Oxymoron Watch

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary E. Landry on how cooperative BP has been in responding to the oil spill:

BP, from Day 1, has attempted to be very responsive and be a very responsible spiller.

It appears that this is could be an epic environmental disaster for the gulf coast. The only silver lining is that it should kill the Obama plan to open up new coastlines for drilling.

On the Nest

My Mallard is on the now on the nest pretty much 24/7. I saw her last evening under one of the bird feeders for a few minutes eating then she was back on the nest. She is well protected by the wood pile and the straw that she has piled up around her. I can't get a picture of her except like this one, using a mirror to view out the window - which is above my head - of the back garage door.

Spring Clean Up

Spring has come early to Minnesota; warm weather in March has us running about two weeks ahead of schedule. I have been slowly making my way around our gardens cleaning up last year's perennials, removing straw from around the more than 50 shrub roses we have planted and trimming back the dead branches.

There is one area just off the brick patio out back that I haven't touched yet.

What you are looking at here is my winter wood pile that I keep on the patio for outdoor fires. Immediately to the right of it is a small bed that has our only two hybrid roses as well as an herb garden of perennial lavender, thyme, and lemon balm. In Minnesota hybrid tea roses need to be buried completely underground using the Minnesota Tip Method. I usually bury these two but we were back and forth to PA in the late fall as Mary Ann's father declined and I didn't get it done. I piled some straw around them and then we were blessed with heavy snow. I piled it high on the roses and was pleasantly surprised to find them alive this spring.

In any case I usually clean up this area first since it is right off the deck and patio, but not this year. Here is why:



One of our resident Mallards has chosen this spot to lay her eggs. It's kind of amazing to me that she doesn't seem to spend time on them during the day but she comes in every evening and spends the night. Every year Mallards lay eggs somewhere on our property or on a neighbors. They never make it; crows or foxes or skunks get the eggs. We will see if these fare any better this year.

It's Cold Up Here

It's warmed up to 2 below. We got about 8-9 inches of snow out of the mega-storm that moved across the country. It is quite beautiful outside and bitterly cold. Yesterday afternoon there were five robins sitting briefly in a tree in front of our house and I image the conversation was something along the lines of "whose bright idea was it not to fly south this winter?"

One Big Happy Ant Family

I loved this BBC story about the ant super-colonies that live on different continents and how they all get along:

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

...Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.

But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.

Researchers in Japan and Spain led by Eiriki Sunamura of the University of Tokyo found that Argentine ants living in Europe, Japan and California shared a strikingly similar chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles.

But further experiments revealed the true extent of the insects' global ambition.

The team selected wild ants from the main European super-colony, from another smaller one called the Catalonian super-colony which lives on the Iberian coast, the Californian super-colony and from the super-colony in west Japan, as well as another in Kobe, Japan.

They then matched up the ants in a series of one-on-one tests to see how aggressive individuals from different colonies would be to one another.

Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony.

But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends.

These ants rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another.

World domination? Global ambition? Whoever wrote this story has been watching too many old sci-fi movies. These ants and their social behaviors are pretty amazing, though.

In the Garden

Not the hymn. My garden this evening. I went out to fill the bird feeders and surprised a baby Pine Siskin. In 16 years of living here we have never had Pine Siskins at our feeders but since early spring we have had lots of them. I have counted as many as 15 in our yard. Their normal summer breeding range is northern MN up through Canada. But some of them are apparently breeding in the southern part of the state near our home.

The baby flew towards our deck and grabbed hold of one of the Clematis climbing along the deck. It hung upside down for a few moments in a comical position until it gathered itself and beat its wings enough to drop without injury to the ground. I walked down and knelt next to it; it didn't move until I reached out my hand. It flew back up under the feeder. So I went and got my camera.



















When I came back out it was still there, eating thistle seeds. Since I had the camera outside I took a few other pictures. The Siberian Iris is in full bloom.



















The Bleeding Heart was pretty much spent; it was beautiful this year.



















I walked up the hill to check out some of our newest plantings and then walked over to see the neighbor's garden. There was a rabbit inside the "rabbit-proof" fence. She effortlessly jumped the fence and ran away. I knew she was a she because I caught her digging a burrow for birthing her babies. I walked down the hill and did a circle around the house and then walked back up the hill. She had returned and was ready to sneak back in, through a small break in the fence.



















I snapped a picture and left her alone. In the garden this evening. And She walks with me and She talks with me...

Let it Snow

It's pelting it down this afternoon. The goldfinches, redpolls, and the female cardinal are barely visible a few feet away.

Shrike Attack

I looked out the window into my backyard yesterday and saw something I had never seen there before. A Shrike was feeding on what appeared to be a female Cardinal. I have seen Shrikes in the wild before. I have never seen them in my yard and never seen them carrying out their distinctive kind of predatory behavior. Shrikes are predatory songbirds that often impale their victims on thorns. They will leave them there to return later to feed.

There are two varieties: Northern and Loggerhead. Northern Shrikes winter in Minnesota so this is likely what I was watching in my yard. We have had extensive rabbit damage of our shrubs this winter - I wish we had more large predators in the neighborhood - and the Shrike had used the chewed-off stem of a Chokeberry as its thorn.

I watched it through my binoculars for a few minutes then attempted to take a picture out the back door of the garage. It eyed me for long enough to capture two shots with my very inadequate (for nature photography) camera and then it pulled the Cardinal off the stem and flew off.