August 8, 2008
The bats are flying nightly this time of year. Best seen against the twilight sky, they fly erratically, using sonar to overcome their blindness and find their prey. Hundreds of mosquitos and other pesky insects are eliminated each evening as the bats seem to dance in the air. Well, maybe if they were dancing to rock and roll, right?Backyard tip of the week: Want to have fewer mosquitos in your yard? Try putting up a bat box. Bat boxes differ from bird houses by having a smaller opening, often on the underside of the box. Many bat species are threatened due to ecological pressures. The provision of bat-boxes can help support locally important populations. Bats are also becoming a popular source of natural mosquito and insect control in some parts of the world. A single bat can eat up to a thousand mosquitoes a night as well as numerous garden pests. Bat houses are an ecologically friendly way of controlling mosquitoes, as pesticides mostly kill the mosquito's predators rather than mosquitoes themselves. Bats may seem scary, but a yard with less pesticide and fewer mosquitos is something that you and your family are sure to love.
Backyard sightings for last week: Including northern cardinals, American robins, northern flickers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, bluebirds and catbirds. Chipping sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, Carolina wrens, house wrens, eastern goldfinches, house finches. Red-bellied and downy woodpeckers, white-breasted nuthatches, a ruby-throated hummingbird, the tufted titmice, black-capped chickadees, blue-jays, American crows, a few grey squirrels, a mostly white skunk, and some bunnies. Also, European starlings, common grackles, red-winged blackbirds, mourning doves, chipmunks, many different kinds of butterflies, still a bunch of fireflies, a hummingbird moth, and a white-lined sphinx!
Cool sighting of the week: If you remember, last week I told you about the mysterious appearance of a fruit tree in my front yard. Well, I'm still not sure what that is because the fruit is so small, but I found something this week that was equally cool. While walking around the yard on Tuesday afternoon, I came upon a small tree that has been growing for several years now near the base of another much larger tree. All this time, I'd been thinking the small tree was the same as the one next to it, but this week, as I walked by, I spotted something different than I'd ever seen in the yard before - cherries! It was a real live cherry tree! And, no I didn't cut it down. I tasted the cherries and while I found them to be not so sweet, I'd bet that the birds will love them. Either way, finding a free cherry tree in the yard this week was very cool!
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