cute as can be! congrats!

My dog gets a few birds every year. :(

Beautiful little bird!

Please please please don't let any of those cats invading the neighborhood get it.

At the same time cross your fingers that there will be trees for it to nest in as loss of habitat due to human expansion is a far greater problem in that it affects all creatures.

This post was edited by rouge21 on Thu, Jun 12, 14 at 22:54

Got my fingers crossed rouge21, but ever since we killed off them huge herds of pesky buffalo, stopped those natural prairie fires, along with the settlers who plowed and fenced 'er off and planted all them imported trees, them dang barren grassland prairies are nearly gone and we got trees growin' everywhere now. Who needs an old "empty" prairie anyway? I say good riddance, let those migratory birds and other critters figure out some other way to manage without them.

If that baby bird does get it, thank goodness it won't be for a lack of some imported trees to fly up in, it'll be a cat or a dog.

This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Fri, Jun 13, 14 at 2:45

For sure getting all cats (especially ferals) spayed and neutered is an obvious plan of action that will help.

But GP1, of course you don't think there are more "trees" now than in the past?

Cats and birds have been together on this earth for tens of thousands of years. Loss of all forms of natural habitat including your beloved prairies alters the delicate balance between predator and prey beyond say the direct relationship between bird and cat; for example there are now fewer natural predators of cats that can be found in close proximity to such felines as they are often found today.(i.e. in urban environments).

This post was edited by rouge21 on Fri, Jun 13, 14 at 8:54

We are without animals living with us for the first time in decades (ancient collie died in March and daughter's anti-social cat has gone with daughter).....so, out of seemingly nowhere, my garden has birds. True, we have more birds than we can shake a stick at in the woods and the morning and evening singalong is deafening....but for years, I must have spent many months of my life peering through my monocular (astigmatic, binoculars are hopeless) at my kitchen windows, glued to the antics of the few birds agile and fearless enough to brave the cat and dog onslaught....and now there seem to be dozens of them. If nothing else, I use them (birds) as markers of the passing seasons (the first cuckoo, the first swallow, the migrating pink-footed geese). Next (daunting) step will be to try to learn specific birdsong and alarm calls. Looking forward to the attempt.

I confess to having homicidal thoughts against various neighbouring cat-owners after finding yet another mutilated blackbird on my path....or even worse, a whole nest of starving babies or abandoned eggs - I may even have written furious notes suggesting bells and neutering and put these angry missive through letterboxes......but I am calmer now (must be the HRT).

When my parents passed away and the job of disposing of the house and possessions started in earnest, the first thing I claimed was my fathers birdbath. It was nothing special - just the usual concrete type you find all over the place, but I wanted it. In all my years of gardening, I've never had a birdbath. Just one of those odd things I never got around to buying.

Of all the things I retrieved from their house, this is by far my favorite. I can't tell you how much time I spend at my bedroom window watching all the birds now coming to my garden. It's just so much fun. And if I'm not out their by 5:30 am refilling it, the birds let me know with their hollering.

Kevin

I enjoy the birds much more than the cats, that is very true. I think I saw the house where all these cats are coming from. Yard full of puffballs with all the goat weed and there must have been 25 cats crawling around in it. It was downright creepy looking.

Rouge, we could go round & round on trying to out sarcasm each other but I don't feel like doing it. The US was once 40% dazzling prairie. Grasses build the foundation for life, they bind the earth, prevent water and land erosion, they are the base of the food chain feeding all wildlife including ourselves. Ultimately grasses are the most valuable resource and responsibility of mankind. Grassland is vastly richer and more supportive of life than conventional agriculture.

Deep prairie grass roots are what feed and replenish the Ogallala Aquifer which is shrinking at an alarming rate due to the dramatic and ongoing loss of the grasslands, drought and agriculture. Trees do not replenish the auquifer, their roots suck up large amounts of water. Trees destroy grassland making them impossible to reclaim in a short period of time. Grassland cannot compete with trees.

There in the East, I imagine people are concerned with how we leveled & destroyed the forests and built up big cities full of concrete. That is not the case here in the mid section. We have areas of forest but we also need areas of undisturbed grasslands and it is unbalanced now. The grasslands are the most delicate & endangered ecosystem in America. Once its lost --and its disappearing at an alarming rate-- there is no bringing it back. A forest can be replanted but not a grassland.

To answer your question "are there more trees now than in the past". Where I am? Absolutely YES. They were brought in here by people moving westward from the east. It is ridiculous. If you want to continue this close-minded argument, fine, but do it with someone else because I think we'd be better off staying out of each other's backyard.

Out here where I live, killing trees is often considered a good thing, its called restoration. Once cedars take hold it doesn't take long for larger hardwood trees to establish themselves. Our urban areas are spaced far apart and are thick with trees, we are also "blessed" with lots of wind making most trees lean severely, so if you want to know what I think I can make it very clear. I think thinning trees is a good practice where I live and that less is better than more.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://search.aol.com/aol/imageDetails?s_it=imageDetails&q=grasslands+cedars&img=http%3A//www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2007/images/07_tx_fs_clbjng_restored.jpg&v_t=nscpsearch&host=http%3A//www.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2007/nfp_2007_tx_fs_clbjng_restoration.shtml&width=104&height=77&thumbUrl=http%3A//t2.gstatic.com/images%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcSQRq4gxknUbRra-_EbXr_6J0EGA12ovgpKmCt61pIvAWHMNbqfTUWsxiM%3Awww.forestsandrangelands.gov/success/stories/2007/images/07_tx_fs_clbjng_restored.jpg&b=image%3Fv_t%3DimageResultsBack%26page%3D3%26q%3Dgrasslands%2Bcedars%26oreq%3D815d57d7e0034e15a47270cda9dd5d39%26oreq%3D7cdf71bf7ba14fb999d0d915961b2f5b&imgHeight=149&imgWidth=200&imgTitle=showing+killed+red+cedar&imgSize=5181&hostName=www.forestsandrangelands.gov

This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Fri, Jun 13, 14 at 15:53

I think we'd be better off staying out of each other's backyard.

I didn't know for sure it was your backyard until now. You can understand my confusion i.e. you were GreatPlains1 for awhile and then I see you...tried to start fresh, coming back creating a different identity...wait let me check....oh there it is...TexasRanger10...for how long this time? What's with that? Did I miss an announcement? I don't see much difference.

Rouge21

For the third time and for the record there are some people here who turn posters into the mods whenever they get their feathers ruffled. Weislaw and myself were turned in by a few overly sensitive persons who announced to the forum that we upset them. They called for others to turn us in to the moderators. After 3 warnings from the mods a person is terminated from posting. GP1 was targeted by a few posters and terminated. Refusing to be run off, I am now TexasRanger10.

Does that clear things up for you?

Not that I care but for all I know, you were one of them since my posts obviously seem to get under your skin. If you want honesty, your posts are irritating to me but I don't run to the mods over it and would prefer we simply stay off of each others threads. I would rather stick needles in my eyes than post on one of your threads again.

This thread was mine and was about a baby bird. Not trees or ecological issues. If you will remember we already had that discussion. This is tiresome and unproductive.

I would rather stick needles in my eyes than post on one of your threads again.

I am shocked that fellow GW members have found you anything but respectful, disarming and thoughtful.

Texas Ranger knows what he is talking about. We must all get our heads out of the sand and learn from him.

Just for the record, There are more trees in this area of Texas than before. We used to have a centenarian cowboy that lived here and worked ranches that used to tell me that he could ride all the way to Austin without getting on the road. The cedar explosion makes it impassible in the outlying areas. When the developers come in and clear for dense housing is when the trees TOTALLY disappear and runoff of caliche commences, and then the trees come back with all sorts of exotics mixed in.. I spend a lot of time keeping trees in balance. I run a 17 acre BIRD sanctuary and part of my job, the biggest part of my job is to chop trees down and maintain GRASSLANDS from being encroached. Birds LIVE on grasslands and nest in the trees on the boundaries and stream canyons. If the brush gets too thick, they can not have flight paths through. Back in the day, The cedar was limited to the stream canyons by the many grassfires. Most areas saw a fire once every 7 - 10 years. That is not happening now. Indians were real pyro's . They used it to freshen the land and attract game to it the following year by setting fires. I have a drip burner on order.

I think that we have a regional difference . The East and west coasts were forrest and woodland ecosystems and the middle of the country was a grassland, so the systems returning to the state that was before means something totally different. It is unwise to transplant ones preferred values as a blanket statement for everywhere. It just doesn't work. My ecosystem was a brush/ park/grassland, a mixture. But the wild fire element and overgrazing, removal of bunchgrass, disappearance of the all topsoil and turf has made trees rampant. TxRanger is from the area that experienced the worst mostly human caused environmental catastrophe of history. She brings generational passion to this subject.

Just for the record. I don't ever see bluejays of this type but they are rampant inside Austin, 30 miles from here. They like the cushy life. We have the much better behaved peacock blue Scrub jay.

Just for the record, I find TxRanger quite disarmingly honest and thoughtful and she was sticking the needles in her eye not yours (Rouge21), so what is the problem? She has a way with words. I think that there is a regional difference in how people talk about what they are passionate about. The use of strong idiom is much more respected out this way.. Some of what passes out in the west is considered over the top in the controlled circles of the East. I am from both places and there is a big difference. New Yorkers get a bum rap for outspokenness too. They are not as good at idiom as High desert and grasslanders are. I think it is related to the never ending historical struggle against the elements out here and the closeness of rural roots. Manners were not as important . I find back room quiet manipulation and passive aggressiveness much more sinister and despicable. I enjoy strong idiom. I am only sad that it does not come naturally to me.

I do suggest tolerance from all parties in respecting DIFFERENCES and if one can't, keeping distance is a good second..

My father and sister came to visit me from Ohio. He and my sister had the tree debate on the way down. When he got to VA, he said he never saw so many trees in his life than here. We do have a lot of trees, which can be seen along the entire length of interstate.

From my perception of my area, I think the amount of trees we have is at the bottom of my concerns list.

There are a lot of misconceptions concerning what North America looked like "back in the day". I'm by far not an expert but the main ones I hear are that forest covered the east coast, America was a vast empty continent, and there was some utopian hippie society going on before Europeans arrived.

In the years after first contact, disease wiped out most of the native civilizations. They had been using fire extensively to keep forests open and encourage game, that's why the earliest arrivals didn't have to clear thousand year old trees to set up their settlements, the land was already managed for various uses. Here's a link with some of the history.
Regardless, the Midwest was treeless and its ecosystem was geared to that and restoration is a noble goal, but I don't see us burning Indiana to bring the bison back. (No offense Hoosiers, I don't really want to burn your state)

GP your baby bird is cute, the jays and mockingbirds here do fine, but I keep having to pick cowbird eggs out of the little field sparrows nest... I guess I shouldn't tamper but it is my yard after all and I want the sparrows to have half a chance.

Here is a link that might be useful: NA forest history

Ryse, thanks for that.

kato, More than anyone, Wantanamara is one who would sympathize with your cowbird problem. We don't have that problem here but they certainly do in her area of Texas as far as endangered birds are concerned. Its quite serious in some areas. They are interesting in their evolutionary development because since they followed and developed a symbiotic relationship with the bison herds there was no time to roost so they developed a very unique & original way of insuring their young would be brought up by other species while they stayed on the move. Its one of the many problems we now have caused by settlement. Mass killing is just about the only way to deal with it which is sad, too bad we can't re-learn them instead.

Wantanamara, that reminds me and I kept meaning to ask--how is that area doing where you guys had that fire? What does it look like compared to the unburned ground?

Campanula, A deafening sing along by birds sounds a heck of a lot better than a deafening one of cicadas in the trees. A person can barely hear themselves think sometimes.

Yea, most people are pretty direct and plain spoken down in these parts. We've got a classy phrase for just about any situation. As far as the "staying in ones own yard" part and "needles in the eyes", that wasn't my first rodeo so I definitely got a bit hot under the collar on that third round and was prime to have a conniption fit. I think Great Britain has quite a few idioms of their own, I looked it up one night and finally had to shut down the computer and go to bed, too many of them. Some of that stuff, I didn't even know what it was but they had some pretty funny ones.

Sara, its not Ohio but its close. Here is my family when they lived in Indiana taken right before moving to Oklahoma. There were lots of trees there at least way back when and they lived in a log home.

Now here is where they moved to in Oklahoma. You can sort of see a difference in the # of trees. There's lots of trees now but this is how it used to be.

Of course outdoor cats, especially ferals do kills birds (as well as warm blooded vermin). To help solve this problem (among others associated with feral cats) we needs to sterlize all felines. (TNR Trap Neuter and Release/Return is one such program to humanely accomplish this goal). I pointed out in my first post in this thread that loss of natural habitat is by far a more serious problem to maintaining wild life populations of all types. And of course this is happening because of human sprawl. I gave no specifics on how humans alter the natural landscape; just that we do. There is no way that such an obvious observation (I am sure on a gardening forum I am preaching to the choir) should trigger such rudeness. But having said that, what is good for the goose must be good for the gander and so my most recent post was inappropriate in a public forum. I apologize.

Rouge, The subject of predators is an interesting one. There are a couple books I came across that I am checking out to read. One is called 'Never Cry Wolf' which is about how the wolf keeps the caibou healthy. The other is Caroline Frasier's 'Rewilding the World'. An environment without carnivores is "dead of its own too-much'. I love that phrase.

I am unsure if I should act (report) on the house with all the cats. On the one hand, they are living creatures but on the other hand its a problem of obvious lack of trapping & neutering. There is a car up the street with a sign in the window crying foul that says "Someone is trapping and killing pet cats in the neighborhood". I'm not sure if the two are related or not. In the meantime, I am still trying to decide if I should act. I don't like being in this position.

Thanks for sharing your pictures Texas. I really enjoyed them, for the history aspect as well.

Cats and birds have been around for a long time but cats have not been fed and cultured the way we do now. Larger predators have been removed until this rebirth of coyotes. Balance is a hard thing to maintain. Human intervention of the food chain is all over the place and sometimes further intervention is called for and sometimes less is called for.

I have been asked by "my" biologist who has designed my wildlife plan to BE the predator that brings the land back in balance. I don't like it, but it has been suggested to kill Racoons,, stray feral cats, deer, and FIRE ANTS. They are all out of balance. I know my neighbors' cats that live close to me., but there are 2 places that have 30+ cats. One old man who used to buy 40lbs of cat food a week died a year or so back and , oh lordy, were we trapping some sorry mean cats that inundated us and taking them down to the shelter. I have another guy who lives about 1/4 mile from me who has at least 30 cats hanging at his house. They make it over here and we try to scare them off. My cats are past their hay day of hunting. They don't bring down anything. Even the lizards pay the little mind. The cats do like the field mice and the rabbits. I see a family of really fleet whiptails that have moved in. The coon population has dwindled because of our activity and the foxes have replaced them. They are much more in balance. The coyotes are working on those cats. I hear them at night. My cats stay inside at night. I tried being a cowbird predator but that didn't work out too well. The rather large trap is at my neighbors house raising chickens. My neighbors got rid of their cows and we don't see the cow birds now. The deer are a hard nut to crack. Our land is weirdly shaped and the place they love to hang is by the road and hunting them is dangerous for passing traffic. We do have a mountain lion on occasion. Then , all the deer get scarce in a hurry and I start feeling like I am on the menu when I go run the trash out in the night time with my long mag light grasped tightly. I have heard it roar. We have boars. The lions killed 2 400lb boars a couple of years ago and my neighbor shot 4 of them last summer. They can root up ground in a hurry.I wish I could channel that energy in the spring, I wouldn't need a tractor to plow over a field.

We do have wildlife in disarray. The boars do damage, the deer are making once common trees endangered. I am doing my best caging tree seedlings and watering them in the summer when we have no rain. Lately there have been no seedlings making it through the summers because of the drought. I have been revegetating and diversifying flora and fighting invasives. It is a big pill.

Yes, deers used to be much less common, due to less habitat, more food pressure (like bison, elk, etc), and have predation from mtn lions and wolves.

And that causes them to be more like what we call them, hooved rats. I admit they're cute...and I love them, but I know exactly how much damage they do when overpopulated.

I agree with above poster about serious population reduction. I also have a neighbor with 30+ cats, the coyotes do help in keeping population down, but they're struggling with the birthrate and people wanting to kill coyotes.

In the past 30 years of my life, I have seen the local extermination of chipmunks and possibly flying squirrels (though I wouldn't bet on the latter), frogs and toads (for the most part, leopard frogs still semi-plentiful), and many snakes, due to human efforts and their pets run amuck.

As a consequence, I've seen bird populations dive, rats and mice have lemming years, and insect damage to local crops go WAY up.

You could say 30 years is too short a cycle to pay attention to, but it's the only cycle I can see in my life time.