It
is time for more nature stuff for all the master naturalists out there. If you haven’t paid your money and
don’t hold an officially authorized Missouri Department of Conservation Master
Naturalist certificate, you can play along here anyway just as an amateur
naturalist. Or you can come and
sit on my back porch with me and learn a whole lot and get by with only 50
cents a cup for the coffee.
Because
it is there in the mornings or evenings, as I drink coffee and watch the life
go on in and below some 250-year-old oaks, that I learn a little each day. For instance, just off my back porch a
bright red bird spends a lot of time after bugs for his little ones in a nearby
nest. He is not a cardinal, and his mate is an entirely different color. Since
he is not a cardinal, there is only one other bird he can be. What is he and what color is his mate. Answer at the end of this column.
One
of the most plentiful birds here on Lightnin’ Ridge is one of the largest
insect eating birds to nest high in the trees, and you almost never can see
him. We know him as the rain crow
here in the Ozarks, but his scientific name describes the color of his bill. What
is it? Now that ought to be an easy one to figure out. A rain crow’s loud clucking, which gets
faster as it continues, has long been said to be a warning of rain to come, and
it is the most reliable of all weather predictions, because I have never heard
one, ever, that I did not see rain to follow. But once it didn’t happen for about three weeks!
Which
is larger, a whip-poor-will or chuck-wills-widow. Why do they have the hairy looking bristles sticking out of
the sides of their open mouths?
And did you know that neither of the birds build a nest. They just lay eggs on the leafy forest
floor, and their eggs are very susceptible to skunks and coons and possums and
armadillo’s, four rotten no accounts that eat every egg they can find. I truly believe that the decline I have
seen over the past ten years or so in the numbers of these birds is due to a
great increase in the egg-eaters. But a whip-poor-will can move its eggs
easily. Any card-carrying master naturalist knows how they do that. If you don’t see the end of this
column.
It
is in late June and early July that you can so easily call up rooster quail if
you can whistle like a bobwhite. I
hear one or two every morning around my place, and when I have the inclination
I whistle one up to within a few feet of the porch. I had one so frustrated once that he flew up on the roof and
whistled back at me for an hour or so.
Usually though, a comical little rooster will run around in the back
yard and finally fly up on a low oak limb, whistling away until I have to leave
the porch and go do something else. But he will sit there on that limb while my
Labrador runs around in the yard trying to find him. Do you know why a rooster
quail will come to your call so readily as summer progresses? Any top-flight naturalist knows the
answer!
Back
in the depression days their readiness to come running to a call got lots of
rooster quail killed. There were
likely four or five times more quail back then, and folks lived off the land in
hard times, always hungry. My
grandfather called up the bobwhites back then and shot their heads off with his
.22 rifle, sometimes getting a dozen or so in a morning for his family. Because they were all roosters, and
there were so many of them, I doubt that impacted reproduction at all. Male quail were always able of taking
care of a number of hens, just like turkey gobblers, or leghorn roosters.
Sometimes when I talk to a group about nature they have a
hard time believing the stories about fish jumping in the boat! Is that story
about flying fish landing in a boat just a big tale to fool gullible folks or
is it true?
Well
almost every summer, when we float the rivers at night and bang through the
shallows with boat paddles splashing and headlamps on, we see it happen.
Usually the bass are small, but some are up to 2 pounds or better, and they can
leap from the water several feet in the air, distances of more than 10 feet and
three feet above the surface. And yes, when I was young and we would go along a
small river in a johnboat grabbing frogs with a headlight, we always seemed to
take home a bass or two that jumped in the boat before the night was over.
As
for the rooster quail, by this time a good part of the mating season is over and
many hens are nesting. Like wild
gobblers, his call is to attract a mate.
It stakes out where he is and that he is unafraid and available. That
helps mark a special territory that is his, and any interlopers should expect a
fight. He comes to my call because
he figures to whip that rooster he hears and run him off.
The
whip-poor-will often moves its eggs by holding them between her thighs while
she flies from one place to another, and those bristles that stick out from the
side of the birds beak is for feeding on insects in flight. If they miss a bug in the air, the
bristles may catch it and channel it into the wide, open mouth. The
chuck-wills-widow looks very much like the whip-poor-will, but it is a little
larger.
The rain-crow is also known as a yellow-billed-cuckoo and
if you get a good look at that bashful tree top dweller, you are
fortunate. It is a beautiful bird,
as is the red bird I so often see that isn’t a cardinal. It is a summer tanager, and while the
male is bright red, the female is a subdued yellow color.
Now
you have all the answers, except to how you might get our brand new summer
issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal magazine. Concerning that, you may call me at 417
777 5227 and we can get you on our subscription list. Write to me at
Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or email me.. lightninridge47@gmail.com
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