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Wildlife

A few close friends and I were having coffee the other morning when the conversation drifted off to holiday gift-giving and how difficult it can  be to find that exactly “right” gift for the “right” person. We started reminiscing about some of the gifts we have received through the years, usually from our husbands. Some were sweet, some were strange and some were absolutely hilarious.

I was absentmindedly browsing through some internet articles last night when a rather bizarre fact caught my attention. According to. BirdCast which is published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 443,900 birds crossed over Missouri the night of November 6, 2023 and a total of 5,788,600 birds were in flight. The random fact immediately sparked so many questions:  How do they know the number of birds flying across an entire state on any given day?  What kind of birds were they?  Where were they from?  Where were they going? How far does a migrating bird travel in a day? Being an avid armchair birdwatcher, I couldn’t resist digging just a little deeper to find some answers to my questions . What I found both saddened and encouraged me. 

It never ceases to amaze me how much work there is left to do in my gardens in November. Even though the blooms are long gone and the foliage is a squishy shade of greenish-gray, I need to motivate myself to bundle up, get outside and get to work. There are 10 chores that, if done now, will make my spring garden thrive.

Our library system periodically hosts adult Ed programs for the community. The other night there was one about turning your turf lawn into a - and I quote the presenter here - a native paradise for pollinators. Figuring he knew more than I did (ours is three years old and far from a paradise), I settled in to learn. 

Tuesday, September 2nd was National Hummingbird Day.

Since they are one of my favorite bird visitors, I celebrated the day by hanging a brand new feeder with freshly-made nectar in it. They were overjoyed!  Well, in reality I just replaced a feeder that had cracked open and watered the pentas with sticky syrup. Ever since, the birds had been circling the empty space looking for food, so I replaced it, even though I knew they were getting ready to depart. 

My granddaughter, the same one who schooled me about moths, is now fascinated with bats. Among other things, I gave her a bat abode for her 8th birthday thinking she would keep her stuffed bats in it. (Yes, there really are bat “stuffies”!).  When she unwrapped it, you would have thought she had received a priceless treasure. What surprised me even more though, was how excited her dad was about the gift. He immediately went outside and walked around the house to figure out where it would hang. 

According to NASA’s latest satellite pictures, the United States currently boasts 49,000 square miles of lawn area. That’s larger than the entire state of Mississippi and the nation’s single-most irrigated “crop.”  It’s also one of the most expensive, costing Americans roughly 76 billion dollars a year and 14 hours a week to maintain. But, where did this obsession with a lush, green lawn originate?

My absolute favorite people to buy gifts for are my gardening friends. Admittedly, it gives me the chance to dream about my own next purchase, but more importantly, they always seem delighted to add another dimension to their gardening lives. In years past, I have just published a list of ideas, but this year I’m trying something new. This time around I’ve divided the list into categories. Hope it helps you find that perfect surprise for under the tree.