Feature Article November 6, 2002
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Summer SecretsNovember is often referred to as a gray month - the month after the brilliant colours of the leaves have disappeared, having fallen and become leaf litter on the forest floor. The branches of the hardwood trees are now barren, except for a few trees such as beech, that cling to their leaves well into winter. But take a look. Now is the time to see the secrets of summer, to see where the song birds have had their nests, to find a hornet nest high in a tree, to see the graceful shape of the elm branches, or the gnarled branches of a sturdy oak.
All summer the song of the Scarlet Tanager has been heard in the forest, and occasionally a brief glimpse of the scarlet singer is seen as he serenades. Now is the time to look high in the oak tree and see if you can see the flimsy, flat cup that the female has built well out on a limb, and usually well above the ground. Or maybe the song most often heard is that of the Red-eyed Vireo. The male sings repeatedly all day long - in fact, someone with not much else to do once counted one male singing over 6,000 times in a day. Meantime, his female partner has been incubating the eggs in a deep-cupped nest suspended in a horizontal fork of a slender tree branch.
Perhaps you have heard the Gray Catbird with its mew-like song and seen it flitting among low shrubs, but did not realize that its nest would be built deep in a dense shrub well concealed by the foliage. So now is the time to look for these nests and discover where they are, and maybe guess as which bird built it.
It is sometimes possible to discover a two-storey, or even as many as six stories if it is the nest of a Yellow Warbler which has been predated by the Brown-headed Cowbird. This small songster is often the victim of the cowbird, but usually recognizes the egg of the intruder, and will build a second storey on top of the cowbird egg, burying it. As many as six stories have been found, with cowbird eggs buried in each layer.
In late spring a young Bald-faced Hornet queen who has overwintered in the ground or leaf litter has begun to construct a nest, sometimes high in the trees. Superstition has it that the higher it is the more snow there will be, but the depth of snow is unimportant to the queen and her colony. All but a few young mated queens of the colony will die with the first frosts of winter, and the nest is left vacant in its aerial locale for us to find.
Study the bare trees and you will soon learn to distinguish between the different kinds by the shape and structure of the branches. Search the branches for the nests of either birds or hornets - there is much to see and learn in nature.
Sightings: Northern ducks are now to be found on some of the lakes as they rest between legs of their migration south. Ring-necked, Common Golden-eye and Scaup species were present on McGowan Lake on Oct. 29. My Hairy Woodpecker let me know she was looking for the suet on the 29th and quickly came to it when put out. She left some, which attracted a Raccoon that evening.
