"Single Mother"

JH jhimmel at connix.com
Mon Jul 23 22:05:15 EDT 2001


While I like phoebes as much as the next guy, there was one year my opinion
of them was a little less favorable.  One had gotten into the habit of
raiding the moths off of my sheet.  It became such a convience for her, she
built her nest about three feet away.  Not only could she have breakfast in
bed, but her young rarely had to wait for a meal.  I would have to turn off
the lights for a few nights a week to give the moths a break.

As for the Gypsies - we seem to be in somewhat of a boom year for them.  I
noticed many dead (desicated) caterpillars on the oaks in Madison today.
Victims of the fungus, I presume?

John
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John Himmelman
Killingworth, CT USA
jhimmel at connix.com
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Visit my websites at:
http://booksandnature.homestead.com/booksandnature.html
www.ctamphibians.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: bill and Dale <droberts03 at snet.net>
To: butterfly ct <ctleps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Date: Monday, July 23, 2001 1:58 PM
Subject: "Single Mother"


>Everybody,
>      This may seem off topic but really with a little stretch it's not.
>I want to tell a little story, please indulge me.
>
>       She's a single mom and she's doing the best she can to get by.
>Three hungry mouths to feed.  She does what she has to do.  She kills.
>All day long from morning til night. She murders them one at a time.
>Gypsies mostly, that's her specialty, but she'll kill others too when
>the opportunity presents itself. Sometimes she stalks at night, easy
>pickins when I forget and leave the back deck light on.  The cousins of
>the Gypsies come to the light and she's right there anyway so she leaves
>the little ones and grabs a quick bite.
>      This spring a pair of Eastern Phoebes set up housekeeping in an
>old Barn Swallow nest on the exhaust vent from my bathroom fan on the
>backside of my house. The first brood wasn't successful but about two
>weeks ago a heard a couple of little peeps and thought, "that's good
>they're raising another family." The same day I found one of the adults
>dead by the side of the road, the male I think. For the next two days my
>single mom called incessantly for her mate to come help with the chores.
>She'd chirp for five minutes nonstop with two or three caterpillars in
>her beak, give up and go feed the kids herself. I know I'm
>anthropomorhizing. I'm giving human characteristics to a bird. But the
>point I'm getting to- she's a master predator of the hordes of gypsy
>moths flying in my yard. She kills dozens, maybe hundreds, every day;
>snatches them right out of the air, anticipates their crazy flight path,
>hovers, bill snaps with an audible click and another gypsy bites the
>dust. It's beautiful. It's unexpected. If you watch the erratic,
>unpredictable flight of male gypsies it's hard to imagine anything
>catching up with them. But maybe the flight of gypsies only seems
>unpredictable to my untrained human eye. My single mom seems to see the
>pattern clearly, she has the eye. Anyway as the hordes of gypsies grow
>I'm rooting for my Phoebe family. I hope mom can keep up the pace and
>the little ones make it. We could use three more Gypsy killers.
>                                                                   Bill
>Yule
>
>


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