THE MOUNTAIN ASH AS A WILDLIFE TREE

NICE DAY

CEDAR WAX WING AND MOUNTAIN ASH BERRIES

...SO MANY BERRIES, SO LITTLE TIME....

UNIDENTIFIED AVIAN SPECIES SEEN IN DOWNTOWN BAYFIELD

Saturday, 8:30 AM.  44 degrees F, wind WNW, light with stronger gusts.  The sky is clear except for some scattered puffy white and gray clouds, mostly along the eastern horizon.  The humidity is 85% and the barometer is up a bit, at 29.96 ".  We should have a nice day.  The Farmers
Almanac predicts fair weather for several days, and turning unseasonably chilly.
  We cut some more fir wood yesterday in the afternoon, after it stopped raining.  Buddy and I hunted down the logging road but saw no grouse.  He is working extremely well and we will start to go farther afield now.  I find that an hour or two of working in the woods is about all I want to do at this point, so the net result is rather meager but that's OK.  My mother used to say, "You can do everything you used to do when you get old that you did when you were young, as long as you never stop doing it."  I would add to that, but not as much and not as fast.
   The mountain ash tree outside the kitchen window continues to attract  many species of birds, but by the end of today the berries will be virtually gone.  The berries must be at the very height of their delectability. So far I have seen robins, cedar wax wings, downy woodpeckers, flickers, fall warblers and even a female hummingbird dining in the tree.  The later I felt a real pang of sorrow for, as I fear she has missed the migration.  It is a terrible thing to be abandoned by one's flock.
   I am so impressed with the mountain ash tree as a wildlife attractant that I have vowed to add one to every landscape plan I draw, and put it right outside a good viewing window.
   I have written a lot about mountain ash trees in past blogs, just use the blog search engine to read about blossom time, the different species of mountain ash and their ecology.