Patti Muzny, newsletter editor

Patti's Chirpings

In our OKC backyard, we are now seeing young Robins with their pretty speckled breasts – some still begging for food from the parent birds, although I feel that will come to a screeching halt soon.  Ma Robin is nesting again and should fledge another brood shortly.  

Our Brown Thrashers almost made it to fledging, but after I found a nestling on the ground in the garden that looked suspiciously like a long-legged thrasher, I checked the nest and it appeared to have been ransacked by something.  I suspect one of the many squirrels that use the stockade fence beside the nest site for a superhighway.  Since then the thrashers have disappeared.  

We had a “first” for our backyard during the first week of June.  A House Wren was found perched atop a wren house at the edge of the garden and we also saw him carrying nesting material inside.  We can only hope!  While House Wrens are sometimes seen in our yard during migration, we’ve never had them stick around for the summer. 

Mississippi Kites are soaring throughout our neighborhood and I always enjoy watching them.  Maybe someday they will choose our large pin oak in which to nest.  

In the wee hours of the morning of June 11, Brian heard a Great Horned Owl in our neighbors’ tree.  It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen or heard one there.  (That munching machine of a cottontail that has appropriated my garden had better watch out!)  

I still keep hoping for a Collared Dove, White-winged or Inca to find our feeder, but so far it’s still the “usual” birds,” including the one tame Rock Pigeon, squirrels and that bunny.  

Even with the competition from flying and four-footed garden munchers, I’ve managed to grab enough blackberries for my own munching, and harvest my first peppers.  Chicken wire cages salvaged my produce from the bunny.  Let’s say it challenges my creativity to raise my veggies and flowers to maturity!  

By Patti Muzny

On June 7, Nancy Vicars, my sister, Bobbi Arthur, and I left OKC and headed the truck toward western OK.  Nancy had signed up for a Breeding Bird Survey route from near the town of Arapaho and south toward just north of Dill City .  We had never done this one before, and needed to scout the area before trying to find the stops in the pre-dawn hours for the first time.  

BBS Routes are pre-set in a 25-mile route, with stops every one-half mile.  We stop and listen and look for exactly three minutes at each stop.  This route had not been done for a few years and we found the instructions were extraordinary.  

We drove where we thought the typed (on what surely was an ancient manual typewriter) instructions directed, but somehow managed to be off one stop after being directed to cross under I-40. The directions didn’t say to turn right or left.  Left looked like a merge back onto I-40, so we turned right.  Then the directions began to get a little more fuzzy. The map showed a road that appeared to be nonexistent, and those typed directions were not the most dependable we’ve found.  

On one stop the description was, “dead tree on horizon.”  Written in pencil in the margin was “tree fell.”  (Maybe BBS participants shouldn’t use dead trees as points of reference?”  It gets better…another stop was referred to as a “slanted road.”  As we approached this point, various images came to mind.  Now just what was a “slanted road?”  How could we be so dense?  It was just another word for “diagonal” intersection.  And there was also a stop with a “mesa yonder.”  

Somehow we managed to synchronize our stops with the last 25 or so, but we needed to try to find the missing stop.  Without the odometer, we would have been meandering all over that route, never being really sure we were where we were supposed to be! We vowed to check out the missing stop later and continued toward Cheyenne.  

On our trip back to OKC from Cheyenne , we were traveling with Jerry and Anita Vanbebber.  We told Jerry of our plans to take the I-40 exit and asked him to see if he could see a southbound road from the overpass as they continued eastbound.  Jerry’s report was a quick, “Yes.”  We found the elusive road and soon coordinated the interesting typed directions with the map and now have our “ducks in a row.”   

Nancy and I will work that BBS route soon, and are now confident we know exactly where the predetermined stops are located.  

Scouting this route was much like a scavenger hunt and we really enjoyed following the clues.  Now if the birds and Ma Nature will cooperate when we do the actual survey, we’ll be rather pleased.