Dawn Chorus

The Natural Garden, Eastside Chronicle, Tallahassee Democrat 3/26/07

Early one March morning our daughter woke us saying that a bird outside her window had woken her calling, “Feodore, feodore, wick, wick, wick feodore”. Feodore, as she took to calling this bird, was a cardinal calling from the bushes outside her window announcing his breeding territory or trying to attract a mate. He and other cardinals begin an early morning chorus while it is still dark, with other species joining in towards the approaching light of dawn. In my yard the brown thrasher joins in shortly after the cardinal.

This early morning singing by birds is hardly unique to our area. It even has an official name – the dawn chorus, which occurs when songbirds sing at the start of a new day leading up to breeding. In checking the internet, I found that there is an International Dawn Chorus Day, especially active in England, this year to be held on May 6. This is a little late for us, spring having arrived in mid March.

It is amazing to imagine this chorus of song that, in North America, begins at the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and sweeps across the continent as a wave of bird songs as dawn progresses. One of the best ways to enjoy the dawn chorus is to go for a walk half an hour before dawn. If you go by yourself, you will be more observant of the sounds around you. I walk regularly at this time of day. Last week (week of March 19th) I jotted down the times of the chorus:

6:40 am – voice of the first cardinal in our yard

7:00 am – chorus beginning to build (still dark out)

7:15 am – pale light of dawn, dawn chorus peaking to a crescendo

8:00 am – down to individual voices here and there

Each day dawn gets earlier and earlier so you will need to adjust the time you walk to correspond with dawn.

On my walks I try to identify the voices of individual birds. I usually can distinguish Carolina chickadee, Carolina wren, tufted titmouse, perhaps a mockingbird, along with the cardinals and brown thrashers already mentioned as the leading singers. This morning I heard a rufous-sided towhee. Blue jays usually chime in late (I guess they like to sleep in). I am sure there are many other species singing – I just can’t distinguish their calls in the chorus. The cardinal can confuse you; besides his “feodore” call, he has several other interesting calls.

The quality of the dawn song is related to the quality of habitat that we create in our yards and parks in a neighborhood. Birds, like all wildlife, must have trees and shrubs that provide food and cover, places to make nests and raise their young, thickets for protection from predators and sources of water. What you plant in your yard will ultimately affect the dawn chorus of Tallahassee. I encourage all of you to experience this early spring dawn chorus by going out for an early morning walk by yourself or with a friend and listen as you walk!

Making Preserves Can be a Fun Family Project

Tallahassee Democrat, Thanksgiving Day 2009

My earliest memory of picking berries, at about the age of 6, is of a blueberry patch on a hot summer day near Woodville. I enjoyed the experience immensely. But for some reason, I wasn’t allowed to go on the next weekend trip to pick berries. Maybe it was because I had complained about the yellow flies, horse flies or redbugs. Or maybe it was because of the tick that had to be removed from a location I would rather not discuss. It was removed using the hot cigarette method, designed to make the tick think there was a forest fire and that he should back out of his own accord. Anyway, desperately wanting to go on the return berry-picking trip, I ran down Alachua Avenue after my parent’s DeSoto bawling. I guess I loved to pick berries, blue and black.

As a senior in college, I sometimes found picking blackberries at UF’s experimental forest to be more fun than studying. That same year was the first time I made jelly, from elderberries picked along US-19 near Perry.

Two years ago the mulberry trees at McCord Park in Betton Hills had an abundance of fruit. My college-age daughter and I went daily to pick as the fruit ripened, carrying a step ladder to reach the high fruit. I think the tall weeds under the trees kept neighbors fearful of snakes and away from “my” tree, and that was a good thing. We ended up with three batches of mulberry preserves, about 21 half-pint jars. Delicious! This year, however, these trees offered nothing. I’ll be watching next summer.

Mulberry, blackberry and blueberry are great for making preserves because there is no preparation of the fruit. Just cook add sugar and stir. I follow the recipe on the Sure-jell package. This summer my son and I spent a nice afternoon together washing jars and lids, smelling blueberries cooking, sealing them tightly and then boxing some up to send to his lonely sister in northern Minnesota.

Chickasaw plum also makes delicious preserves, though it is a tedious process to get the pit out of the small ½- to ¾-inch fruit. There is a row of Chickasaw plum trees on Centerville Road between Capital Circle and Potts Road that were loaded with fruit this summer. I saw a family picking them, but I didn’t pick there because of a concern about pollution in the fruit from car fumes. I guess that worries me more than snakes. We planted a Chickasaw plum in our yard; some years are banner years and others we get very little fruit.

The other fruits I like to use are muscadine grapes picked at Monticello Vineyards and kumquats from my own tree. Like the Chickasaw plums, these involve an hour or so of time to pick out seeds. If you make grape jelly you won’t have to pick out seeds since you merely strain all solids, but I prefer preserves with chunks of fruit. You probably can’t convince your teenage kids to pick seeds for you, but if you do the prep work, I bet they would like to see and smell the simple process of making homemade preserves. It is a basic lesson in where our food really comes from.

Anyone of any age would like to pull a jar of blueberry preserves out of the pantry in January to savor the sweet tastes of the summer past. For me there is no better Christmas gift than homemade preserves, except maybe my son’s chocolate truffles!

Pollinator Insects are Beautiful as They Buzz in the Garden

The Natural Garden, Eastside Chronicle, Tallahassee Democrat 8/13/09

In the heat of the day, I ambled around our front yard. It is alive with bees and butterflies. On a summer day, observing these beautiful insects is just a pleasant interlude between thunderstorms, but in reality, the survival of the human race depends on these little insects and their brethren for their pollination services.

The insects’ favorite plants in our yard that are blooming now are African blue basil, pentas, Mexican sunflower, dwarf ironweed and Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’. The flowers of purple coneflower are beginning to fade, but on the few new flowers, bees visit regularly. There are even bees and occasional butterflies nectaring on the white flowers of the garlic chives.

It is fun to position myself right in the thick of things and take notes on who is visiting what. During my ten minute walk about, I watched a hummingbird work the deeper flowers of the dark blue Salvia guaranitica, red shrimp plant, orange firebush and red cigarette plant, but also visit popular butterfly plants like pentas and Mexican sunflower.

The tall, bright orange Mexican sunflower attracted zebra longwings, lots of Gulf fritillaries and a couple of giant swallowtails. Big lumbering bumblebees were abundant on the African blue basil, the Agastache and the tall growing pink pentas grown by O’Toole’s Herb Farm.

The hot spot during this particular ten minutes was the dwarf ironweed, a North Florida native wildflower. Its pretty purple flowers were absolutely loaded with pollinators – metallic green sweat bees, yellow and black sweat bees, large bees with yellow and black striped abdomens, honeybees, skippers and some other small butterflies that I could not identify.

If you want to create a haven for pollinators, be selective when you choose perennials and other plants for your yard. Most need a fairly sunny spot to thrive with good organic soil that drains nicely. I learned recently at a seminar by Julie Neel, an experienced butterfly gardener and naturalist from Thomasville, that more nectar is produced while sunlight is shining upon the flowers so the pollinators seem to follow the sunlight through the garden.

When Jody and I walk about our yard on a hot, sunny day admiring the beauty of the flowers and insects, we feel greatly rewarded for our efforts in transforming this yard from an unproductive average lawn to a refuge teaming with pollinators and other wildlife. It didn’t happen over night; it has been a seventeen year transformation and happened one plant at a time. You can do it, too!