The Mountain is Calling
Bottlebrush buckeyes (Aesculus parviflora) are blooming on the mountain. The flowers are visited by a variety of native bees and other pollinators. Bottlebrush is unique among the buckeyes for retaining its foliage, in good condition, well into fall. It is also more tolerant of disease and insects than most buckeyes.
Photos by Michelle Reynolds
Bugs are bird food!
If you love birds, if you want birds in your yard, and if you would love to see birds nesting nearby, then you must learn to love bugs (using this term for insects, beetles, spiders, butterflies, moths, caterpillars, and other crawlers and flyers).
Yes, lots of birds love to eat the sunflower seeds and suet you put in your feeders. And they probably gobble up your berries and other fruits and veggies you may grow in your yard. But take a closer look at the birds as they forage the bugs in nature. You might see wrens, titmice and chickadees robbing the spiderwebs, eating both the spiders and the insects caught in the web. You might observe gnatcatchers, flycatchers, vireos, finches, cardinals, and tanagers snatching butterflies out of the air. Watch the robins, thrushes, thrashers, and towhees scratching and grabbing beetles, ants, and grubs from the ground. See woodpeckers and nuthatches crawl limb to limb pecking for a snack. Look up and see swifts, swallows, and martins nabbing insects on the fly. We must learn to coexist with creepy crawlies if we want to support the existence of the birds we love.
A few things you should do (and more importantly, not do):
do learn to watch and appreciate bird/bug interactions
don’t be a bug hater
don’t use pesticides
Pictured: phoebe with dragonfly, Carolina wren with katydid, white-eyed vireo with grasshopper
Photos by Michelle Reynolds
Pollinator Week is an annual event celebrated internationally in support of pollinator health. It's a time to celebrate pollinators and spread the word about what we can do to protect them.
The Habitat Garden at Ruffner Mountain is a pollinator’s paradise. We invite bees, wasps, flies, beetles, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds to the native plant plots. Pollinators visit flowers to sip nectar or feed on pollen while transporting pollen grains to other flowers as they go. We like to plant many different flower shapes and colors and observe all the creatures they attract. Next time you come up to the mountain, don’t be afraid to lean in and get a closer look.
This week, we’ve observed calligrapher flies and bumblebees on the compass plant (Silphium integrifolium) and grey-headed coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata).
Click here for further reading on how you can support pollinator health.
Photo by Michelle Reynolds
Parking lot improvement photoshoots can be exciting, too! (Just ask little Riley here)
As enticing as adding something new may seem, so is prioritizing the maintenance of existing facilities and spaces before creating new ones. Maintenance is an important form of conservation, and conservation - simply defined - is caring for what we already have.
We are thankful to Councilor Hunter Williams, the wonderful D2 team, Birmingham City Council, and Mayor's Office for helping to fund the much-needed maintenance to the Nature Center parking lot to ensure our visitors have a safe experience at Ruffner Mountain.
A big thank you to Cheryl Thomas and Peter Cutsumbis, owners of Along Those Lines LLC; we loved working with this local, family-owned business. Read more about how they got started here.
We were wondering which snake shed its skin here, the black kingsnake (which we hope is still around) or the copperhead. Both have inhabited this nook under the sidewalk, and since kingsnakes are known to make a meal out of a copperhead, we’re surprised to see a copperhead again.
Snakes are out. We love snakes, and Ruffner Mountain is their refuge. We are of the opinion, if we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us. It’s pretty rare to run into a venomous snake on the mountain. Visitors usually see gray rat snakes, kingsnakes, green snakes, garter snakes, Dekay’s brown snakes, or ringneck snakes, all non-venomous.
What do you do if you see a snake? Enjoy the sighting! Keep calm and keep a safe distance. Move away and walk around it. Or if it’s blocking the trail, slow down and simply wait for it to cross. It’s important to do this for the snake’s safety as well as yours.
The small, compact, cup-shaped nests of blue-gray gnatcatchers and ruby-throated hummingbirds are perfectly camouflaged on forked branches and scraggly lichen-covered limbs. These nests are made from lichen and spiderwebs. The birds use the stretchy, strong and sticky spider silk to anchor their nests to the branch and to shingle the sides of the nests.
Next time you reach for the broom to brush off webs from the eaves, consider leaving them for the birds instead. There are many reasons to love spiders. They are great natural pest control, catching pesky insects in the sticky traps they weave. Spiders are also an important food source for birds. And if you leave your webs, you’ll get to watch birds steal from the webs, and you just might get to watch gnatcatchers and hummingbirds utilize the silk as a building material for nests.
Photos by Michelle Reynolds
My, what big eyes you have! And big bushy antennae, too! The Polyphemus silk moth (Antheraea polyphemus), named for the man-eating giant cyclops in Greek mythology, has wing spots resembling eyes. This male Polyphemus moth (females have smaller, thinner antennae) was found flopping around the parking lot on Tuesday morning during Habitat Garden Club. It was later carried off by a bright red male cardinal. No doubt, such a chunky body was a nice breakfast for the bird.
Plenty of host plants for the caterpillars can be found around the parking lot and the habitat gardens — oak, ash, birch, dogwood, elm, hickory, maple, and willow — so we hope to see more of these big beautiful moths!
Photos by Michelle Reynolds
