Why Worry?

... proclaimed the nomadic Brown-headed Cowbirds, Molothrus ater, and stopped looking for nesting material. 
We are on a constant move, following the countless herds of bison, there is no time to be wasted by nest building, incubating and raising the young. That takes weeks and the bison won`t wait
Okay! No fear - we shall lay the eggs into someone else's nest. Or nests .... more the merrier.  
Each female will produce 20 to 35 or even more eggs each summer and lay them - one by one into different nests. That should be sufficient for the survival of the species. 
We shall choose the smaller bird species to raise our young so that their young cannot really kick out our babies out of the nests. On the contrary.

Brown-headed Cowbird - Male

Meanwhile we shall roam the American continents, picking insects, grass seeds and such. Being adaptable we shall grow in numbers and then ..... hmmm,... then.... what?
Oh, never mind ....

And so it happened that the cowbirds, just like the cuckoos and several other species became brood parasites.

Brown-headed Cowbird - Female

Well, this of course is my grossly simplified version of the long-time evolutionary process but these days most everyone understands the paralell. 

The fact is that the cowbirds became very good at laying their eggs into the cozy nests of songbirds. They are not too choosey - the reports state that the cowbirds already use some 240 different bird species as their involuntary hosts. Each female lays only one egg into a host nest. But then her sister and a cousin and several other female cowbirds can choose the very same nest.



 

It happened yesterday, July 27th, that we noticed a pair of small birdsrunning (yes, running) their legs off all over the driveway, and picking up seeds and bugs.
They were Chipping Sparrows,  Spizella passerina, 

 Right on their heels ran three other birds - twice the size the sparrows - relentlessly demanding to be fed!



 

NOT ENOUGH!

So the caring sparrows, their rusty caps all ruffed up and their wings and legs tired, kept on running and flying and feeding their "offspring". The fact is that the cowbird babies raised in their nest kept them so busy that they never realized that their own offspring was dispatched and done with a long time ago.


Just like all youngsters, the cowbird fledglings must learn about the world they were born into. The roosters were frightening but, thankfully, they soon motored away.

 

But something had been left behind and one of the young had to explore! 

Good to eat? 

 
Too large. How about this one?



 Negative! 

Better find the parent and demand real food! 

















The sparrows obliged. Over and over again they filled the bottomless pinkish caverns with all the food they managed to find.

It won`t take much longer, perhaps a couple of days, and the young cowbirds will become fully independent. 
The sparrows will fluff their feathers, relax for a day or two and possibly begin another courtship. 

Lets wish them better luck next time.






The fledglings will mature find their places in cowbird flocks and  continue to conquer the continent. 
They were originally found only in the prairies preying on the insects disturbed by the great hooves of countless bison. But the bison are gone. Places all over are being deforested, spaces are being open for non-arboreal species. 

The adaptable nomads are successfully learning to utilize the new environments; much to the detriment of songbirds whose nests they seek. 

Dead Man's Fingers

What?

Let me rephrase: 
The title should  read  Xylaria polymorpha - a fungus that, like all the other fungi, makes its living by extracting nutrients from dead and decaying wood.  
The individual mushrooms are elongated like fingers, and during their lifetime change their shapes and colour. They often fuse into bizarre shapes that may look like parts of a human hand. 
Thus the common name - Dead Man's Fingers. 
Sorry if the title mislead you you,  but I really prefer to talk about this strange fungus that I found on a dead tree branch reaching far past the edge of  Box Lake, near Nakusp, BC.

Just imagine this: 
It is an amazing summer day. Your kayak is gently gliding on the glass surface of the lake, you are stretched back, feet dangling over the sides (I do have one of those "grandma" kayaks - wide and safe so it is not a problem). The mountains are still wearing their snow tops but down at the lake the greenery is sprouting en mass..... .....there are the blues and the greens crowned by white. 
A perfect picture on a perfect day reflecting in the water for double dose of pleasure.

You allow sunshine and water to lull you to sleep. The kayak is carried to the lake shore nudging a dead tree trunk. The gentle collision wakes you up. You are staring at a very strange thing! 

Dead Man's Fingers hanging off a thick dead branch!

I must say that, having never seen this fungus before,  I was initially in quite a shock. It looked so real that it gave me creeps - and I did not know its common name then!

Human imagination! How powerful it is - I had to tell myself that this is something much more ordinary than the brain was milling about. Very neat!

Still, when the sun went down and I looked down at the fisherman cleaning his catch all I could think of was: Please take care, we already have a bunch of fingers on the other side of the lake.

The Mighty Castor - part II

Beavers can have up to 8 young . They are called "kits" and they stay with their families up to the age of two. That means that there should always be a family group around the beaver home.

Depending on location, their family homes can differ. Many are represented by the typical lodges surrounded by swamps and ponds with a number of beaver-built walls where water can be let in or out in order to maintain system of ponds and swamps. 

Let them work and soon a dry valley will undergo a very noticeable change.

 
They will keep on building the walls and damming little streams, constantly maintaining the works and adding some more until there is a complex system of ponds and gates that can be closed or opened to allow water to collect or to drain.

 

Humans might not appreciate the beavers' engineering efforts but for the rest of the natural world the beavers have created new environment. The plants will grow and where there are algae, grasses and sedges and willows, there is animal life. From amphibians to birds to the large mammals they will slowly move in to colonize the new landscape. 

 This would represent a typical beaver lodge. It is built from branches and mud that freezes in the winter (therefore they add more mud on the top of the lodge before the first snowfall). The frozen mud forms a very hard layer and the snow on the top insulates the lodge.
Inside, there is a chamber with flat floor -  all placed well above the water level so the animals stay warm and dry.

A tunnel descends down from the chamber and under the water so the beaver can sneak out without being seen or heard. Inside it looks somewhat like the white part of the photo. 

Maybe there is another tunnel as an emergency escape - I am not sure on this one but it would make sense.

The outside opening into the tunnel is always under the water - unless the water level drops down (like this one on Brilliant Dam on Kootenay River) - I am sure that for the time being the beavers were less than impressed with the entrance being exposed.

This would be the normal state of this particular lodge. 

Now, I am looking at the size of the logs and trees that the beavers used - they are very strong for their size and they can manipulate their building materials with dexterity and patience. I cannot picture myself (5 or 6x the beaver's mass) maneuvering such logs into the places.


As mentioned above, in Fall they reinforce the lodge with mud. Again - this is no little mole hill. And the amount of mud they need to collect and then place on the top of those logs just blows my mind. They work hard and mostly unseen, during the hours of human supper and sleep.

And then... let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.



When Spring turnes into Summer another layer of wood goes up. Then mud, then snow ......

What happens inside the lodge as it grows bigger? I don't know if  they enlarge the chambers as well ....?

No wonder they say: Busy Beaver, ....

And all of the above is only about building the lodge. I have not even mentioned all the branches stored in the water for the winter to come. 

As for the trees, the beaver's choices would be the aspen, the alder, and birch although as seen in the photo red cedar and other species will do as well. What's neat is that most of these species have the ability to sprout back.



They say that the beaver's incisors are so strong that they can chop off a "sliver" the size of a man's hand. 

Ouch. 

Thankfully they are vegetarian.





The above lodge  was built in a quiet bay of ever flowing Kootenay River. There was no way for the beavers to copy what  people have already done to the river several times: to dam it. 

This lodge is just a waterfront condo built by several beaver generations. 





There are other waterfronts in the area - not as fancy as the lodge above: 
just some modest bachelors' suites inside the river bank.





In other places however, the beavers dam entire valleys, changing the environment for the benefit of all. The amphibians and reptiles, birds and the moose, deer, bear and many bugs and plants alike.