Birds' life

The farm is coming alive with the natural life that benefits from diversity.

We’ve had coyotes and turkeys in the back field wandering around. The lightning bugs have come out at night, and there are a LOT of them.

Bluebirds are back living in some of the houses on neighboring property. The houses are in pairs, you may have noticed. That’s because tree swallows and bluebirds like the same kind of house, and tree swallows are more aggressive than bluebirds and will evict bluebirds if there’s only one house in a “neighborhood” to take. But once the tree swallow has a home it’s happy with, it won’t attack the bluebird. Both kinds of birds provide some natural pest control, although this is a good time to remind workers and pickers and collectors that insect repellent is always a good idea.

Here's a tree swallow flying next to a house it's inhabiting in this picture, taken by your editor Sunday (between mosquito bites). Click the pic to see it more clearly.

We would welcome any wren houses that members might have to donate or loan, as a wren house placed judiciously along the woods line would provide us with even more pest control. “As far as its feeding habits are concerned, the house wren may be considered entirely beneficial to the interests of mankind,” noted Arthur Bent in his encyclopedic study of bird life.

We could use some of that insect destruction capacity, so let us know.