In early May I told you about the high levels of activity in my garden during migration. The songbird migration is over now, but the level of bird activity in my garden is undiminished. Some of you may remember that birds were my first love until I discovered dragonflies and stopped paying as much attention to the birds. But lately I find myself unable to ignore the boisterous singing of the resident robins, blue jays, and cardinals, and my love of birds seems to have been rekindled, at least temporarily. My garden is a fruity buffet, luring them in to enjoy the enormous quanitities of berries on my serviceberry shrubs (Amelanchier species). It’s a ceaseless parade of birds all day long, most often the robins, but I’ve also seen four other species of birds feeding on those berries when the robins allow them access: cedar waxwings, blue jays, cardinals, and house sparrows.

I’ve spent many frustrating hours trying to capture video of this spectacle but I’m having trouble getting my camera to stay focused on a bird moving around in a shrub. Nevertheless, I managed to put together a little montage of some of the activity for you.

This is the first time I’ve had such bountiful berries on the serviceberry shrubs; each plant is self-fertile, but they apparently produce more berries when you place multiple shrubs near each other. I added another one of them last year, and sure enough, I got a bumper berry crop this year.

One lovely afternoon recently as I sat watching a cardinal feeding on serviceberries in my garden, I felt a sort of gratification I’ve not had in many years in regards to birds. Instead of always chasing “better” and “different” species in distant locations, I found joy in watching the birds who live in my own yard, the ones who are so common we often ignore them. How sad is it to not notice the eye-popping blues of a blue jay? Or the knock-your-socks-off beauty of a male northern cardinal in his bright red breeding plumage? And even the subtler beauty of a female northern cardinal? The American robin isn’t as brightly colored as those two, but he sings a joyful song that brings a quiet smile to my face as I listen. These birds remind me that we often miss the wonderful parts of our everyday lives as we go searching for the supposedly “greener grass” somewhere else. I’m loving the peace of being at home more these days, sharing my time with the birds, dragonflies, and other insects who live here with me.

I’ve also spent many hours watching the pond to see who comes to bathe and drink. I have to stay far enough away so that my presence doesn’t frighten them, and sometimes my camera’s view is blocked by the plants in the pond. I was most excited to see the Baltimore oriole come to bathe daily for almost two weeks. Earlier in the spring I’d watched a pair of orioles gathering lots of nesting material from my garden. Cedar waxwings showed up mostly for the serviceberries, but they also investigated the pond a little bit. (See them in the video above.) The waxwings have been one of my favorite bird species for many years because of their elegant beauty and the distinctive high-pitched whistling that always alerts me to the arrival of this gregarious species.

If you have a bird bath, you’re most likely well aware of the exuberance shown by the American robin when it comes to taking a bath. They deserve the rubber duckie award for all the splishing and splashing they do.

My pond continues to be the most wonderful thing I could have ever done for my garden. It attracted dragonflies from day one, and continues to be a focus of bird activity too. I often make tweaks to the arrangement of plants and the access to the water, hoping to make it easier for everybody to get in there for drinking and bathing. I do regret not making the pond much bigger, and I regret waiting so many years to build it.

I created this little pea gravel beach for easier entry and exit, and I’ve recently added several dragonfly perches around the pond, using branches that have fallen from the maple trees. That’s one thing I didn’t do a good job of when I made the pond last summer. Dragonflies need to be able to crawl onto a vertical surface to help them emerge from the exoskeleton to begin their lives as flying insects. Last summer I found a couple of them floating dead in the water, and that could have been because they couldn’t find a way out. That made me sad because they were the primary reason I made the pond in the first place. But I’ve got more branches in the water and around the water now and I think that will help them a great deal.

I continue to find new species of dragon- and damselflies in the garden, and found three or four new species in one week in late May. So far I’ve documented 16 species here, and definitely more activity since I built the pond. I found this evidence of a green darner emergence in the pond a few days ago, but sadly didn’t get to see the adult before it flew away.

And just last week I was stunned to find a teensy tiny Sedge Sprite floating around inside the tall stems of my sawtooth sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus). This one-inch damselfly is usually found near marshy ponds, fens, and places with a lot more water than I have here. But despite that, he was here. Incredible.

You’re Gonna Need More Rope!

When I wrote about my new battle with deer in May, I also mentioned that I was/am considering building a second pond. I laid out a rope outline and moved it each day as I watched to see if it would get enough sun for the pond plants. I finally settled on the location, and then the deer came back. My security camera photographed her drinking from the pond at 5:00 in the afternoon, an unusual time for deer to be moving around in the neighborhoods. And now that we’re in the midst of a record-breaking heat wave, I’m expecting to see the deer again and again. So I’m second-guessing the idea of adding yet another pond to make my yard even more enticing to them. I think I need a second camera to point at the fence to figure out where they’re getting through. I put up the rope “psychological deer fence,” (described in the May post) but I didn’t extend it the entire length of the fence because I thought some large shrubbery along the rest of the fence would deter the deer. It didn’t. Clearly, I’m gonna need more rope. (I can’t help hearing that in the voice of Chief Brody in Jaws — “You’re gonna need a bigger boat!”)

It’s frustrating because the deer are so destructive that they can destroy hundreds of dollars of work in the blink of an eye. Maybe it’s good that the heat is preventing me from digging right now, so I can reconsider my plans. It’s so hot that I can barely stay outside long enough to water some of my potted plants and small baby native plants. Thank goodness that most of my native garden doesn’t need watering at all! The long roots on native plants make them amazingly drought-tolerant.

I hope you’re all keeping safe in the extreme temperatures, and don’t forget to provide your animals with extra water and refuge from the heat.

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