Robins in the Grapes, a harrowing story

So far we've had four robin nests on the Scordato homestead this year and two of the four have made it. The following is an account of the robin's nest in the grapes. I posted the empty nest at an earlier post. Here is the progress of this nest, as we had to help them out a bit. So, on June 13th the chicks started to hatch out and I managed to catch this rare moment when the last egg still had to hatch. Usually when I check nests, each day it's like: four eggs four eggs four eggs four chicks But I got this shot, fuzzy as it is:

Here is another shot with all four chicks, can you tell anything different from the previous pictures?

It may be hard to tell from the pictures, because the camera kept focusing on the surrounding grape foliage, but once the babies hatched out of the eggs, their weight tilted the nest at about a 45 degree angle. While this Momma robin chose a nest site that would be covered by the grape leaves, she was still not an engineering genius. On Saturday and Sunday of father's day weekend, I kept checking on the nest a few times a day. At one point, three of the four chicks were on the ground, but there was one, I swear I put him back in the nest 6 times. I didn't think he was going to make it he got so behind in feathers and size. I nicknamed him "runty." On father's day morning Runty was out of the nest again. So when we got back from Dad's father's day breakfast, he made a shelf out of scrap from the chicken tractor extension he has been building, and we drilled the shelf underneath the nest to make it horizontal again. Sure enough when we took the shelf over to the grapes, there was runty, and a sibling back on the ground. We put the nest on the grape post and while the platform doesn't actually touch the nest, it does support the vines underneath and the nest was stabilized. But would Runty make it? Yes, here is a picture. As you can see Runty in the front, has less feathers, but is holding his own.

And here is Momma robin, dutifully collecting worms to feed them all.

By the time this blog is posted, the fledgelings will have left the nest, all four of them! I'm not sure if the shelf will stay as Andrew has to prune this row and there will be less cover for them. Momma robin may have to build a new crib is she want's one more batch...Robins can squeeze in three clutches between April and August.

You can see the shelf in this picture here.

And, here is their close up. Let's wish them well. I saw a statistic that says only 1 in 100 robin fledglings survive to their second spring. Who knows, maybe it will be Runty, who is in the nest, just not pictured, I swear.

I am planning a huge post soon entirely devoted to the growing vineyard in our back forty. I'll have pictures of the grapes when the first bud out, and some more information about what Andrew is growing.

Berry Pickin'

Everything is early this year because of the unusually warm spring. This means that lavender has bloomed and gone when really I should be cutting now instead of pruning back. We usually pick black raspberries during the Fourth of July weekend but this year the farms said they would be played out by then so we had to squeeze blueberry picking and black raspberry picking in the same weekend. Because of the lack of rain, the black raspberry crop was poor this year. We toiled for like two hours in the hot sun for barely enough berries to make three pies. Since black raspberries are my favorite food, this is really disappointing. It's hard to find frozen black raspberries in the store, they are expensive and not very good. I usually try to pick around 15 pounds. I was lucky to get 7 this year with my friend M and Andrew helping me pick.

I got hooked on black raspberries from my Grandma and Grandpa Perdue's house in Saint Paris. They had wild black raspberries all along a fence row by their long lane. Nothing beats black raspberries. They are smaller, juicier, sweeter, and hard to find and pick as they have more thorns, and often grow in places where the insects are vicious. I love black raspberry pie and am incredibly grateful that Graeter's make a wonderful black raspberry sauce that I can find at Kroger. Black raspberries in a bowl warmed by the sun aren't bad either. We had much better success at Berryfield farms near Centerburg and Mt Vernon. They have been irrigating their blueberries, do not use pesticides, and had very competitive prices. We got the tip from Amanda (see Made in a Treehouse in the blogroll) and had a great time. In less than two hours we picked 18 pounds of blueberries!

We actually ended up picking in a row with one of the owners. He said that starlings are the hardest birds on the blueberries, and that honeybees aren't the best pollinators for the bushes, that bumblebees and mason bees do most of the heavy lifting. He said blueberry bushes can live up to 40 years when taken care of, which is on par with grapes. Most of the blueberries went into food saver bags to be vacuum packed and frozen so in January I can make scones, muffins and who knows what else. We may make blueberry ice cream later this summary so stay tuned. I put two cups of berries in each bag.

Indoor Projects: Bake!

Andrew is the cook and I am the baker. He loves to try a recipe from one of his favorite Food Network personalities and can really but in the time and energy to make some really delicious meals. Dinner is too high pressure for me. Too many things to watch and chop. Plus, what if it doesn't taste good, then dinner is ruined! I get a raging sweet tooth from the Perdue side of the family and have always eaten dinner looking forward to dessert. I love trying out new recipes. Baking is generally a winter pursuit for me, but with so many great internet sites out there, I'm trying to take advantage of the super hot days and rainy days to be more focused indoors. I'll start with my proudest baking try, my first cake from scratch! I can't remember if I reserved this book or just saw it on the shelf, it's hard for me to keep track of what I just find and what I order. But I can't wait to try more recipes in this book. And the cute vintage bundt cake pan was a bonus find. Man look at that color! It comes more from the 8 (yup, 8) egg yolks I had to whisk in before adding to the mix. The yolks are courtesy of the Scordato flock of course. It didn't require that much lemon juice, but I needed a lot of juice to make the complementary lemon sorbet from this book. I got to try out another great vintage find, this one from my favorite antique shop, Old Glory Antiques, only a stone's throw away from our house. I love how the bottom part helps measure the juice as you go. I'll be doing another post about Old Glory later, as a lot of our great pieces in the house are from this lovely Mom and Pop shop! While I ws working on desserts, Andrew was working behind our house to make our seating area by the deck. Once it is all done I'll post it up here. The deck was last years project, and the seating area is one of this years. Here is the cake cooling on the rack! While the cake was cooling, I made a simple syrup for the sorbet, and heated up some strawberries to make a topping. The pot with the discarded lemon halves is an idea from Country Living magazine. I simmered them on the stovetop for about an hour and a half in water for a lemony air freshener. Andrew said he could smell the lemon when he walked in. My sinuses, alas, did not let me note the difference. Here is the finished product, voila! And with the sorbet and a little honey drizzled over it, because you know, honey makes everything better! Stay tuned for further adventures in cake making. I think I'm going to stick with this simple cake bundt book. Even though it is slim, there are lots of possibilities. And speaking of lemons, I've been searching for the perfect lemonade recipe. A few weeks ago I tried a recipe from Even though I love the fragrance, look and used of lavender, I've discovered that I am not a big fan of the culinary flavor. I'm aiming to try it again without the lavender, because the vanilla layer really mellowed out the lemon. "Where did I get all these books?" You ask? At the library of course! Last but not least. I tried the Giant Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies from Baking Bites and I made peanut butter fudge using my lactaid milk from a recipe from rcakewalk. See sidebar for blogs)It had been ages since I'd had fudge and it wasn't bad at all. So many recipes for fudge called for condensed milk, and it's hard to substitute. Both were very good! Until next time!

Indoor Projects: Spa

Now that this year's cucumber plants are off and growing and it's getting to be hot weather, I dug around the deep freezer for some cucmber puree that I froze last summer when I was up do my eyeballs in cucumber. I made some cucumber after bath splash. The flat jars were and experiment. I mixed ground oats with the pulp of the cucumber left over from draining the cucumber juice off to make a light summery scrub. This was not a recipe, and is an experiment. I also made a triple batch of brown sugar body scrub for a friend at work. It's actually white sugar and brown sugar, sunflower oil, and optional, vanilla or lavender essential oil. One of my favorite decorating books lately is this title. THe problem with a lot of decorating books is that they look pretty but, do people really live like that? The addition of a dog or cat in the picture doesn't quite sell me. But there are still some really good ideas in here. She has a quarterly magazine coming out too, the summer one is out and I've enjoyed looking at it too. Here's a picture of Maxwell, sleeping through my puttering about in the kitchen.

Of Chickens...

...and foxes

Our fox family is back. We had a siting a couple weeks ago at Mom and Dad's and on Memorial day we spotted one fox in the morning and two in the evening. We've had foxes here for a while. The first spring that we were in the house, I got some grainy pictures of a fox sunning itself in our strawberry raised bed at the end of our lot. The fox also liked sunning itself on the neighbors flat bed trailer too. Last summer we had several sightings and I got some good shots (like this one below) of the fox behind Mom and Dad's field.

The pair (I use the term loosely as I seriously doubt it is the same pair over these last several years) have raised pups (or kits? or cubs? I should know that off the top of my head) in the neighbors horse barn and in the woods behind Mom and Dad's house. Foxes are beautiful any time of year, although this year their red coats fade to more tawny and later in the summer they will look downright raggedy as they shed their summer coat. But what of the chickens? Well Memorial day morning I was at the kitchen sink and Andrew was at the table eating breakfast and all of the sudden he said "Fox!" And pointed at the backyard. I didn't have my glasses on and convinced a fox perpetrated chicken snatch was about to occur, ran out the back door and down the yard in my socks shouting and clapping and hoping the chickens were okay. The chickens were okay. The fox was in the field along one of the fence lines. It took a few minutes for it to run back towards the horse barn. Maybe they will den there this year. We'll see. This is problematic. It means no more laid back chicken ranging. When the chickens are out now, Andrew or I or both of us will need to be out and nearby. No more doing housework for an hour while they range. We'll have to be out and about in the yard. The grass in the neighbors field was baled over the weekend. Now the foxes can scavenge for any animals that were run over by the hay equipment and it is much easier for them to chase mice in the short cover of grass. It may very well be the foxes still aren't aware of the chickens even though they have been thirty yards away from them, or they don't recognize the chickens as a prey option...yet. In the evening, while Mom and Dad were here for dinner, we saw the fox again and we watched her on and off for an hour, keeping an eye on the chickens, as she raced around hay bales (I don't know why I am saying it was a female, I mean, who knows.) and stalked mice. I tried to get her in a mid air pounce with my sports speed on the camera but no luck yet. As you can see with the hay bale picture, I got very close and the zoom lens made up the difference. If I get any more good shots I will post them. I will leave you with this one below, of when the mate arrived on the scene. And I got them both in the same frame.

Robin Update: No hand-outs in the Avian World!

This story is a couple weeks old now, but that's okay. The first clutch of robins fledged about three weeks ago...or is it four now? Anyway, it was the Monday morning after the garden project painting the wash tubs blue and planting the mint and lemon balm. All day that Sunday, I caught glimpses of the juvenile robins hopping about the yard. On Monday morning when Andrew came home, he looked at the front porch and I greeted him at the front door. When I opened the door he said "look down at the welcome mat," and there, right by my feet was one of the juvenile robins. "Is he hurt?" I asked. We didn't know so I shut the door and got the camera and when I came back he had flown past the door and onto the grape vine tree.

I took several pictures of him, relieved that he could at least fly a bit. But I had to get ready for work. When I was switching laundry out though, I heard this really high pitched insistent chirping. I mean, it was almost ear splitting. So I went out to the front porch with the camera and he had moved on to our planter that is by the nest. He had basically flown as close to the nest as he could without actually going back to the nest and he kept up his high pitched crying.

The parent robins were both nearby in the garden with worms, but they wouldn't go near the juvenile at all. I wondered if he was begging for food but being cut off. Just the day before I had caught the robins refreshing the nest with grasses and ah, working on the next clutch so to speak. So I wrote Cornell, home of the best heron cam ever. If you haven't checked it out go now and see the babies. All five herons are thriving which shows the parents can find plenty of food for five hungry mouths. It's quite amazing to see these birds up close, and hilarious when the babies give the camera and extreme closeup. These nest cams are not only fun to watch, but gives scientists a whole new way to analyze behavior like never before. Below is the correspondence with Cornell, reprinted with their permission. Hi, we had four robins fledge from their front porch nest on Wednesday May 2. This morning, one of the juveniles was perched on one of our garden features just a few feet from the nest. The parents have already started to refurbish for the second clutch. this juvenile, was making very high pitched, insistent chirps. Neither adult robin would approach him or the nest and hovered about the garden at large. He did not appear hurt. Was he begging for food and the adults were trying to wean him off? Thanks Dear Julie, Some kids just don't get the hint! What you suspect is the most likely explanation for this behavior. I have even watched parents chase a youngster who keep coming around to beg for food when they believe that he ought to be feeding himself. We don't like watching that but, from the bird's perspective, it's really important that the youngster learn to fend for himself. I hope you've been watching the nest cams we've got up at our All About Birds website. There's one on a Red-tailed Hawk nest on the Cornell University campus where there are now three little balls of white fluff being fed regularly. They can be viewed at www.allaboutbirds.org/cornellhawks. In addition, four of the five eggs in the Great Blue Heron nest have hatched so the heron parents are being kept busy. They can be viewed at www.allaboutbirds.org/cornellherons. There's so much going on at the Lab that is fascinating. To learn more about some of those activities, sign up for our monthly eNewsletter at www.birds.cornell.edu. I also encourage you to visit our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/cornellbirds, where there is a community of people who are always asking and answering questions about birds. I'm so behind on blogging I haven't posted pictures of the robins right before they made their way into the wide world. Enjoy this series. I won't post pictures of the second robin clutch unless something notable happens.

And last but not least, a parent's work is never done. Here the male rests with a beakful of worms, waiting for me to leave before going to the nest. It's the male because the ring of white around his eyes is not very prominent and his feathers on top of the head give him more of a buzz cut look whereas a female has more of a sleek cap look to the top of her head.

The Scordatos Have Gone to the Birds...

Or it feels like it these days. Aside from the Robin news, we have a few kildeer about, the barn swallows are back in force, the bluebirds are still about, and the red winged blackbirds continue to be our nicest regular at the bird station. Here one of our resident males is hanging out in one of our oldest orchard trees.

We've had a couple yellow finches at the feeders, but they aren't in full force yet. And the mockingbirds are back. It's so much fun to here their range of song. Basically, when you go outside and it sounds like you have a bunch of birds in your backyard singing all at once, look for a single gray brown bird about the size of a dove but slimmer. Mockingbirds have white bars across the middle of their wings, and tend to look like pinwheels when they are spiraling about fighting another bird for territory (like the skirmish I saw around our pine trees a few weeks ago) or coupling their song with a dance (literally!) Last summer I watched a mockingbird perched on our electric pole and he would run through all of his songs once in the same order, then he would launch himself off the pole top and execute a tight loop, then land and do it all over again. He even let out a frog ribbit! Dad does not really believe this but it is true! I've read in books that they can mimic frogs, crickets and other insects. I read once that a mockingbird can have up to thirty tunes in his songbook. How amazing, they don't have their own song, but can pilfer any one elses. I would love to come across a mockingbird nest. I don't know where they like to nest and I've never seen them at the bird feeder. I've read that they like berries. Here is a picture of our resident mocker on one of our pine trees, belting out a favorite for the ladies.

Sometimes it is really a fun discovery to find a nest. I see them all the time in the pine trees while mowing and the other afternoon I found a sweet little nest in the grapes as I was watering them and wetting the ground down for the chickens to have a cool place to hang out. I think the nest is abandoned though. My guess is the birds built the nest thinking it a great site, then realized there was a lot of action going on, once Andrew got his grapes in the mail and started planting. I will be posting about Andrew's grapes one of these days soon.

In other bird news, (see, we really have gone to the birds) Andrew surprised me a couple weeks ago by building super bird feeder station to replace the assortment of hooks and feeders I had behind the house. It is a huge improvement and the height of the feeders is really nice too.

And finally, here's a shot of Molly, checking out a bird of a much different sort...

It was a year ago today...

That Andrew and I were sleeping in the guest room, and had most of our bedroom furniture in our master bath while we picked up shingles and other debris out of our backyard. Yup. On May 23 2011 tornado strength (but not the actual tornado) winds whipped past the hill on Parkview and took off most of the roof above our bedroom and half of the roof over our garage. The winds buckled our next door neighbors garage door inward, and chucked their super deluxe playground set over their chain link fence and into our yard. Two doors down, the front door blew off its hinges and into their kitchen. Andrew and I weren't home. Andrew was at work, and I had been in Columbus getting my hair cut. Dad called me as I was leaving Dublin to see where I was and which route I was taking. "161 is okay," he said, "it's going to go down 29 and head towards West Jeff." But of course, it didn't. I kept thinking as I went down 161, that man of man, the bulk of the deep blue gray, on the horizon, actually, it was the whole horizon, looked worse and I was heading straight for it. I didn't fathom how bad it would be, I didn't see any funnel clouds, but just past Irwin I had to stop in the middle of the road because it was raining so hard I couldn't see anything. I've never been in a rain like that ever. I didn't even trust myself to pull over and just hoped no one would rear end me. It only took a few minutes for the rain to lighten up so I could drive again and in the space of a few miles, stopped completely. By the time I pulled down our lane, I could see the pinks and oranges of the setting sun and hear birds singing. Then I pulled into our lane. It took a minute to computer that one, the house looked wrong and it took another minute to computer how it looked wrong. I didn't remember our roof being yellow...oh wait that's the plywood that's underneath the shingles, paper, and plastic. And what was wrong with our front porch. What is all that stuff on our front porch? Oh wait, it's the soffit under our front porch, all tour out and bent up in front of our door. Where were our garden boxes? Um, blown away apparently. Where were some of my terra cotta pots? Smashed on the walkway. Those suckers weighed 6 to 10 pounds but were toss and broken. Thank God none of them hit a window. I went into the house and was still really unaware of the extent of the damage. I was still thinking that you know, we would call someone to replace the shingles. the cats greeted me and didn't seem too upset. I freaked out when I looked in the back yard to see all this stuff scattered across the yard until a realized that a lot of it was from the neighbors jungle gym. I went upstairs and that's when I noticed two things pretty much at once, quickly spreading stains on the ceiling and the sound of water running. It wasn't raining anymore. It was the sound of water running down the tresses of our house. I called Dad and asked him to come over. I called Andrew and told him I thought the damage was worse that I thought and I would call him back. I turned on the bedroom light to see water pouring out from our ceiling fan. I shut the light off and turned the one in the bathroom on. I striped the bedding off the mattress. It was completely soaked for a circle about two feet across. Dad came over and shut off the breakers and took a ladder up into the addict. He brought some tarps but the water was overwhelming. We called a local roofer's emergency line and I called Andrew to tell him to find coverage and come home. He came home about the same time as the roofers, who using a spotlight, tightly tarped up the rest of the house. Because we called so quickly, we would be the first in line for repairs, as there was a lot of damage in the route 4 corridor from Springfield to Mechanicsburg with two tornado sightings, one, very close to where I stopped the car in the rain. The next day was calls to the insurance agent, taking pictures, lots and lots of pictures, moving stuff out of our bedroom. Mom was a huge help. I had timed laundry great, we had tons of dirty laundry and Mom took all our bedding and laundry and other bedroom linens home for washing/storage. For weeks Andrew and I would be getting most of our clothes out of laundry baskets in our other guest bedroom. Dad brought his dump bed trailer and gator over and we spent three hours picking up shingles and other debris. I wish I had taken a picture of this from our second story window but I didn't at the time, of the backyard. This was the eeriest part of the whole thing, all the debris was laid down in our backyard in a very precise spiral, think hard peppermint candy (like a Brack's) kind of swirl. It literally looked like the items had been whipped around to land in this spiral that started out narrow at the house and fattened as it stretched across our backyard and into the field beyond. The second thing that happened is that the folks who came to remove all the wet insulation (that was really starting to smell like ammonia) fell through our bedroom ceiling. I mean, FELL through the ceiling. Insulation and drywall was everywhere. I will say this for our roofers. If you live in my neck of the woods. Consider Metz roofing. They came out quickly the night of the storm and tarped everything up. They told me and Andrew that they would start work on Wednesday as Tuesday would be spent addressing everyone who called them with emergency repair needs, and they would also get the supplies together for our roof. On Wednesday morning they came at 7 am and had the entire old roof removed by lunch. While they left for lunch the giant shingle truck came and by Wednesday night the bulk of the work was done. Andrew had to work that night and I remember Doug Metz telling me "the roof isn't done but it's tight. It's going to rain and I don't want you to worry, no water will get in and we will be done tomorrow." I hated the sound of rain falling outside that night, but I really appreciated Doug's reassurance. Last Memorial Day weekend was spent with a giant dumpster in our backyard and Andrew and I trying to keep up with gardening and planning the steps it would take to put things back together. I think that's the weekend we also shopped for a new bed. It took 6 weeks. We got the original drywall person to do replace the entire ceiling of the bedroom. We had to have the ceilings in four rooms repainted. We got the soffit replaced on the front porch and had to repaint the entire bedroom and clean the carpets upstairs because of all the insulation. Andrew was home during the day enough to call contractors, the insurance adjuster, and do the myriad of paperwork things needed to keep everything rolling. Dad helped me plant the lavender that year and Mom gave us a leg up by helping with all the linens. Having family close by makes a huge difference in life I think. I know we are really lucky and overall the repairs can still be considered minor. People lose their whole homes everyday. We were able to still say in our house and that is huge. I'm hoping this brush with severe weather will be our last. Below are some pictures. The last picture I took tonight, the last visual remnant of the damage, where a piece of debris literally split the board fence in half...from the middle.