Why I Oughta...

Yesterday, I posted a photo of our new suet nugget feeder and talked about how we normally hang a suet cake (that's what I call them) out on our feeder, but the nuggets seem complimentary to the cakes.  Or, at least, that's my hope. I didn't want to forget what kind of suet that I put out, so I'm posting it here in the birding diary:  We're starting the season with this no-melt hot pepper suet dough.  Why?  Well...most importantly, it is inexpensive and available for curbside pickup at our local Home Depot.  But also, because we've used it in the past and it seems that the squirrels *do* indeed NOT like the hot pepper stuff and stay away.  

Earlier this week, I posted an image of our first set of London Plane Tree buds (they're pointy right now) and talked about how nature writer Rutherford Platt talked about how tree buds set in the Fall are as varied as jewelry and diamonds .  Here's the second in my (now) series of tree buds around our yard.   Today, is a look at our Greenspire Linden tree buds.   Interestingly, I've posted about these very buds before - but in Spring - because they get big and bulbous and interesting looking - like this time in early 2020 and also in early 2018 .  But, never shared a photo in the Fall. I bought these trees back in 2017 before we even moved in our house because I wanted to try my hand at espalier with them.   And, even more recently, I showed how these things were covered in aphids and I attempted to spray them with a pesticide .  Here's what the buds look like right now - in November of 2020: I'll get to a few more tree buds in our yard over the next week or so

It is getting back to being the bird feeding time of the year.  I take most of the warm weather months off and feed during the Winter when I don't have to deal (as much) with raccoons and skunks and other large critters.  That means that I'm getting our feeders out of the garage and hanging them up, but it also (this year) meant that I added a new feeder to our program. I found this relatively inexpensive ($4.99 at Home Depot) cage feeder that takes these Peanut Suet Nuggets ($2.96 per bag) that would add a different variety of food to our setup.  Below, you can see the cage feeder - with three perches - and the bag of Peanut Suet Nuggets. I didn't fill the whole feeder, but I think that the bag would fill a little bit MORE than the whole thing, but not that much more.  At $3 per bag, I'm interested in seeing how long this will last and how it performs against the weather; not to mention if it attracts some new visitors.  I normally put out a suet cake (hot pepper) so

Over the weekend, we went out walking (and playing Pokemon Go) around Barth Pond at Patriots Park down on 55th Street in Downers Grove and one of the kids came across this two-tiered honeycomb that has been abandoned by the occupants.  Based on the color, this hasn't been a vibrant, active home for a while.  Neat to see and fun to have to kids show an interest in nature.

We had a storm come through last week that dropped all the remaining leaves - and I mean ALL - in the yard.  With the leaves off the limbs, I've started to investigate the structure of some of the trees and noticing that most of them have set buds before they head into dormancy.  The first tree that I looked at was our new (this year) London Plane Tree.  The brief history of the tree is that I bought this with some birthday money from Nat's Grampy in early Spring , planted in May and it was immediately stressed , it seemed to recover and full leaf out this Summer, only to return to a stressed-state during the late Summer heat .   Below is a look at one of the limbs of this tree that shows off what are quite pointy buds: The London Planetree buds you see above are almost thorn-like at this point, but based on what I see online, they'll continue to grow out and get a little bit 'bent' in the appearance of their tips .    It also says that the Plane Tree (or Maple-leaf

 We have a pretty active NextDoor online community.  And as you'd expect, there's TONS of animal/critter sightings on there - including the occasional coyote ( Here's one that I saw on my walk to the train on our block ).  But, Downers Grove has what I think is A LOT of foxes in our town.  We have so many that there's now a restaurant named after the phenomenon (at least, I think that's why they named it that way).  I've posted about some of them on the blog including earlier this year when there was one sitting on the driveway across the street from us early one morning .   This past week, The KotBT and I were out in our front yard dragging our garbage cans down to the curb in the early evening when we spotted the Fantastic Mr. Fox crossing our street - from the creekside of the block to our side.  Here he is trotting across the street: I have a series of other posts about critters/wildlife on the blog including a close-up encounter with a fox up in Wisconsin

By the time the middle of November comes around, I've been doing leaf clean-up in our yard for at least four weeks.  We get early drops (Walnut), constant drops (Catalpa, Maple, Kentucky Coffee Tree) and late drops (Oaks) and it lasts more than a month.  If I waited until they all came down, it would be a huge mess.  Not that it isn't a good idea.  It just isn't how I address the situation.  When I started this year, I spent time using the mower and bagged up all the leaves as they dropped - by mowing about once per week.  I filled our compost bins pretty quickly.   But, with our bins filled, what do I do with leaves still on the grass?  I decided to try something new this year:  I just mulched them in the lawn.   You can see it below - this is mostly a lot of oak leaves (which are hard to break down) that have been mulched up and left behind.   I don't love this look, but I wanted to try it.  Here - below - is a close-up look of the mulched in leaves.   And here's