ospreys settling in the south
by Ced Vig - Wisconsin Woodsmoke
More and more osprey are settling into southern Wisconsin. Nests can now be found in Madison, Stoughton, Portage and two in the Milwaukee area. They are all using man-made structures for their nest. Some use cell towers and other utility poles. In northern Wisconsin, many of the osprey nests are found on man-made platforms on tall poles.
Wolves raid chicken coop
According to Ryan Stutzman's article in the Phillips Bee, wolves raided Paul and Ilmi Nelson's chicken coop and took eight chickens from the scene and left 41 dead birds behind. The Nelsons live west of Ogema off Hwy. 86.
Home again
Lois Sabatke, Rhinelander, sent an article from an Indiana newspaper saying that the state's nesting eagle population was soaring into a century high.
Bald eagles, once extinct in Indiana, now nest in more than one-third of the state. Twenty-one years after the birds were reintroduced into the state, an eagle count found 91 chicks in 68 active nests.
The life span for bald eagles is up to 30 years in the wild. Males may weigh a much as ten pounds, females, 14 pounds. Males have a wing span of six to seven feet, females, up to eight feet. Who rules the roost?
They're nesting
The goldfinches are nesting. They have waited until the thistle plants ripened so that they could line their nests with this down. Generally their nests are a few feet off the ground in the forked stem of a shrub. Four or five eggs will be incubated by the female from two to 14 days. The male feeds the female during incubation.
Crickets
So you're hearing the chirping of crickets. There are three kinds - the black field cricket, the similar brown house cricket, and the smaller and pale green variety known mostly by its sounds. Rubbing their wings together, the males sing in unison on summer nights and unwittingly tell us how warm it is. Add 40 to the number of times they chirp in 15 seconds, and this yields the approximate temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.
Like grasshoppers, crickets die in the fall and pass the winter in the egg stage in the soil.
Suggestions for hummer feeders
Under no circumstance should insecticides or other poisons be used at hummingbird feeders; if they kill insects, these chemicals can't be good for tiny hummingbirds - or people. Any chemical that contains petrochemicals should be avoided; this includes Vaseline and many insect repellents such as Off, Skin-So-Soft, and 6-12 that might be bumped by a hummingbird and ingested later when it is preening its feathers.
Battle with the hornets
So you are having problems with those mean yellow jackets. So am I! Here's a solution that we may want to try. It comes from the publication, Operation Ruby Throat.
There is a technique, however, that is regularly used by many and found to be very successful. Always have at least two feeders, with different concentrations of homemade nectar. Although the standard recipe is for four cups of water and one cup of sugar (4:1), make up a 5:1 ratio in one of the feeders (this one is for the hummingbirds). The other feeder should contain a mixture with a 3:1 (or if necessary, 2:1) ratio, and this is for the bees and wasps. The insects have a very strong preference for rich, high sugar mixtures and will quickly determine that they want the second feeder. This leaves the first feeder virtually free for the hummingbirds, who will be quite satisfied with a 5:1 ratio.
Once the bees and wasps have settled in on the second feeder (which will usually take only a few hours), you can safely move that feeder to another location; the bees and wasps will follow it.
Cattail heads are maturing
One cattail can produce over 250,000 seeds. Each seed can last up to five years in dry conditions before germinating.
In addition to seeds, cattails also reproduce by rhizomes which interconnect to form colonies that can spread over an acre or more.
During their peak growing period, leaves can grow up to seven inches a day reaching an overall height of over eight feet.
Cattails are self-pollinating. The staminate (male) spike produces bright yellow pollen near the end of June that fertilizes the pistillate (female) head.
Muskrats eat the rhizomes and rootstocks and use the entire cattail for building winter houses. A large variety of wetland birds prefer cattails for nesting sites.
P.S.
Enjoy the summer that's nearly gone!
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