Nature's Music

Living close to nature reveals hidden secrets about yourself. Having as your nearest neighbors; barking Elf Owls, the melodic trilling of Bewick's Wrens and the constant scoldings from omnipotent Acorn Woodpeckers makes you more aware of how important it is to keep their "communities" intact as well as ours. They provide the music we need to survive...

How do you keep the music playing?

One of four nesting pairs of Elf owls this year... our nearest "neighbors"...!
Please watch Tony's video for more Elf Owl action ,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHcXI7abj8o

Tom.

Meet Tom.

Our special, rescue, mini-doxie boy. At 4 years, he is all boy. A 9 lb, four-legged terror, ready to run down and ravage a 40 lb javelina. Not familiar with javelinas? Note photo below, javelinas (collared peccary) are cloven-hoofed mammals, similar to the wild boar with grizzled grayish or blackish bristly hair, pig-like snout (however, they are not wild pigs!), tusks (canines) found in southeastern Arizona, extreme southeastern/southwestern New Mexico, and central and southern Texas.  Traveling in small herds of 6 to 30, grunting softly while feeding, will give an alarm call of a barking cough and/or chattering teeth. They may charge and bite with those canines, which protrude about an inch from their jaws inflicting nasty puncture wounds. Please don't feed them or they will come in to close to your home or garden. With dachshunds being notorious overachievers, trouble will definitely start! Able to leap small buildings in a single bound, so to speak. 

Back to Tom...Look deep into those eyes and you see sweet, loving curiosity. Be one of our 3 other dogs with Tom in an alpha mood, desiring your undivided and you'll experience pain delivered swiftly by flashing pearly-white canines, ready to sever a part of your anatomy. Usually we can intercept these raucous, nerve-jarring happenings with a quick scoop, he's only 9 pounds, remember? My hubbie and I were late once and Beaber, 12 year old, male, standard doxie, new to our household, lost a tiny part of his lower ear. Welcome to the family!

This would not be any great surprise to other doxie owners given their feisty reputation. Tom is special, he was born without esophageal musculature resulting in an enlarged esophagus or megaesophagus.
http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_megaesophagus.html
Translation: he needs gravity to get his food to his stomach. For you, that means feeding him vertically for every meal of his life and hoping it stays down once it gets there. Regurgitation happens often and with a constant risk of aspiration pneumonia. As a little guy, this can debilitate him quickly and with possible deadly serious consequences. Is it any wonder we think he is amazing having such a dynamic personality and forgive him his infrequent surly episodes? Maybe I would be the same way... "Outta my way, I'm small, but I'm mighty!"


That's my Tom.

Hello Old Friends!

Hello All!

Yes, we are still here with 22 nest boxes. Our trees seem more beautiful this time of year providing our extended avian family with a wonderful canopy. We have 4 pairs of nesting Elf Owls, an all time record with the owls surpassing the bluebirds and the flycatchers for the first time in 12 years. Life brings its series of challenges, but the birds always provide you with a reason to keep going. No matter what.

Enjoying our morning cup of the "elixir of the gods" (coffee!), we watched the Ladderback woodpecker family feeding on our homemade suet. Having learned the technique from their parents, they will know for themselves how to glean the nutritious snack. 

Birdland Ranch Suet:

2 cups cornmeal and uncooked oatmeal

1 cup peanut butter

2 cups lard/shortening or 1 cup leftover bacon grease or used cooking oil (you can use a combo of them all)

clean, cooked, crushed eggshells (Bake cleaned out eggshells in the oven, while baking something else and when you can smell them a bit they are done! Crush them with your rolling pin or in a small food processor)

Additional ingredients you can add:

stale bread (place bread in a plastic bag and then crush with your rolling pin )

dried raisins

cookie/cracker crumbs;avoid salty crackers

popcorn, no kernels

bird seed

Mix all the above in a big bowl until the consistency of really thick peanut butter. You may need to add additional oatmeal/cornmeal and/or shortening/grease to mixture to gain the proper consistency. It needs to not stick to your fingers, but feel somewhat dry. Once your happy with the "feel" of it, smush down the mixture into any plastic storage bowl, keeping in mind the width of your suet feeder, usually about an inch or so. Freeze. When you can't push your finger through suet (rock hard in other words), it is ready!

Take outside to your feeder, tap the container against a handy rock and it should slip cleanly out. Place in your feeder and watch your "neighbors"!

We keep this in our suet pretty much year round. Everyone eats it (had a visiting Black bear one Spring that took the whole feeder down!)and it makes you feel good that you are helping them out. Please know that they don't rely on it, it is merely  helpful, like putting out snacks for your friends when they visit you, during weird weather, freaky cold snaps and the like. Remember consistency is the key.

New Era Begins!

In case you all were wondering if I was ever going to update my blog site, the answer is Yes!

Has it really been since July of 2007? Well, let's not dwell on the past. I began a new career path. My new path is as a veterinary technician or as I like to be called, animal nurse. Being on the front lines, so to speak, at our ranch, we have witnessed many wildlife emergencies over the years. It became apparent to me that I wanted to do more than just shuttle them off to hopefully more competent hands. I wanted to be the hands!

So with one semester left to complete, I am on my way to being a national and state certified animal nurse. The work is challenging and very rewarding. My day work will be working at an area companion animal hospital (if all goes as planned!) with weekends devoted to wildlife conservation, education,research, rescue, and rehabilitation at our ranch. How does one accomplish this? Planning and great volunteers! My husband and I are in the process of establishing our organization with all the initial infrastructure set up by Spring 2010. Challenging, rewarding adventures ahead!

Our website is going through an early, early Spring "molt" here, so keep watching! Full speed ahead!

Nest Box Check - July 19, 2007

We have three nest boxes with Eastern Bluebird clutches remaining out of our 21 box trail.

• Box #1 - 5 eggs
• Box #4 - 4 recently hatched bluebirds with one egg remaining.
• Box #7 - 5 eggs
• Box #9 - nest box found down on the ground with roof destroyed, all 5 eggs gone. All the evidence indicates bear predation.
  

We are winding down cavity nest box trail activity here, but the onset of the monsoon rains are catalyzing our grassland bird species. One of my favorites are the Montezuma quail who can be heard singing to each other every morning, evening and before each storm. The quail are a species of concern due to loss of habitat to overgrazing and excessive hunting. One of our ongoing ranch projects has been reseeding the areas around two wildlife water ponds we established in 2001. The ground was so severely overgrazed during the years it was a working cattle ranch that each summer rainy season we battle to re-establish vegetation for our grassland birds. We have decided to try a technique used to seed steep eroded areas along highways. Straw mixed with seed are rolled into 25ft long sections, which are staked into the ground. This keeps the seed where you want it, not running off the hillside with the first really strong storm. Later this Fall, we plan on submitting a grant proposal for these "seed rolls" of native grass seed and mulch.

MoMs - Day 1

MoMs (Molt Over Migration Stopover Ecology Project) began this morning with Peter Pyle (co-author and field director) and 5 enthusiastic and experienced bird conservationists assisting with setting up mist nets and banding birds. Arriving mid-morning, Tony and I approached the main station set up for weighing, banding and noting feather molt, etc. of the birds to hear that all was going well. "20 birds", Peter exclaimed, "We had only expected 6 or 7!" For all of you just tuning in, please refer to my post on July 1 for a summary of the project. In short, this study is aimed at finding out what a molting migrating bird requires for habitat (food, shelter, etc.) in order to ensure he/she arrives at their winter home base healthy to start the cycle of migration and reproduction for next season. Molt demands a great deal of energy second only to reproduction. Since very little has been documented about these habitat requirements, we are thrilled to be helping in the process of discovering what's needed. A 3 to 4 person team will return to the ranch for a total of 12 or 13 more times to band and document their findings. Please stay tuned!

Nest Box Check - July 13, 85 degrees and cloudy

1. Female Eastern Bluebird on top of box with nest material. Male singing encouragement nearby.
   
2. Ash-throated Flycatcher in oak near nest box, but no new nest material present.
3. No new activity.
4. Mother Eastern Bluebird flushed from nest. 5 eggs present.
5. No new activity.
6. No new activity.
7. 5 Eastern Bluebird eggs present.
8. No new activity.
9. 5 Eastern Bluebird eggs present.
10. No new activity.
    

• Box #11-13 and 15 -21 no new activity.
• Box #14 has one Elf Owl nestling remaining to fledge in next day or so.